How it is With Dad

So, usually, this is how my day goes. I get up when hubby leaves for work, sometime between 7 and 7:30am. I drink a big glass of water (rehydration), get a cup of coffee (preferably in a crappy give-away type mug with a computer company or radio station logo on it) and drag myself into my home office where I attempt to be spontaneously creative on either one of two levels (writing or design) depending on what is on my action list. I know that I exercise (do yoga, water aerobics or walk) almost every day at 9:30, so I attempt to make the first two hours of my day the most productive.

I have this terrible handicap of sort of having a one-track mind to a certain extent. Once I get up out of that chair and go "out" into the world, take a phone call or otherwise get distracted, I am completely unable to get back into anything else at the same level of intensity. Whether it is designing a newsletter, writing a short story, working on the blog, or working on marketing materials for my business. I am done once I stop the train. So I try to save the more mundane things for the time after my routine is broken. Like phone calls, cleaning, and family stuff.

Inevitably, like today, one or the other of my parental units will call around 8:30. When my mom calls it is just to tell me every little thing that happened to her since the previous phone call, and a lot of stuff I have heard on the previous call. This morning it was my dad. He needed a form off the internet. Now, he is 82 and runs his own business. He has a nice computer in his home office. He has internet service. He has NO idea how to use any of it. No matter how hard we have tried to teach him. So he wants to know if he can come by. So around 9am I am interrupted by a knock on the door. What he actually needs is a form that he printed to be filled out with a typewriter and returned to the state of Nevada. Hmmm.... And he wants to wait because he's "already on this side of town". NOTE: Our town is small. Really. 8 stoplights in the whole town, I think. Population around 8,000. But after living 12 hours away in Pennsylvania, we now live "all the way" across town from them. (this isn't by accident, btw) This is maybe a 10 minute drive, but terribly unappealing to my dad, a.k.a. the most impatient man on earth, because he hates the "traffic" around the town square. (which cracks me up since I spent 18 years living in Nashville where there really is traffic.) So he limits his trips. Which is apparently a major inconvenience when he needs something done at the drop of a hat.

I know the obvious solution here is to say "no", but have I mentioned that my dad was in sales almost his entire life? You do not. say. no. to this man. It doesn't work. He is the salesman every company wants and every consumer dreads. From furniture to cars to insurance, he's done it all. Except for real estate which he never considered because "it isn't an impulse buy and I don't like waiting on people." See? Impatient.

So with my day today sufficiently hi-jacked I asked him please to just leave it for me to figure out and I would run it by his house later. To which he replied, "well, I need it done today" to which I responded "well, it is only 9am, there's a lot of day left." Then, "Well, soon, OK?" me "I can't bring it until after lunch, is that soon enough?" "Oh, sure yeah, if you can't get to it until then."

My life, honestly...