And sure, you love your kid…
Your kid is brilliant! Look how fantastic he is on the sax? Or at
ballet… Football… Art! Why they could be an actor! A
musician! A director!
And they really do believe it;
I’ve seen that belief etched on their faces the whole way through being a
parent with a kid at school! It’s like there is some parent switch in
their head that doesn’t allow them to see what the rest of the world
sees. Umm lady… he’s not gorgeous, he is a pimply brat with a lurchy
walk! Or hey, are you mad? That kid only stood on the stage wearing
a sack cloth, looking at the audience like a stunned mullet – I’m not seeing
‘actor’ there! More often than not, the ugly truth of it is they get some
nerdy job, if they are lucky, and slave away like the rest of us.
So in a blended house, you are
forced to spend time with children that are the product of how they were
raised; which generally comes with a goodly whack of ‘mother’ traits. For
mine, they all got a very healthy dose of sarcasm and humour; plus a tad of
loudness… A bit of emotional and last, but not least, the girl got the clean
gene.
The Squeeze’s kid got a paranoid
aversion to antibiotics; which is somewhat dangerous when combined with a lack
of hygiene in the not washing your hands after leaving your yellow sea complete
with several splash drops twenty centimetres from the toilet bowl.
And this is where our troubles
lie. The kid has been raised with zippo
table manners, zilch hygiene traits, with the belief that he doesn’t have to do lift a finger and that he knows everything .
I on the other hand, I am a clean freak, demand respect, can’t abide
laziness and actually do know everything!
So I sent the Squeeze a list of
options because I was putting my foot down. There was no way the kid was coming for a week or two. I die first... He'd die first...
I figured compromise was our only option.
I figured compromise was our only option.
1. We could go our separate ways.
2. Tell the Harridan our place is too small, we
will do weekends and school holidays when we can go away, but short of that –
shove it…
3. We could move to a bigger house, with “escape”
rooms and two bathrooms (and I would be paying the same as I am now) or,
4. We would have the kid next Wednesday and Thursday
eve but that was my limit. Come Friday
at the conclusion of school, they were off down to a friend’s beach house until
Sunday.
He picked option 4, so I suggested he give notice to
his other two boys and have a Squeeze man/boy weekend of bonding.
As for me... I’ll be skidding across the floorboards in my sox – am home alone… And I’ve still got 2 bottles of
Moet in the fridge left over from my birthday!
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Thanks. Better check it out but it should be up today!