Busy Little Bee…

Well D Day strikes today… 

I did happen to remind the Squeeze yesterday that this time was approaching; after all, it was at his insistence that everything would be finalised and attended to by the end of February.  He of course, denied it in his moodle-ish, stuttering kind of way.

In fact, the date has already zoomed past.  Originally when sitting like a bug under a microscope in the nut doctor’s office, he had suggested that the conclusion of Wilson’s Prom would signal that everything was done; we could move on and everything would be right in the world.

When we got back, there was a small amount of debate in that he couldn’t organise anything while we were away and at the conclusion of our stay, the Harridan was down there (using all of his stuff of course) having her own little ‘velvet wearing’ holiday.  So that effectively put all of January out.

Ok.  Fair enough.  I’ll run with that (and did) so the end of February became the new D day.  Today.  And where are we at?  You may be shocked to learn we have not progressed very far at all, actually.  Yes…  I know.  You’re not shocked.  Neither am I. 

I do believe he has tossed her off the health insurance which is something I guess; but let’s face it; there was not a chance in hell that he was moving in with me while still paying the wife’s health insurance!  Not a chance!  Zip.  Nada. 

Of course he would argue that some things are open to interpretation; not to mention that we have a rather wild variation on what constitutes as “done” adding to the angst.  I’m not a “put off today until tomorrow…” kind of girl.  Get things done, shut the door, move on!

I mean to satisfy the ‘organising a divorce’ requirement you actually have to do something about getting it done.  Organising it, does not equate to “mentioned it to her” and then printing the document out.  You actually have to lift those papers off the printer; read them… Fill them out.  Frankly, I see that as the easier thing to do in the list!

So item number 1 on the agenda:  Nil Conformity to Agreement.

Then we had ‘fix the superannuation policies’.  I have managed to reduce his five super policies to 3 – (please note that I said “I”).  All he had to do was take the very neat folder containing all documents that I produced, to an accountant and seek advice on which one he should retain and roll everything over into.  Personally, I thought he should stick with the industry super but he can waste money going to the accountant if he needs it in black and white…

Part of this discussion encompassed the ‘get a will’ and a ‘medical proxy’ also.  After all, if we are living together; a couple perse, then if anything happens to him I hardly want to be sitting in the hall while the wife rushes to his bedside and tells the doctors that he would never have wanted to be on life support!  And it was his one wish to donate all of his organs!  Hell, he hasn’t even looked at those things and you’d imagine he would be wanting to tidy that bit up quick smart…

So item number 2 on the agenda:  Nil Conformity to Agreement.

Then we had what I consider for him – the hardest part.  The Finances. 

Hardest because this will require him manning up and removing the Harridan’s grip from his testicles – something that he finds incredibly difficult.  And trust me, it’s not getting any easier over time.  I'm beginning to wonder if she will ever let them go...

This should have been relatively simple and they had the discussion around “we need to discuss” – but of course this has been constantly delayed – in all probability, delayed because as it stands now, certainly suits her.  And although she certainly hasn't come back with a day or time, he sure as hell hasn't prepared for it either.

I figure if you are going into a negotiation, you need to sit down and work out what you have to give; what you are prepared to give; and what you can give up in order to come out with your requirements met.  

You also need to establish what is to be covered in the discussions and make sure you stick to covering off those issues - and only those.  For example, send an agenda; or at least an email to say ‘we are discussing maintenance arrangements for Kid 3.  We are not discussing health insurance or any other kind of payment for Kid 1 or Kid 2 – they are both adults and working.  Discussion on them is off the table.”  That would deflate her some I suspect.  Then there is the reality that "maintenance covers everything.  I pay.  You organise."  For example, I don't pay 2.5k school fees and then slink off to pay for all the uniforms - and then pay maintenance on top.  That's not how it works!

In an attempt to work out what he would be up for, I did some quick calculations on what maintenance should be using what I consider to be very generous figures; I also worked it out on a calculator via the Child Support Agency who from what I can tell, is obviously governed by man hating lesbians, so I figure it is erring on the side of caution most certainly!

It was then up to him to sit and work out what he had paid for the last year, make a comparison and then give the facts – in black and white.  This is what I am supposed to pay.  This is what I have been paying.  This is what I’m prepared to pay in the future.

More than anything else, he has to get a standard figure.  She is robbing him blind by sending a million different things his way to pay – and he moodles off to pay!  Part of working out a figure for the last year was introducing some shock factor; because I’m tipping he has no idea.

So item number 3 on the agenda:  Nil Conformity to Agreement.

If he intends to accomplish all that he said he would by the end of February; I suspect he will need to get cracking.

He will need to be a busy little bee.

