Day One

Day one of my dad's retirement.

Number of arguments with mother? Three. But the end of the day is yet to come. Number of arguments with brother? Upwards of three and counting. Number of arguments with me?

I don't know if you can consider my "arguments" with my dad as arguments. Mostly because I try to be annoying in a way that may or may not be sarcastic but you can't really tell. For example, whenever my dad doesn't like how I do something (where I put the kettle, how I wash a dish, how quickly I pull the blinds open), I go into my dead eyes shopgirl mode.

What is dead eyes shopgirl mode? That's the mode I go into when I've had a really crappy day at work with abusive customers. I no longer care what they think of me. Instead, I am cordial and show no emotion.
"Sorry for the inconvenience," I will say, making eye contact with my soulless eyes. They will become agitated as you cannot really argue with someone who is not arguing back. They don't want to look like dickheads to the other customers.

I do this to my dad. "Sorry," I will say. "It won't happen again." He will become similarly agitated as you can't really argue/tell someone off when they are apologizing, no matter how dead eyes shopgirl mode it is. Am I being sarcastic? Yeah, maybe. Will it actually not happen again? Not sure because I often stop listening when in dead eyes shopgirl mode. Am I really sorry? Not a chance. I just want you to shut up so I can go back to whatever I'm doing.

I try to tell my mum to do the same thing when she's arguing with dad. However, she is physically incapable of doing this. She gets flustered, angry, raises her voice. All the things that just exacerbate a situation. In my future marriage, my husband and I are either going to have a super calm relationship with no arguments or he will get really pissed off with me as I go into dead eyes shopgirl mode every time he tries to start a conversation with me that maybe even be slightly inflammatory or have the potential to go that way.

Will report back with findings from Day Two.

J