Tests of Patience

I have returned from a weekend with the mother-in-law who lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. It is regretful to say, but each time I go see her, my patience is severely tested. In her worldview, everyone is out to get her and everything else that everyone else does is wrong.

I continue working on practicing what I preach. I smiled -- so much so that my partner said, "be careful, your face is going to freeze that way!" (That's a little joke between us.)

I prepared all the meals, which she ate with loud gusto. Umm, umm, lip-smackin' good. (Noisy eating is common, unfortunately.)

I had to work on a big project for my employer, so I had to plug away at my laptop when I wasn't doing something else. My patience was frustrated once again because I found that my collaborators -- all over the United States -- had documents and files they needed to share with me, but because my mother-in-law doesn't have internet access and I'm too cheap to buy an air card, I just had to suffer without.

Unfortunately, riding in a car all that distance tested my patience in just being "cooped up in a cage" which is really my problem, no one else's. My partner, on the other had, gets very stiff due to his disability. That makes him irritable and grouchy. He can't gripe at his mother, so I'm the lucky one to hear some things that perhaps he wouldn't say if he weren't so sore.

Columbus Day weekend is always one that tries my patience. But I continue to remember what I blog about, and find an inner resolve somewhere deep inside me to accept what I cannot change and just go with the flow.

And you know what? Overall, I'm okay. I could have had a more productive weekend and less taxing on my nerves had I remained home. But then again, going with him to visit his mother is something my partner asks me to do only twice each year. He does so much for me otherwise. It's only fair that I accommodate his interests and needs from time to time.

I have to say that I really appreciated the change in TV commercials. While I am not fond of television and don't watch it at home (no time, no interest), my partner and his Mom had it on. I couldn't help but notice the "regular" commercials, instead of the commercials run only on the DC television stations that try to influence votes in Congress on various issues. Or right now, additional commercials about the election for Governor of Virginia, which air in our market. All those commercials are awful and so darned one-sided; it was refreshing to hear something else for a change, and not all that political junk.

Life is short: grin and bear it!