Fat and Happy

My sister is on her way here from the UK.  My brother is about to be married.  This is his second wedding.  Brother 2 – 2 marriages.  Me – 3 marriages.  If you schedule them well, you will never run out of small appliances.

But I regress.  My sister emailed tonight to ask what dress I was going to wear.  She mentioned she had moved into fat jeans.  I argued I would need ‘obese’ jeans now…

It sucks being happy.  I am waiting for the moodle to do something that will strip all happiness from my bones (and blubber!)

Damned fool has to be reasonable now!

The Money or the Curb!

My life used to be kind of relaxed.  I’d get home, runner up, go for a walk then come home, pour a glass of red and put music on while I cooked.  Then I started dating the squeeze and there seemed to be a moratorium on ‘relax time’. 

These days, I am basically kicking in the front door and biting the top off a bottle of red…

I am swinging from one side of town to the other and the weekends I spend in clean freak hell, ensures I will be working every night to catch up.  Partly this is due to my not being there to do the things I would normally have done, like the Saturday morning housework fest.  But partly this is due to the girl who doesn’t seem to understand the concept of “have as many friends as you want over – when you move out to your own place!”  In other words I get home to every towel in the house is in the wash, the floors are dirty and then there is the minor problem in that my table gets scratched or the walls and doors have dirty hand prints on them; not to mention the greasy fingerprints on my stainless steel fridge – I ask you; how freaking hard is it to use the damned handle!!!!!

So as you can see, things are already stressed.  Then I add to the mix the fact that work has gone through restructure (again) - the idiots at the top still don’t see the reality of “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear…”  In other words, try funding the department so we can do what we are good at and stop restructuring.  Stop figuring tasks are not done because we are slack and therefore there is a requirement to bring in idiots, make them managers at which point we are forced to sit and listen to their nonsensical ideas.

Ideas, that if even remotely positive, are in fact regurgitated ideas and templates that we did years ago!  Difficult, because I’m seriously inept in covering up my look of “you moron…” so am obviously seen as a rebel.

We are house hunting at the moment and even that causes a minor ripple of stress.  I have to very carefully balance the requirements – I want room to move, but not so much room that suddenly I’m coming home to find Mess 1 and Mess 2 (with nose ring) have moved in!  The squeeze wouldn’t quite understand that but hey, we are a new romance – we are entitled to a little bit of time on our own – kid free!  Where we can do stuff together instead of being at everyone else’s beck and call…  Have sex in the kitchen!

Aside from anything else, by moving he’ll save money.  If he’s not at home they won’t ring or come home with the great idea that they all go out for breakfast or coffee – and not take their wallets!  And the idiot that I date, even knowing he is broke; wouldn’t think of saying “cool, your shout.”  Hell, I’m tipping by the end of the week I’ll wig out (again) because he still hasn’t kicked the harridan off his health insurance!

Why did the Moodle Circus have to roll into my town!??

The Death of Technology

Yesterday we went out for breakfast with Boy 2, nasal ring still in place, much to the Squeeze’s disgust.  If you catch him at the right time - generally out of the house and over food, he can be quite the conversationalist.  As prickly as he is, I probably get along with him the best.  His table raconteur offers lively debate and if you add the fact that he lacks the “clingy vine” factor of ‘run and squeal to mummy’, well suffice to say, that is a winning combination for kids in my world.

Part of why I see him as likeable is the haughty twenty something year old attitude which is a mixture of “know-freaking-everything” and” I’m-too-damned-cool”.  Add to that the fact that the Squeeze and I are sitting across the table in “past-your-prime” and “you-were-never-young” land and the conversation flows quite nicely!

Yesterday, he wowed me with his desire to shut down technology.  He lost his sim card while in Vietnam and so has been phone-less since returning home and this so some degree, changed his life slightly.  He mentioned the fact that he now has to resort to the life the squeeze and I grew up in – the pop over.  But perhaps more importantly, he talked about forcing yourself to be organised and keep time.  Without a phone you can’t forget the details; nor can you send a text to say ‘I’m running late’. 

So he wants to go back to year zero.  When I pointed out this meant no power; no hot showers… he decided that since he is the one going back, he could pick and choose the areas he went for.  Cold showers weren’t on the list I take it.

Sunday, we went out for lunch with the Squeeze’s mother (Geelong!  I hate people from Geelong!) and his brother – who I get along with…  He greeted me with “is that bitch still giving hell?”  Prior to our meal arriving, the Harridan (speak of the devil) called for directions.  Lucky I wasn’t eating or I may have choked.  As it was, she was dropping kid 3 off; and I figured she would do her 'waltz in there like she owned the place, take over' and drink me $44 champagne. 

My stress levels rose and I began looking at the door...

