Conundri

Conundrum:  A difficult question or riddle, especially one using a play on words in the answer. 

I knew it was time to come home when . . . 

Normally when I visit The Old City I stay with friends.  I do this for a reason that should be obvious by now but I'll repeat it anyway because I'm not quite done bitching about my family who DRIVES ME CRAZY.  See?  I couldn't even get through the set-up before mentioning that my family drives me crazy which is the reason I stay with friends.

I have managed to keep some semblance of control when visiting my family by not spending any time with them.  This never occurred to me when I was drinking, a fact you might find surprising until I remind you that it never occurred to me that I had to quit drinking if I wanted to sober up.  Quite the conundrum.  Another conundri was connecting the troubles in my life to my drinking.  There was a big, thick, black line running from my drinking to my troubles which I couldn't pick up on despite the fact that it could be seen from space with the naked eye.

I didn't get into trouble every time I drank but every time I got into trouble I had been drinking.

Anyway, on my last day in the small apartment - the day my clearly unhappy and spectacularly dry father finally arrived - I was considering taking a running leap through a plate glass patio door and off the adjoining 4th story balcony.  I was out of patience with the complaining about things that weren't being done when the best person to do them was doing the complaining.

My father - who for two months has been more or less confined to half of a small hospital room - was upset that no one had called to change the address of his newspaper subscription.   He found the knowledge that the paper was being delivered to the old house unhelpful.  He got quite upset with my mother for not calling the paper.  He harangued for a while.  It was clear to me that he might have taken two minutes to make the %$!! call himself at some slow point in the last sixty days.

What I wanted to do: "Give me the %$!! phone and I'll call the %$!! newspaper right now because you could have made the %$!! call six times instead of bitching that no one called the %$!! newspaper."

What I did: Went to my room.