Thursday, June 7, 2012

The Art of Compromise

Blending of families can be bloody difficult.  There are all these different personalities waging war with one another; not to mention the mile long list of complexities that dictate who this kid becomes when it walks out the door.
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.
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!