Luckily, she dropped the kid and ran; at the same time Kid 1 (who doesn’t live there but makes me a pimp by having some slapper steal my jeans) and nasal ring Kid 2 arrive.  Of course they have to get the Squeeze’s credit card to order their lunch.

WTF?  21 and 25?  Hopefully in future, he’ll point out that if they don’t have money, maybe they should stay home!  Our $60 lunch just became $150!  How does that idiot think he can just maintain this level of "vampirism"?  He is broke now!

As for the death of technology, I give it a month.  Then he’ll be forced to take his laptop in to get fixed and actually go get a new sim!  That night as we were leaving to come back to my side of town, the Squeeze basically had to pry his laptop from Boy 2's fingers...   So much for the death of technology!

Saints Preserve Us

Is it just me?  Sometimes I think I’m too old to be a mother; too old to put up with anyone else’s pain and stress and heartache.  Hell, I can barely put up with my own!  And kids are so easy to push around that every so often, some utter moron tries.  What really gets me is that the kids almost expect it…  Certainly accept it.  Don’t seem to want to do the Maid of Orléans (aka Joan of Arc). 

Makes me wonder where the world will end up when we are prepared to just roll over and let someone take advantage because they are bigger.  The daughter has had a succession of these things happen over the last few months and as opposed to just rattling my sabre, I actually want to go and rip their entrails out!  Not my kid!  Not on my watch!

My point being that there is so much effort and emotion that goes in to sabre rattling and when you have three children, the stress multiplies.  If you’re really lucky, they hit those moments of need at different times.  Don’t think I could take having to do my Joan of Arc routine for the three of them at once. 

My ex-husband is remarried and at forty nine, his wife had a baby.  When he told me on the phone, I think my initial comment was “are you out of your ever living fricking mind?  I’d rather be dead!”  My position on this certainly hasn’t changed.  It would seem that neither have his as they are about to have baby number two. 

Personally, I’d rather be stripped naked, covered in honey and staked to an ants nest – but hey, whatever rings your bell.  And the reality is that if he put forward any opposition at all, she would just pick up her handbag, give it a shake and let him hear his testicles rolling around in there like dice in a Yahtzee cup.

Now that the Squeeze and I are together, we have six kids.  I would be as equally offended if someone tried to take advantage of them; hell, I already get into trouble when I go to war for him!  And he is on a regular clockwork of abuse and manipulation – so it’s hard not to.  The Harridan flies in like momma bird to drop the worm of abuse; and the Squeeze just opens his mouth for it like a good little baby bird.

When ex-hubby number three’s kids reach their 20’s, he will be in his 70’s!  Certainly too old to do defence and yet this is not unusual in the way the world is these days.  I see it all the time; second time daddies with younger wives and trailing along behind them, brats.

When all is said and done, I may have snagged myself the Moodle Extraordinaire, but at least he is smart enough to stick to his own ‘woman pool’ and not want to breed!

Alien Abductions

Were there weird lights in the sky night before last…? 

Either aliens abducted the squeeze and gave him a ‘romance’ probe or he read my blog and decided that yes, he really had been indifferent to the romantic occasion that is Valentine’s Day.   Either way, walking in the front door last night and finding long stemmed red roses on the table was somewhat outré for the squeeze.

And they were beautiful.  Blood red, soft and velvety; smelled divine.  Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

I can see a need to be pragmatic on occasion; even though I’ll admit I don’t manage it very often.  I can cry at the movies or reading a good book.  Oh let’s face it, I cry at some damned commercials!  And yes, I’m quick to anger.  Of my two favourite technical guru’s at work one replied to an email of mine asking for work to be scheduled with “those dates are a little aggressive, not unlike your personality”; when I laughed my head off and showed favourite tech two, his reply was “you are a little menacing…” – which I found equally as funny!

It is about passion.  If you possess it, you can’t pick and choose when it rears its head.  If you want that passion in love, it has a flip side that is just part of the parcel I’m afraid.

On a scale of 1 to 10, my passion level would be about an 8.  The squeeze would be about a 2.  As you can imagine, there is a whole world of difference going on in that area between 2 and 8.

And it’s hard work, continually having to explain what I consider to be the basic elements of a romantic liaison.  I mean how do you even get to fifty six and not know this stuff?  Yes, there are obstacles.  We are like the bloody Brady Bunch and there always something coming out of left field; but you have to hang on to some beliefs.  You have to remain true to some ideals.

Chief amongst those is that if you want a relationship to work, you have to make it work.  You have to go out of your way and set priorities.  Yes, it’s important to be there and have your kids – but it’s also important not to push your partner to the back all the time.  It doesn’t hurt the little vampires to know that they are not your whole damned world…

Now… On a scale of 1 to 10, my organisational level would be about an 8.  The squeeze would be about a 2.  As you can imagine, there is a whole world of difference going on in that area between 2 and 8.

