Thursday, October 04, 2012

It's Always Fun When Grandpa Comes.....

Unless you have anxiety disorders.  Then it's stressful because you don't know what could happen.  When my husband asked if his father could come for a visit, i said 'sure'.   Because there was a very good chance that it wouldn't happen at all.  Anyway, it was over 3 months away so it seemed ok.  Not that I was doing a lot of planning that far in advance.

When it looked like it was going to work out after all I was still ok with it.  Ocd was not acting out much, so I kind of forgot what it could be like.  Then came the dog collecting my dirty socks from the basement floor and bringing them back into the living room and here was OCD wondering if the house would ever feel 'uncontaminated' again.  I was anxious and i tried to clean what i could. 

That's when I realized that Grandpa coming to visit may be very nice for my dh, and even my kids but for me it would be work and potentially anxiety-provoking.  So one night Bruce and I had a long talk where we decided that having Grandpa sleep at a hotel would give both him and me breathing space.  It would not be 24/hours a day company.  It's not like we are good friends or anything.  But I also wanted my husband to be able to spend time with his 84 yr old dad as,well, he's 84.

I don't know how much of my dislike of overnighters (altho I do let my dd have guests overnight) is because I'm introverted and like to have my space- or whether it's all due to OCD.

On the plus side, his dad wasn't insulted, Bruce will spend the nights with his dad at the hotel for extra male-bonding time ( and because FIL needs that extra care, as we found out by talking to the nurse at his assisted living place) and I don't have to clean up my daughter's room to make it ready for him as we have no guest rooms in our house.  Bruce is away on a business trip for the week and Katrina is sleeping with me at night.  She's getting tall and likes to sleep sideways and kick around in the bed so having all 3 of us sleep together probably wouldn't work out so well anymore anyway. (Sniff, sniff, my baby is growing up.)

It would be great if I were the type of person who would just say 'great, I'll add more potatoes to the pot' when people want to come over, but I'm not, and actually never really have been.

Hey, 4 years ago I would have freaked out even more because there would have been lots of places IN my house that were 'contaminated' and couldn't be touched and that there was no way I could have people just wandering around my house unsupervised.  Now it's basically the laundry room that's off limits and don't go touching the garbage can with your hands if you can help it- altho the dogs brush against it and I live with that.

5 comments:

  1. I am the same way about having guests. I, too, wish I could just say, add an extra plate, and go with the flow, but I've never been like that either. The hotel arrangement sounds like a good idea.

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  2. Oh... I get this way about guests too. I'm glad everyone was okay with the hotel idea.

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    1. Ha! His sister had a fit and the residence where he lived told us he couldn't stay at a hotel alone because they check on him at night. No one had mentioned anything like that to us 3 months ago!

      So Bruce said he'd stay overnight with his dad, which i thot was ok, since it would give them man-bonding time. Sis. felt much better when she found out that dad was looking forward to the vacation hotel and all and that we'd planned that he and my daughter could go swimming in the indoor pool the hotel has. We hadn't planned to 'dump' him off there and let him sit there for a few days but everyone reacted like that was the plan. shakes head. In 5 days it will be over, one way or another. Hey, a full-blown ocd attack could be rather entertaining for the onlookers

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  3. Oh, I have a really, really hard time with guests too. I'm happy to hear that it worked out for you. I cringe just thinking about having someone stay here. And it's definitely ALL OCD.

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  4. I am so with you on this, it is hard for me to have guests. I am even tense having people over for dinner but I do it anyway. My kids all live out of state so they come with their spouses and children at our house but they know I have OCD so it makes it easier because they know it would bother me if they touched my garbage can. Even then, I am still tense which makes me sad cause I should be able to totally enjoy it. Having someone other than my kids would be terribly difficult for me, gives me anxiety just thinking about it.

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