Money and ethics

I still have not dealt with the lying thing, which runs thus:

It was Daughter Harridan's 18th birthday in early December. I had made clear to BFG my intention not to get her a present since, having been called a "fucking homewrecking scum" and "psycho bitch" in July I told her not to expect any further birthday or Christmas presents from me or my family until she could treat me with courtesy and respect. To which she replied (and I quote): "you can fuck off I dont want them anyway so get your head out your ass"

Two days before her birthday BFG is looking anxious and saying he hasn't got her anything yet, so, with some internal begrudging, I take pity on him and offer to meet him at Fosse Park one freezing evening, where I spend about 2 - 3 hours of my time helping him choose presents. Not sure exactly how much he spends but it's probably approaching £100. We're broke of course, but it's his money and his daughter, and it's her 18th, so I don't resent it.

However, it now appears the whole "I haven't got her anything" was some kind of ruse for my benefit, since he had in fact bought her a laptop. Without thinking it appropriate to mention it to me.

I haven't been supermarket shopping for a month, because I couldn't afford it. But the cupboards really were completely bare, so I told him I would have to go last weekend. But we hadn't got enough money for food, so we had to move money around in various accounts before I could go food shopping, and the rest went on my credit card.

Despite this, it's not really the money that I'm upset about. It's the lack of openness and honesty.

His foolhardiness in (a) spending that much money on ANYBODY when we don't have enough money coming in to live on, and Christmas approaching fast, and (b) spending that much money on someone who has in no way shape or form behaved in a way that warrants it, sadly fails to surprise me.

However, his dishonesty disappoints me.

Insult to injury? She texted him and told him she didn't think it was ethical to accept the presents as she wasn't in contact with us and felt he had spent too much money on her under the circumstances. He texted back and told her to keep them and enjoy them or take them back and keep the money.

I don't even know where to begin tackling this. I could pretend his son told me about the laptop I suppose, but I don't know where to start. It's eating away at me though, so I know I'll have to say something.

little white lies

Sick to death of being lied to. We had a conversation about this earlier this year, because he tells me white lies all the time. I told him that dishonesty was a dealbreaker for me, and he said he wouldn't do it any more.

I can't really say anything though - I only know he's lied to me because I looked at his phone, and I told him I wouldn't do that any more either. So we're just as bad as each other.

No gateaux involved, anyway.

The life of a cottager

Me: I love your earmuffs, F. Where did you get them?

F [my 6 year old stepson]: I got them in LONDON! [the venue for one of the 6 holidays his mother has taken him on so far this year]

Me: Wow, cool.

F: You don't like places like London. That's why you're called Tuftycat Cottage. You just like cottagey places.

Me: Who says that? [Knowing full well who said it; his horrible, nasty-piece-of-work big sister]

F: Ummmm.... anyway... what do you want for Christmas, Tuftycat?

Me: Oh, I don't know...

F: How about a voucher towards a holiday in Tenerife? [the venue for another of his 6 holidays so far this year]

Me: Well that's very kind of you but no thanks darling.

F: Why not?

Me: It's just not really my sort of place.

F: I know! How about London? You would like London! It is really good, Tuftycat!

Me: I have been to London before, you know, F.

F: [puffing chest out because he's been TWICE!] How many times?

Me: Well, I used to have a job that meant going to London twice a week. There are 52 weeks in a year, and I worked there for 4 years. So that would be at least 416 times, not counting all the times I've been for fun.

It really shouldn't feel that good to get one-up on a 6 year old, but the look on his face was priceless.

A couple of things I have noticed about men and boys

1. Men think cleaning the toilet means squirting some bleach down it. Trust me, I have known a lot of men and I have never yet met one who understands that you have to get a cloth or a cleaning wipe and actually clean under the seat and around the rim and down the pedestal. This despite the fact that, let's face it, it ain't the laydees who piss all round the rim and down the pedestal and quite often over the floor and surrounding area, is it?

2. When small boys are 2 years old they have a visit from an MI5 agent who trains them, every single one, in the special technique required to hoist yourself further up on a woman's lap, namely, by jabbing the sharp pointy part of your small boy's elbow with maximum force into the woman's breasts. This training is carried out in top secret, the mother/other female carer is not told, that would spoil the surprise.

This may be first in series, I'm sure there are many more.

In which I explore Parenting, Property and Petulance

His ex, who I privately think of as The Harridan, has had hysterics because he opened the front door of THEIR HOUSE (yes, he still jointly owns it and pays half the mortgage) and put a wee giftie inside for his undeserving daughter. He didn't set one foot inside but, cue a lot of abuse and swearing from Mother Harridan and Daughter Harridan (how dare you enter OUR HOUSE etc).

So now she is selling the house and moving to the other side of the county. In the short term this is going to be very very unpleasant, because The Harridan is capable of first class nastiness, not just a bit nasty but spiteful in the extreme, so she is going to make the process and outcome as uncomfortable for us as possible. I can see there are reasons for this, after 20 years together he ran off with a kooky poet, but her spite overtakes everything, including what is best for the children. There is no love lost between their daughter and me but she will be starting the final year of 6th form in September, in what way can it possibly be good for her to be uprooted at this point from the house she's lived in for as long as she can remember?