Obviously, if the Harridan is going to drop a kid on us; and I figure that day should have some significance, or I have planned something else; then if there is agreement without discussion with me, my organisational gene is going to spike into my passion gene and I’m going to want to stab him.  How hard is that to understand?  Basically, I figure any fool can work that out, so the squeeze should be able to.

And at the end of the day, I’m all for passion and letting it out.  If not, you just internalise everything.  And that can’t be good for you.  After all, which of us has suffered a heart attack..?

When the Girl got home I told her I should put a poll on my blog asking, why did the squeeze buy me flowers…?

A:  he loves me

B:  he realised he was a thoughtless twat

C:  he is scared of me

Without hesitation, she said “C”.

All is Right in the World

Well.  I can rest easy now that all is right with the world.  Sleep will be plentiful tonight.    The Squeeze is confident “people” agree with him that I need to step back and not stress that he is a moodle who does as told and pays for all and sundry.

Of course if I listened to my "people", I wouldn’t have lasted past the 4 month argument to take his wedding ring off; complete with the excuse of “I like it!”

Idiot.

The Youth of Today

When I started high school, I wasn’t exactly ‘Miss Popular’.  I wasn’t one of the high school elite, those fantastically pretty girls with perfect figures, buckets of confidence and parents that obviously had bigger pay checks than mine judging by their clothes. 

I was impossibly shy and a little on the pudgy side. 

To make matters worse, over the holidays prior to the start of high school, I had seen a commercial with an elfin faced goddess who sported a very short pixie-ish haircut - and I fell in love.  Not with the model, but with the style.  I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would be sophistication personified, starting school looking like that.

Up until that time I had quite long blonde/brown hair that had curl.  My mother stood at the hairdressers elbow as she cut, sniffling, watching the tresses hit the floor.  I didn’t care if it was beautiful hair and I ‘was going to regret it’...  I was a grown up, my life was about to change.  I was about to enter the real world.  I felt about ten feet tall throughout that cut.

This lasted up until the moment I looked in the mirror and didn’t see myself suddenly transformed into an elfin faced goddess.  Instead, I looked like a pudgy boy.

Where am I going with this?  Well given the fact that I was a shy, pudgy, boy thing at school, I didn’t get to date much.  I’m not even sure I actually even thought of dating!  Having read that back, I remember that I swooned with unrequited love for the first few years of high school; so I did think about it – I just didn’t get to experience it.

So my familiarity in the dating rites of twelve year old boys is somewhat limited. 

This makes my ability to find resolution to the argument between myself and the squeeze a monumental quest.  If I thought it would work, I could take a tonka truck over there, slam it on the table and say “ready to talk yet moron?”

Silent Treatment:  a sulky twelve year old trapped inside a fifty-six year old body is incredibly unattractive. 

What’s in a Name?

My sleep patterns have been out this week.  Probably why I’ve been off with a migraine today – you can only exist with interrupted sleep for so long before you crash and burn.  And when I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind goes into full Rubik’s Cube mode.  I pull apart a million thoughts and twist them around; looking for answers.  Not that I ever find them.

What keeps my mind active at 1 am today?  The fact that if the moodle and I end; what the hell happens to my blog?

Dating a Hunchback – I loved the name when I first thought of it but if he rolls out of the circus tent; bow tie blinking like a Christmas tree and little paws tapping and turning that ball – then I’m pretty certain I don’t want to look for another Hunchback. 

Doing this shit once in a lifetime is bad enough!

9 Crimes

Funny.  Not sure why that song popped into my head when I sat down to write.  Dictates my mood I guess.   The squeeze and I, as a pendulum; swing kind of wildly from side to side.  Still, eventually it must reach a finale.  End, or next phase; who knows? 

The trouble is, things seem fine one moment, but then erupt.

I understand how that happens.  He is totally lost, but then again, it would require emotion to comprehend how it works; and he really is an emotional puddle.  At odd moments, I almost feel sorry for him.  It is like being picked up and thrown into a totally different world; where everyone speaks a language you don’t understand, but more importantly – you just can’t learn. You never will.  Where you are colour blind and someone’s words are ‘red’.  And for the life of me, I don’t know how to explain it.  How do I explain the colour red to someone that can only see in tones of grey?

If I sit and think about it all rationally, I understand it quite well.  I have an issue – or several.  They all involve his inability to shut down his life with the harridan. 

The issue is never resolved.  Our cycle is that I erupt; I explain; he breathes all the right words…. Says all the right things… can shut it down; can move on – but of course, he never actually does.  He can’t.  He tries; he just can’t.

