You can pick your friends...

    I had a row with my dad on Sunday. A good old-fashioned stand-up shouty row. Why? I had a pile of car body assemblies from a younger and much rustier cousin of the Rusty Old Wreck, and he scrapped them without telling me. They were destined for the scrap, but there were one or two parts on them that I wanted to salvage. He knew that, but chose to ignore it. Very annoying, and sadly not the first time it's happened.
    All rather unfortunate, but not the reason for this post. Afterwards as I drove back into town I was thinking about my relationship with my dad.
    I have few complaints about either of my parents. They can be a little old-fashioned at times, but in the ways that matter they have always been good to me and my sisters. Compared to the parents of some of my contemporaries they were very tolerant of our teenaged excesses too, I had none of the rafts of rules my friends had to put up with. But thinking as I trundled through the weekend rat-race I realised I've never been what I'd call close to my dad. At least not in the way other people seem to be. We do things like fettling machinery or dealing with random bits of agriculture together, but I can't think of a leisure pursuit I've followed with my dad. We don't go fishing, or watch football for instance. Hardly surprising I suppose, given the curve ball of gender variance my brain has thrown at me.
    His reason for scrapping the panels was that they've been in a pile for a couple of years and I hadn't done anything with them. Which is true, I've been alternating between not sleeping and struggling at times to retain my sanity and my marriage. Which returns to my relationship with my parents, I've talked a lot about all my gender issues with my mother but not with my dad. I'm simply too embarrassed to do so and he's going deaf so it would involve quite a lot of explaining. I've relied on my mother to tell him and perhaps that was a mistake.
    My annoyance will pass in time. Part of me is tempted to express further displeasure overtly but I think I'd regret it if I did so. Cutting off contact with my parents for a couple of months would only upset my mother and I have apple trees and the Rusty Old Wreck to see to at their place anyway. The more mischievous part of me toyed with introducing them to Jenny because I know it would embarrass the hell out of my dad, but yet again I know that wouldn't be a good idea in the long run.
    So I'll just simmer for a while. My equilibrium has been upset this week, hardly what I need in what has been a difficult and annoying month. Unfortunate, but life goes on.