Yes, Do Adjust Your Set

Living at my father's house has been fodder for many jokes, much soul searching and the required practice of Attitude Adjustment. I find myself using the humor to deflect expected judgments from people, which is a nifty and effective way to distract someone. I am usually successful with this tactic.

"So where are you living now?"

"Well, I am staying at my dad's house with my two dogs while all my worldly possessions are in storage. And bonus, we work together!!"

Quizzical look followed by, "Oh, well, how IS that? Is it hard? Does it suck?"

Here are my stock answers:
1. "I figured since in most European cultures, take the Italians for example (one half of my heritage as well), it is totally normal for unmarried adults to live at home. And since I am an unmarried adult, why not be like the Italians?? They seem to have a zest for life that we all want to emulate, so I am taking the chance to do it! I love it!" Big smile and hearty laugh.

2. "You know, I went online to one of theose carbon footprint calculators, and I am apparently some kind of carbon hog, so living at my dad's house truly reduces mine and his carbon footprint! It is fantastic!" Big smile and a gulp of wine.

3. "No it is great, really, I mean he is crazy as hell and smokes a lot of dope, and rants and fucking raves about politics and even more about shit he knows nothing about like The Sopranos which he has never seen yet has clearly defined opinions, and has a LOUD LOUD LOUD voice especially early in the morning, and did I mention the pot, oh and he is a slob and leaves crumbs and a wake of stains on every piece of furniture, couuntertop and carpet he touches, and he doesn't have garbage pick-up, he takes the offings and dumps it in other people's cans, oh and gets shit-faced a lot, and don't get me started on how he doesn't sleep in his bed, but on a couch, and now I understand how I got so screwy during childhood and was jacked up enough to marry my now ex, but other than that it's great! I do have a great view and he picks up the tab on my utilities!!" Person would then be gobsmacked and run away from me in terror.

Any more, and I start to veer into bullshit, or worse, actually rant the truth as evidenced in #3. This is when I realized that the Attitude Adjustment was critical, especially to tap into the all the years of therapy and take advantage of my youth (yes god damn it, I still consider myself young) and spend some time with my dad as an adult before he is really old and really-really crazy. So, I Adjust. And write about it... a lot.