So how do I coast along happily?  Because in reality, I have to know and understand that there is a reason that he can never put me first; that he can’t seem to shut this person down from interfering in our lives.  Why he can’t stop paying for her.  Why he can’t divorce her… Why he can’t put my feelings ahead of hers.

And it is in those moments when I face the reality of that truth, that it guts me. 

It is at that moment that I walk away.

When we were friends, I pitied him.  I pitied the fact that he loved a person that was so obviously unworthy of that love.  I thought her a manipulative bitch who whistled through fingers every single time he even thought about finding happiness.  And each time, he would shut the door on happiness and run home.  Happiness for my moodle lasted weeks, then it lasted days – but still he ran home - bow tie; hoops of fire, and all.

Now I see why any life he could have of chosen would never have worked.  Even if he hadn’t of gone home, I doubt many could have coped with this evolution that barely moves.  I mean hell, we are 1.5 years in and discussing moving in together and he is still paying her health insurance.  Has no hesitation in dumping me when commanded too; and doesn’t seem to understand or care about the damage that causes to our relatiohship.

Our relationship is like a bucket – full of water.  Each time he puts me last; leaves me home; goes for the “happy family” option – he dunks a cup into the bucket and empties it.

I’m not sure how much is left anymore.  But these days, I pity me.

One Day My Prince Will Come…

And the moron I am currently dating is so obviously not him…

It is Thursday.  Monday is Valentine’s Day.

Due to the emotional and financial vampires we have bred, things are a little tight in the financial department at the moment; especially given that Valentine’s Day falls on the 14^th and we are both paid monthly on the 15^th. 

So… we didn’t exactly have anything earth shattering planned.

I don’t think I’m over the top on ‘presents’.  Spending a fortune has never been the key to gift giving (I’m sure he would breathe a sigh of relief here…) however, putting a little thought into it and choosing something a little different as opposed to the generic gift, no matter how small, is important.

So is spending time. 

I’m talking about quality time; alone… Just us.  That is something we don’t get very often these days.  Actually, that is something we have never really had.  When in ‘Clean Freak Hell’ we have that permeating odour of ‘who the hell knows what’ combined with a deplorable mess.  Even without the less than romantic setting of filth, there is a kid at every turn.  Always a kid. 

Could be kid 2 who lives there or kid 3 who comes and goes via access or worse, kid 1 who doesn’t live there at all, doesn’t require access, just comes to eat the food, leave a mess and have slappers steal my stuff.

Yes, we are pretty light on in the ‘quality time’ department.  Whereas once we could circumvent the issue of nil quality time when on his side of town, this all changed when I dragged only girl back from out of town so that she could turn her life around.  My relatively cosy existence evaporated and given that quite often she has her boyfriend over… Well let’s just say that even though the ambience is better, quality time is nonexistent.

Sadly, the lack of quality time is a fact of life when we both have kids – even if we should be living alone most of the time.  Shit happens.  Kids come and go, find their feet then get knocked down again and need another dose of finding their feet.  Add to that friends and families and it’s a wonder that anyone ever actually has any form of romance at all!

Still.  Every so often, if only a couple of times a year, you have to turn off the world and put your partner first.  Those days could be counted on one hand.  Birthday.  Christmas.  Easter.  Anniversary.  Valentine’s Day.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I received this via email this afternoon:

I have to look after boy 3 on Monday and Tuesday so we might have to postpone Valentine’s Day till Wednesday.

I reply to say:  “You don’t have to.  You choose to.  She is not God.  You can say ‘sorry, busy.”   But no; apparently he can’t, because she has to go on a school camp that she obviously only heard about yesterday!

Postpone Valentine’s Day??? 

You can’t just postpone events to fit in with the harridan.

Oh I’m sorry, let me correct that – not another soul on the planet would “postpone” an event to pander to that dictating bitch – except my little moodle.

And sadly, I’m more annoyed at the fool I go out with because he leaps onto that circus stool when she cracks the whip and attempts to stand on his head. 

Sigh.  Just once, I would like my feelings and needs put before hers.

My Worst Nightmare

This weekend we stayed over my side of town.  Truth tell, I was glad.  We don’t stay here enough and I feel as though my place is going to hell in a hand basket.  Of course one man’s hell is another man’s luxury and I know the Squeeze would shake his head at that description and just not see what I see.

We’d been rained out Friday night and had fought a river running through the garage.  Nearly every towel in the place was stashed under doors and the Squeeze, my daughter and I had wrestled my daughter’s furniture into the house since it was sitting in pools of water.  There was mud, bark and furniture all over the house – and still, it was a palace compared to “clean freak hell”.   We were wet as shags and bumping into furniture every time we turned around.

