Halloween in Beacon Hill
Boston Tea Party Halloween decorations in Beacon Hill
I spent all week convincing Nino to hand out Halloween candy with me. I told him Manhattan Beach and Beacon Hill have the most trick-or-treaters in the whole country.
He thought I was lying. We talked to a neighbor who said our block gets more than 1000 trick-or-treaters. Then Nino believed me. And he said forget it. But now it’s Halloween and he wants to go, but we have a problem because the dog. I want the dog to sit with us. Nino tells me I’ll get arrested. That’s how bad the dog is with kids.
I don’t think my dog is terrible, but everyone else does. And we all know there are no terrible dogs, only terrible owners.
Last night we were watching dog grooming videos, because Nino won’t watch what I like so I tell him I’ll just watch whatever, and this is what he picked. I like it. It’s like a dog hair meditation. But what I really like is that the guy specializes in terrible dogs.
The guy called the dogs anxious. Sometimes I tell people that my dog is anxious because she was a rescue. But she is not a rescue, and in fact, we paid $4,000 for her.
I think we were a mark for the dog breeder. I can look at the puppy pictures now and see that she had the dog equivalent of autistic low tone and poor eye contact. I tell myself it’s not sad that I paid extra for this dog, because it’s like me putting up with extra from Nino.
Nino and I have a rule about the dog. He cannot make suggestions about what I should do. If he has a great idea, he can just do it. This stopped his suggestions so well that I made the same rule with his suggestions for what I do with the kids.
Stopping him from going through me did not improve his relationships. It canceled them. Because he can’t deal with conflict.
When he was avoiding the kids by sitting in the garden pretending to walk the dog, I told him that relationships are built on conflict. The people you love the most are the ones you’re willing to have conflict with. “Case in point,” I said. “ I don’t really have to be telling you this.”
He said, “Okay, then don’t.”
I thought, fuck off, but I didn’t say it because I don’t think I’m in a significant enough relationship with him to do conflict together. Anyway, Nino does not cuddle with me and the dog does, so engaging in conflict with the dog has higher payoff.
That is, if I did conflict with the dog. I keep thinking I’m going to, but then I give her scoops of peanut butter so that she’ll leave me alone.
I am too overwhelmed to train the dog for Halloween, or any day, really. I thought I was at the end of my caretaking life and that I was getting a dog to go running with. Instead, the dog has a hip problem and the kids need help navigating getting a job. This morning I tell my daughter to practice interviewing, she says she’s practiced enough. I ask, then where is the job. Then we have too much conflict and Nino tells me that he can’t come over for Halloween if we are already fighting about jobs.
He’s walking all over me, but it’s like a blind person walking all over me because I could tell him forever why he’s not being nice and he won’t get it. And when the kids see me putting up with him, it shows them that they should let someone interact with them like that. I’m telling you this so that you don’t tell me.
I remember a guy telling me that assertiveness training cannot be taught in just a weekend because “that is only enough time to learn the concepts.” I don’t know what the real course would be, maybe people practice and tell each other how they are doing.
I remember a middle aged woman cringing to tell us that, when she was a very young woman, she wanted try to teach Parent Effectiveness Training to real parents back during the P.E.T. fad. She meant that parents know things, and the real world is not like in a training manual.
Which means, Penelope, that if I was your neighbour I wouldn’t have a word to say.
I my own life, I am used to conflict, praise the Lord, because at my agency I always had to talk to a staff I was in conflict with before asking a manager to intervene. Otherwise, the manager would say, “Have you spoken to the person?”
This meant I became used to scary conversations. For me it was a learned a skill, a skill I have used outside of work. The main thing was to be willing.