It's not a major life choice!

"Buy the fucking thing, don't buy the fucking thing -- I don't give a good goddamn!"

Huh.  Things I want to say, but don't, build-up in my chest; directly above my heart a pocket of air seems to fill, stressing every extremity of my body.  The cause of this tension?  Milk. 

"Should I buy milk from Sam's?  It's only one gallon; I don't know if it's worth a drive all the way out there for one gallon ..." begins my father's public self-examination.  I'm upstairs, bedroom door open, applying for YET ANOTHER teaching gig, and he's passively pestering me with stupid quandaries about whether or not he should save a buck-and-a-quarter on bovine juice.  That's when the pressure started. 

I sat here, looking at my computer screen and noticed everything starting to turn red.  Dismayed at my life's situation, I sat forcibly eaves-dropping on my father's kinda' soliciting of my opinion.  It's milk: you buy it.  Either do or don't; I don't really care.  End result: I did not yell anything at my father.

Instead of yelling, I retreat to my usual methods.  I huff.  I get up from my chair.  I noticeably close my bedroom door.  It is rude and it sends the appropriate message: SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT YOUR SILLY QUESTIONS.  This lies at the heart of my stresses of living at home. 

My mother seems more grounded in life; or, at least, quiet.  She doesn't audibly consider whether to drive to the corner store or 3 miles out of the way (in order to save a dollar) for a gallon of milk.  She decides; she goes.  End of story.  My father, however, bemoans EVERYTHING.  Milk; opossums in the back yard; traffic; the less-than-impressive yield of this year's vegetable garden; etc.  If I hear one more open, yet-self speculating, conversation about the price of gasoline I might stab him.  Because of all of this I am certain that families should not live together after the children reach a certain age.

It's frustrating; he's my father.  He fails to notice his penchant for melodramatics, but yet criticizes it in everyone else.  You try to bring it up to him, and BLAMMO!  A fight. 

Hence I close my door, audibly.  I've given up fighting with him over character traits.  The sad result of us living together (again) is my cold and caustic passive aggressive response to his petty ponderings while I sit in my room desperately trying to find a job to get me out of here.

Mind you, it takes two to tango.  He knows when he pushes my buttons, and does so of his own accord.

Lord help me, I hope a job comes soon.  Of course: the minor error in my cover letter (which I was revising when the musings on milk began) will not help this.  His error or mine?  Doesn't really matter at this point, since a cover letter signed simply "Joe" will not help resuce me from my split-level suburban dementia.