Saturday we had to cross to his side of town to pick up a sofa and didn’t have time to do more than a general tidy prior to going.  Boy 2 was not there but I was speechless at the mess; and there is so much stuff that it actually has a rather unpleasant odour about the place.  Things were scattered from A to Z – everything except Boy 2’s car that we were going to pick the sofa up in.

There were dishes everywhere; including a used cup tossed on the lounge room floor.  I didn’t bother to go on about it.  No point.  But really, who the hell does that?  Who makes a cup of tea, drinks it then tosses the cup on the carpeted floor?  Upside is that I think it is so bad now that even the cockroaches have decamped…

We zoomed around to pick up the car and keys from kid 2 only to arrive there and discover the back bumper has mysteriously gone and there is a large scratch down one side.  He was on borrowed time with his license and the wad of fines that arrived while he was in Vietnam would indicate that time is up; just as well given the state of his car.  Not unlike when he goes out, nothing happened to no one…  I was more worried about who/what he hit but also the fact that I doubt his car is roadworthy now, which will make things even harder for him.

I did get to grin at the nose ring he came home with…

The Squeeze is supposed to give notice at his place and leave kid 2 and clean freak hell behind to move to this side of town.  I’m certain he is worried that he will be met at the door by me in a Nazi uniform complete with riding crop.  I suspect he wouldn’t mind the riding crop so much, probably not even the uniform; but I find it amusing that he doesn’t get the reality that I have no intention trying to turn him into Betty Crocker.  Him in an apron is nowhere near as appealing as he would find my uniform.  My house is clean because that is how I enjoy it and as long as he doesn’t want to drink tea and toss the cup on the floor, we’ll get along fine. 

Aside from living in a hovel with messy kids and me turning into a pimp; well hell, it appears my jeans paid for Boy 1 to get laid…  It can’t happen fast enough for me because we seem to spend so much time going back and forwards that there is no routine. 

My daughter is busy apartment hunting – it can’t happen quickly enough for her or I.  We like our own space; she is responsible and likes to stand on her own feet.  Still, she needs to save a little more and like the Squeeze and I, she has had houses dropping all over the place in the form of car issues and mobile phone issues so just can’t afford it.  And this year was supposed to be a good year for us all… We are still waiting for that bit to start.

Last week the Squeeze emailed to say maybe we should get a big place by the beach with a room for Daughter, Son 2 and Son 3 on the weekends we have him.

I replied to say “This isn’t about Boy 2 is it?”

No reply.  I sent the email to my daughter who replied “is this a boy 2 thing” which I found bloody funny.  Great minds think alike.

The squeeze replied to say “no”; but I suspect that was due to my “you just described my worst nightmare” line.

And They All Fell Down...

Just like “I am happy you are happy”; the “fair enough” from the finance discussion the weekend before last went out the window as soon as she got home and realised that she may actually have to pay something herself.

Strangely enough, the Squeeze was told this over a “happy family” coffee when boy 2 got back from Vietnam.  That privilege cost him about fifty bucks.  Obviously, she has scorpions in her wallet; either that or she forgot she doesn’t actually put out so can hardly just sit there and expect someone to pick up the tab.  Every.  Single.  Time. 

Still… he pays.  And I guess if it works for her, so why stop?

Anyway, as expected, the financial agreements began dropping like flies.  Like ring a ring a rosie patients!  They all fell down…  I doubt they even needed tissues.  I just had to sit back and watch them fall; all the while listening to the Squeeze with his normal “it isn’t your problem” and “I’m handling it”.

Of course he is handling it.  In fact, he is handling it as magnificently as he has for the last year and half.  In other words, she still rules the kingdom and he does as he is told – and pays.  Oh, and he is still firmly married.

Not only did she manoeuvre him into continuing on with paying the “family” health insurance – (saying she would get her own - when and if he ever deletes the bitch from his account; which I’m not seeing); but then suggested that he should pay for Boy 1’s health insurance.  The fact that he isn’t the squeeze’s biological son is not even the sticking point. He is 25.  Hell, if he wants health insurance; get it yourself for crying out loud.  Tip:  stand on your own two feet kid!  (And why do I get that Anthony Hopkins flash of psycho again…)

Come to think of it, if the cow you are seeing wants Jag jeans – tell her to get them herself instead of stealing mine!!!  (In case you missed it, I’m particularly pissed off about my jeans.  I find it totally outrageous.  Between the harridan implying I’m retarded and don’t know my own jeans – “she must be mistaken”; the Squeeze with “are you sure” and Boy 1’s, "no way"; I feel as though a serious lesson has passed by.  What part of responsibility and repercussions escaped these people???

Still, I regress.  I was talking about the harridan and her totally unrealistic view of the world in that the Squeeze is a bottomless pit; instead of basically broke and he just has to pay and pay and pay – if she thinks the kids need it (kids is plural and please note, two are in their twenties); but if the kids need it – he will pay it; or there will be hell to pay.

