Communication

I don’t like to talk on the phone very much. Or maybe I’m out of practice.

What I really don’t like is to be put on the phone with people I don’t know and have nothing to say to, just to “say hi”. It’s awkward and boring. However, over the last few years, I’ve given up on not being bored, and have tried to relax when people blather at me in person, instead of plotting my escape (to the bathroom if necessary.) I’ve also made an effort to talk to some of my husband’s friends and family on the phone, because it seemed to be something he wanted.

After my surgery, we were expecting a couple of house guests. One of them, N, had been due immediately after surgery, supposedly to help out my husband, but canceled. Luckily, it turned out my husband didn’t need to do that much extra for me, since he already cooks and shops, and we don’t bother much with cleaning.

N has a tendency to be days late, for visits, and hours late, to meet at a restaurant, so I was not surprised. She shows up for the second half of the second set, for concerts. She would also visit someone in another city, and would be driving a rental, so it was somewhat flexible.

So she was going to come sometime in the next few weeks, and another friend was due during the same time period. So in spite of post-surgical pain, I tidied up the guest room, which meant scooping laundry and papers into piles and boxes, where I would have to start all over at sorting them out, later. (This is the only space in a three bedroom house that is really mine. The rest of the house is full of things you never heard of, that any of half a dozen people might want to buy, if they knew we had them. Apparently quite valuable and impossible to throw away.)

I dusted. I don’t think I vacuumed.

My husband was due to go out of town for a few days, during my first week back at work. I had a thought one day, and said “I sure hope no one comes to stay while you are out of town.” He said “what if it is N?” I said “well… if that is the *only* time she could come, then I *guess* it’s okay. But I’d rather no one come then.”

A few days later I was asleep on the couch, and N called. My husband went into the kitchen to talk to her and I slept on.

When we discussed the conversation, which may have been that night or the next day, he said she was coming the same day as he left town, after he left, during the middle of my work day. I said “oh so that was the only time she could come?” and he said…      ….    “I don’t know.”

I was very irritated. I reminded him of our earlier conversation. I wanted him to find out if she could come a different time. He refused to present it like that. He told me he was going to tell her not to come those days because I “need my alone time”. I reiterated that it was okay for her to come if she could not come another time, and he refused to tell her that.

He called her, he told her not to come then because I need my alone time. She said that’s okay, she could come on Saturday. On Saturday, she called and said “I can’t come because of the amount of time on the rental car.” (How did she figure that out on Saturday and not earlier?)

So I figure she thinks I’m an evil bitch, now. I had a fight with the husband over this. During the fight, he said “you told me to never under any circumstances put you on the phone with anyone.” I asked him how long it had been since that had really been true. I admitted I had said it NINE YEARS previous. I told him if that’s all the effect all my trying had on his opinion of me, I may as well stop bothering. (So my new policy is, in fact, do not put me on the phone with anyone.)

Meanwhile, hubby’s other friend B, was on business in a nearby town, and due to drive down for the weekend. It turns out there was a medical emergency of some sort with a relative, who has since passed away.

(It seemed to me that it was actually the late stages of an ongoing situation, and when she arrived on the scene, she decided to poke her nose in and try to bully some insurance people around after it was way, way, too late. But whatever. In some sort of weird denial, she tried to talk me out of parts of my cancer treatment. “Oh you don’t need surgery then.” She later emailed “I hear you are having surgery after all.” No, that was always the plan. Talking to B on the phone was an exercise in me comforting her, about me having cancer. It drained me and I did learn to avoid it.)

So B was due for the weekend after the husband returned from being out of town. She called either on Sunday night or Monday night, I forget, to say she didn’t come.

I remember the night I was supposed to meet B for the first time. She was in town on business. Hubby told me we were to have dinner and she would phone. At 10 pm we had cereal and went to bed. She later said she had thought it was a “maybe thing.”

I remember when we were 1.5 hours late to her house when she was not *at* her house, because our plane was late (that’s available on line, right?) and she got mad because we didn’t phone her. I tried to get hubby to phone her. He refused. So it’s not all her, but it’s still irritating to me.

Lately, B has been leaving messages on our answering machine. The husband has not been returning her calls. She emailed *me* and asked if anything was wrong. I told him, he said he’d call. That was about a week ago. He didn’t call. He said he’d email. He didn’t email.

She phoned yesterday during the day. She asked him why he had not returned her calls, and he told her (and repeated it to me) that he won’t talk on the phone when I’m in the house anymore because I quiz him on every aspect of the call and get angry if he gets anything wrong.

Never mind that he works (not much though) at home, I leave the house for 9 hours every day, and she has one of them new fangled cell phones.

I only got angry at him one time in recent history. It had nothing to do with B, it had nothing to do with never wanting to talk on the phone.

I emailed her condolences about her relative. She replied, mentioning that “we” stopped returning her calls, and asking me if I still wanted to be her friend.  She said “I know we had some friction last year, but honestly feel that these things are minor and should not prevent us from having fun in the future.”

On the trip she refers to, on several occasions, she insisted she knew what I was telling her, and refused to listen when I told her she wasn’t getting what I was saying, until the 4th time around. She almost cost herself a day’s extra car rental, and generally bossed me around til I was sick of her. It wasn’t minor to me, it makes me cringe at the idea of our next trip to a concert. Which she mentioned, and said “but I wonder if you really want me to come.” Is this a trick question??

I explained to her a little bit about arguing with the husband and misunderstandings. It’s not about her, so I bet she won’t understand.