May 8, 2009

• confusion and delay

  My nephew used to watch a lot of Thomas and Friends, that children’s show with the creepy toy trains with the shifty eyes. Generally speaking, every episode has the same plot — one of the trains does something wrong, and it causes “confusion and delay,” which is apparently the worst thing in the world. I laugh about it, but for me, this is pretty close to the truth. I dislike uncertainty, lack of definition, and scheduling snafus so much that in many cases, I would rather have a bad outcome immediately than wait until later for a possibly good, possibly bad outcome.

  And how is the creepy train show relevant now, you might ask?

  Superman and I have a seventeen day trip planned, as I’ve mentioned before. We were supposed to leave a few hours ago, and return on Memorial Day. Because his work got crazy, we had to change our flight to the red-eye tonight (for a fee) and give up one night of our hotel reservation in New York (with no reimbursement). Actual losses are just the change fees, one night of hotel charges, and the inconvenience of taking the red-eye instead of the afternoon flight. In the grand scheme of our trip and the grander scheme of our lives, not such a big deal.

  For me, however, it was nothing short of disaster when I found out yesterday that we’d have to do it. The confusion and delay frustrated me so much that I picked a fight with Superman, and we were not really able to resolve it, since he thinks it was a justified sacrifice made for work, and I feel like he bends over backwards (at his and my expense) for things that I don’t think are such important causes (sitting in on a conference call, letting his ex bail on her promise to watch the dog, and so on). He has more obligations and responsibilities than I do, and he takes them more seriously than I do.

  Work just isn’t the highest priority on my list. That became pretty apparent when I was the first person in my class to flee the law firm to spend four years “working” (because working in Europe doesn’t really count as work, the way Americans define it) in Europe. And letting exes take advantage of me and shirk their responsibilities at my expense is also not a high priority for me. For him, however, he says that he weighs out the costs and benefits in each situation and decides that the inconvenience of capitulating is lower than the cost of refusing to give in. Fair enough, but I just wish my interests weren’t negatively affected by his analysis.

  I think that my frustration in such instances isn’t about the money or time. It’s about the lack of control — the knowledge that these third parties (Superman’s boss and ex) are able to negatively affect my life, and I can’t do anything to change it or retaliate. The only thing worse than having a problem is having a problem that you can’t fix. Superman asked why I was venting my frustrations on him, since he feels powerless, as well, but who else is there? I can’t go to his boss or his ex. Anyone else is irrelevant. He’s the only person related to the problem that I can actually complain to. So I do.

  I think I might be especially sensitive to this kind of thing because I spent most of my vacations when I was younger watching my mom silently (and sometimes not so silently) fume when my dad spent most of the time reviewing documents, taking conference calls, and faxing comments to people. There is a big difference between having someone being on vacation with you, and having them attending it with you. My dad often seemed to just attend our vacations. So I get frustrated if I feel like someone is just attending, rather than being involved.

  As different as we are, my mom, sister and I share this aversion to confusion and delay in our own ways. My mom is not a great planner, and she doesn’t really know how to make things turn out the way she wants to, so she just fusses and frets whenever there is murkiness, chaos, or scheduling problems. My sister is the ultimate planner and fixer of things, so she kicks into high gear and imposes meticulous order on the entire universe if the universe is threatening to turn entropic. I am somewhere in the middle — stuck between feeling helpless (like my mom) and seeing that there might be a solution (like my sister). It’s an annoying place to be, knowing that there is a problem and that there might be a solution, but not actually being able to get everything to cooperate and implement my grand master plans.

  I was telling my mom about the confusion and delay a little bit last night, which is probably the best thing that happened in Superman’s favor in this argument, and he wasn’t even there. When I told her (fairly neutrally) that we were going to take a different flight out, she immediately asked if it was causing any friction (which had also been my sister’s first question, which means that either they know exactly how I’ll react to things, or this is something that would bug them, or both). Despite my deep frustration, I immediately started explaining why Superman wasn’t to blame, and that his boss is unreasonable, and that it’s hard to control such things, because I would rather have my parents think favorably of Superman than stick to my guns about an argument I’m having with him. After spending a few minutes arguing his case (the very case I had been arguing against shortly beforehand), I sympathized with him much more.

  But I still hate confusion and delay.

  Another source of confusion and possible delay that had come up recently was Superman’s cat. We’ve been talking about moving in together when my lease is up at the end of June, but I’m allergic to his cat, which he has been quarter-heartedly trying to re-home since before we ever started dating. But he wasn’t doing much about it. And I just wanted to be able to plan — should I sign a new lease, should I find a new apartment, should I stay on this lease a few extra months, or should I plan on moving? I couldn’t answer any of these questions without knowing if he was going to find someone to take the cat, and when. And nothing was happening. So frustrating. Superman felt like he couldn’t do anything, and I felt helpless and unable to plan my life because of his cat. I couldn’t really go peddling his cat to people, because that seemed selfish, and I didn’t really think it was my place, and he had asked his ex to look for takers, to no avail. He refused to give the cat to a random person (so Craigslist was out), and insisted that the new owner would have to at least be a friend of a friend. Dead end.

  When I mentioned this to my sister, she asked around and within a few hours, had two people interested in taking the cat. One of them met the cat a few days later, and she’s going to take the cat (assuming she still wants it and Superman can bear to part with the cat) when we get back from vacation.

  It was as simple as that. This is the difference between Superman, who is a prisoner of his responsibilities, me, a prisoner of other people’s limitations, and my sister, who just looks at the universe and orders it to get in shape. Sigh.

  ***

  Our flight leaves in less than five hours, and we’re really looking forward to finally going away, seeing friends, and escaping from our (mostly his) responsibilities for a while. There’s a wedding to go to, soup dumplings to eat, a dinner reservation at Le Bernardin. He’ll meet lots of my friends in New York and Z-town, and we’ll travel with Kanga and Roo for a few days. We have reservations in Spain for two of the top ten restaurants in the world. We’ll be wine tasting in Rioja, ham tasting in central Spain, and cheese tasting up north.

  Can. Not. Wait.

  • 8:40 pm
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