So, I sit there and watch rape and pillage and if I say a word; get berated for it.  Don’t want to speak about it.  I’m handling it.  Blah blah.

I am obviously stupid because the way I figure it, we are about to move in together.  My point – while he continues to support the harridan’s every wish, I see he will have nothing.  He can’t live now.  And it is astounding how quickly they each put their hand out.  And do nothing in return.  If they buy him a birthday present, it is because he has rebuked them for not doing so.

I asked him the other night if he got tired of it.  He mentioned that yes; sometimes he did.  He paid for Boy 1’s 21^st and the harridan and Boy 1’s biological father sat there playing parents – without putting one cent towards it.

And that is where we differ.  I could not have let that go.  I’d have been happy to put in 1/3, but the whole shebang?  No.  Sorry.  If you want to come – contribute!  Then again, I couldn’t have let Boy 2’s birthday lunch go by with the Harridan demanding food and drinks and birthday cakes in a restaurant – only to lift her arse from the chair and waddle out the door without even offering to pay one cent towards it.

I don’t and can’t understand that behaviour.  It’s not about right and wrong.  It’s about utter ignorance and a total lack of care for another person.  I don’t think I have done that to even my worst ex-husband – and I find the whole thing incredibly sad.

If he can’t change, then it makes starting a life with me rather pointless.

Situational Irony...

That is my life as it stands.  Hmm, originally I wrote ‘as it stands at this moment’; however, as I read it back, I realised that has always been my life!  There seems to be a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results when enlivened by perverse appropriateness.

I’m like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; finding a wizard and fulfilling all of his damned demands so that I can go home, only to discover I had the ability to go back home all the time.  I’m an Alanis Morissette song for crying out loud!  But why is it that as soon as my life starts going in the right direction; a damned house drops on me?

This was going to be the first pay in a long time that I would be doing it easy (or at least easier…) and then out of the blue, Dorothy’s house drops out of the sky in the shape of my car.  I drove to work this morning – not a drama in the world.  It’s a 2002 Astra, kind of average.  But hell; I do under 10k a year.  I am literally that ‘one little old lady’ owner!  Turn the key – nada.

I called the squeeze; although he lives over in ‘clean freak hell’, he works not far from me and we generally finish around the same time.  He paused to say ‘I don’t know very much about cars… Wouldn’t you be better of calling someone who works on them?’  If not so annoyed at the situational irony I was currently experiencing I’d have rolled around the carpark laughing my arse off.

I contained the mirth but managed to mutter “are you out of your ever loving fricking mind?  I didn’t call you to come fix my car; I called to get a ride home from work!”  Fix my car, hell; even typing that makes me smirk.  This is a guy who when we were taking boy 2’s car camping, didn’t have a clue why the light didn’t work!  My brand new iPhone car charger didn’t work, nor his Nokia.  I pushed the lighter home and zip; obviously a blown fuse.  This was a little more difficult; I had to Google to find out where the fuses were but when found and replaced, we had action.  Perhaps I shouldn’t even mention the snapping the fuel cover off his car one night when getting petrol  (pfft!)

I’ve said it a million times; I am the man in this relationship. 

I wasn’t expecting him to fix my car.  What I expected was a little bit of ‘relationship support’; not sure why.  I had already sent him an email last night to say “as a boyfriend, you suck!”  He replied to say “how can you blame me for the time a cyclone lands?”  How sad that I had to point out that I didn’t blame him for Yasi. 

What I blamed him for is being an emotional puddle.  If not, he would have understood that he should have been here with me last night while I was walking the house and stressing.  My son was on a yacht off the coast of Queensland and his partner was stuck in their apartment in Cairns.  I was up until 2am then back again to try to find out what was going on by 6.

Hell, a work mate gave me a ride home but what I needed was a “are you ok honey?  Do you need me to come back and get you..?”  I’d have said I'd be okay, but it might be nice to think that he has one manly, supportive bone in his body!

Slander…

It’s funny.  I’m pretty sure that others see us differently to how we see ourselves; see our blind spots or black spots if you will.  Maybe we should examine what others perceive as our black spots and try to rectify them; then again, maybe we should just thumb our nose in the air and say “who the hell cares what anyone thinks”.

I take absolutely no care in the things I say in my blog.  Yes, I do try to make sure I use nick names as opposed to real ones but I don’t do any real vetting.  I’m probably less wary now than when I started but it’s one thing calling your boyfriend a “moodle” to his face; it’s quite different putting it online where it can be read by all and sundry!

I can justify my non-vetting rule by pointing to my disclaimer; it quite clearly states that these are my thoughts; if you don’t like it, don’t read it.  Easy!  But even knowing this, there are times where I have wondered if I’ve pushed the envelope just a tad too far.