But who am I to judge, I have just the one child and I'm making a cock up of that. I asked my little boy the other day if I was a good mummy or a bad mummy and he said "bad mummy". This may be because I'd just shouted at him for throwing all the table mats and coasters all over the floor but it's how I feel a lot of the time, every other sentence starts with "Don't..." and when I'm on my own with him all day I just get frustrated, I don't do enough proper quality time with him on our days together, I just get bogged down in housework and then he starts playing up because I'm not giving him proper attention, who would have thought I'd be so bad at this after all those years desperate for a child?

So unpleasantness ahead with the house sale thing, it's going to get nasty and my partner (who I shall call the BFG) is ill equipped to deal with it, his default position when things go wrong is with his head in the sand sobbing about how much he misses his daughter, which doesn't help to move things forward. So I know there will be stress and after all the crap in January I can only hope our relationship is strong enough to cope. I started this blog because things were really bad and I needed an outlet, they are a lot better now, but I'm not going to pretend I/we have recovered, I'm still really struggling with frequent anxiety attacks and my trust in him has not fully returned.

In the long term I know the house sale will be good for us, if we can get through. We will have A LOT more money, both to live on month to month and to do up our own horrible house. Also if she moves to the other side of the county then contact arrangements with youngest stepson may change, this may be good from my perspective. I do love him (if I say that often enough then it must be true) but he is a very petulant child. Petulance is something you live with in your own child, in other people's children it is irritating.

Petulant child was supposed to be coming on summer holiday with us, but since BFG opened the door of HIS HOUSE The Harridan has changed her mind, there again, how can it be best for her son not to have the opportunity of a summer holiday with his dad? The BFG is a Good Dad, he does not beat or abuse his children, he does not drink or take drugs or commit any illegal activity, he reads stories and does jigsaws and goes on fun walks in all weather (usually to the pub, perhaps I should modify the bit about not drinking), he puts children on his shoulders when they get tired, he gives lots of cuddles, he changes nappies and cleans teeth. He fell in love with a kooky poet, he left and hurt a lot of people, but he has done his best to continue being a good dad, and believe me, Mother and Daughter Harridan have made it pretty difficult for him. They should wise the fuck up, there are a lot worse dads in the world.

emotional investment

Would you take your money and invest it in a bank that for the past 3 and a half years had been tearing up and setting fire to your money in front of you?

Of course you bloody wouldn't. What an obscenely foolish thing to do.

So why would you do the same with your emotions?

He puts his daughter on a pedestal like she is some kind of prize. For the past 3 and a half years she has been (and continues to be) unutterably cruel to both of us, has tried to screw up our relationships with his sons, and has made no attempt whatsoever to be a sister to her little half brother.

What a sick waste it would be to keep watching your own money burn.

Your emotional energy is a precious resource that keeps your relationships in the black.

So invest your emotional energies in someone who deserves it, like your 3 sons, or ME. Stop throwing them on the fire, you bloody fool, while the rest of us grow cold because we can't afford to put the heating on.

secret words

He's changed all his passwords on everything! He lies about this if I ask him - he says he forgot it while drunk so had to change it but then he reset it to what it was before. This sounded so unlikely I checked out whether it was true. It wasn't.

I haven't been spying on him, he only has two passwords (or did until now) and he told me both of them years ago.

For sheer entertainment I even tried his ebay account and found he's changed that one too - this made me laugh a lot. What am I going to do, log in as him and, like, buy stuff???????? Ooooohhhh.

++++tori+amos+++-+Silent+All+These+Years

tori amos - Silent All These Years
Uploaded by manon42. - Explore more music videos.

I can't work out how to delete a post so here is a blank space with a title

Hello. I'm new here.

Age: freewheeling towards 40

General disposition: paranoid, oversensitive, hormonally unstable, rigidly inflexible nature... generally very appealing

Marital status: not any more. likelihood of surfing the confetti wave looking increasingly poor despite presence of man I love

Offspring: 1... or 2, 3 or 4, depending on how you look at it. It's complicated. I gave birth to one of them and the others occupy varying degrees of my home and affections, sometimes with a great deal of success and contentment... at other times with a great deal of pain and hurt

Hobbies: I was asked this by a teenager the other day and what I said made me sound so sad I wanted to inter myself immediately and erect a gravestone stating 'Sad middle aged fuck' (which is difficult to do when one is already underground). So I'll make something up. Potholing, white water rafting, mountain climbing, rollerblading in white trousers, surfing with the dudes, and I'm learning to fly and I volunteer at the local zoo (crocodile enclosure). There you go. Not a toddler, cooking utensil or novel in sight. Ha!

good heart, soft touch, fast horse

Only now do I discover his horse is REALLY F**KING SLOW.

Fishwifery

The child has been despatched to childcare and the man has been despatched to work. If that should be dispatch instead of despatch then please forgive me 'cus I've never known the difference.

This means that I am sitting ON MY ARSE having breakfast and watching GMTV like a fishwife. Don't worry, there are limits to my fishwifery; I'll switch it off when Jeremy Kyle comes on.

Anyway Dr Hilary came on talking about depression so I decided to take his online depression test and apparently "You may be suffering from moderate depression. This self-assessment test is just an indicator, so please arrange to see your doctor to follow up any symptoms you may have."

So that's cheered me up! Now I am depressed about having depression!

Perhaps I should (without wishing to reveal how bloody old I am) switch off the television set and go out and do something less boring instead.

Any suggestions?

i'm sorry i lost myself

Where have I gone?

Somewhere along the rollercoaster I seem to have vanished.

How did this happen and can I get back?