I mean saying quite plainly that he is a moodle who throws on a bow tie, primps the curls and goes off to do the harridan’s bidding should… At least in the real world, be considered highly insulting.  Then there was the entry where I focussed on the dead cockroach squashed on the bathroom floor; or my scathing remarks on the ex (and sometimes the kids) – and throughout it all, is the in your face knowledge that he is an emotional puddle – nothing deep there and a communications guru (like hell).

Personally, if someone was writing these things about me, I doubt I’d leave the house again.  If nothing else, I’d have a screaming fit at them and cry my eyes out – because if I had faults (lol) I wouldn’t want to share them with the whole damned world!

The other day, he suggested my blog was to slander my boyfriend on a regular basis!  I replied to say “pffft.  It’s not slander if you are telling the truth!”

But I worked out why it doesn’t seem to faze him.

One evening I heard him bark with laughter.  Naturally I sought him out to see what was so damned funny.  I stood in the doorway and watched him read the “primp the curls moodle” blog.  When he wasn’t laughing out loud, he was grinning from ear to ear.

Then I knew.  He reads it; but he is reading about someone else.

He doesn’t actually put himself in the role!

Well there goes my subliminal messaging him!  Damned fool!

A Manifesto - For a Moron

I tend to spend a bit of time in ‘Clean Freak Hell’ just cleaning up and rearranging.  This is in an attempt to have the house appear in some small way, even remotely hygienic and organised.  In reality, we all know that I’d be better off standing at the front door and tossing in a cup of petrol and then flicking in a match.  No amount of moving stuff around will ever get this place organised and clean.

I’ve told the Squeeze on several occasions; for me to clean it, I’d need a mini skip out the front to toss the junk in, them to all move out and about three weeks with decent cleaning products; and even then, I don’t think I’d want to live there.  I still get nightmares where that little cockroach squashed on the bathroom floor, gets up and starts running around.

I’m not sure how long he has been there but it’s quite a while I assume; so the build-up of “stuff” is horrendous.  It wouldn’t take much more effort to be the next ‘house of hell’ on one of those cheesy current affair shows. 

Initially he and the Harridan would take it in turns living week on and off.  Swapping from Clean Freak Hell to Velvet Wearing Country; although I’m tipping neither was that much different.  Every cupboard is packed to the rafters with things that should have found their way to a wheelie bin years ago and some of it is hers, so he isn’t totally on his own in the “clean freak hell” dept.  And I freely admit, I'm over the top in the clean stakes.  In fact the moving between houses is creating an ugly vibe at my place - it's starting to look a little too lived in for my liking!   That Boy 1, 2 and 3 are incapable of actually putting anything away or picking anything up is a learned behaviour (well at least their friends pick up stuff.  Oh wait, that is when they are stealing my jeans!)

I have previously mentioned to the Squeeze that there isn’t a hope in holy hell that I would have let my kid stay there when they were young.  I’m no velvet wearer banning antibiotics or sending a list a mile long thinking that the person on the other end is a moron, but I like to think the kids will receive the basic requirements of life; like not contracting salmonella…  Flea bites or waking up with a cockroach camping in their ear.

And here is where it all gets strange to me.  If the kid is sick and you have to send a manifesto detailing the most basic of requirements that any simpleton would know; let alone an adult who has in fact raised three children without killing them – how can you not see the red flags surrounding the house you are sending him to?  How can you think that penicillin is “evil”...  Yet not question the scum in the bath that has moved passed slime and into sludge and therefore you have added the element of a “slip” factor!

When Boy 3 was sick the last time, I was utterly astounded to find upon my arrival, the kind of note you would perhaps leave to the twelve year old baby sitter (if mentally retarded) – which even more astounding, the Squeeze had actually picked up with the kid and brought home.  Personally, I’d have paused for an hour or two and cut it into tiny little bits and left it in the same position; or perhaps burn it and leave the ash there.  I mean how bloody insulting!  I’d have certainly left my own little subtle message; it’s that or a baseball bat to her head…

Now you probably wonder where I’m going with this and why I’m even talking about it.  Water under the bridge, right..? 

Well on the weekend, I found the babysitting manifesto of requirements for the sick kid while moving the bookcase and desk and decided to scan it, remove all of the actual phone numbers for the “Call this… Call that…” and upload so that you can see exactly what the hell we are dealing with here.

Remember, prior to reading, that this kid is 13.5 years old.  All I can think of is that the poor kid has been dragged out of his velvet wearing school and is going to the school that his mother teachers at this year.  Let’s just completely stunt this kids ability to interact with another human…

And if you wonder why I picture Anthony Hopkins in a dress and wig – this is why…