Since the funeral I've had this overwhelming love in my heart for my two girls. I just want to hold them, stroke their hair and tell them I love them. I think seeing loss reminds you of how painful it is and how lucky I am to have the love I still have. I told my eldest daughter this last night as I kissed her goodnight and she said "Daddy, don't make me cry when I'm going to bed!" Yes, it there is one thing STBX and I did right it was to share our loving feelings with our girls. We never got that as kids so we both make sure we tell them we love them. Speaking of STBX, yesterday she called and ranted for 15 minutes on a grade our daughter was given in school. She was to do a group presentation but was ill so I allowed her to stay home after phoning the school. STBX was ranting because D told her that the teacher was planning to give her 0. AS it turns out the teacher gave D the same mark he gave the others in her group. D16 did an immense amount of work on the presentation and really deserved a decent mark despite the absence. STBX wrote a letter to the teacher outlining our D's involvement and asking for a higher mark than the other participants who "did virutally nothing". OK, bad idea I'm thinking. How do you tell your teacher that YOU deserve a higher mark than the participants who actually showed up and did the presentation. I also think it's common in group work to have some members who do next to nothing and others who do most of it, that's life. I said to D "I say you take your mark and move on" but STBX sees it otherwise. So, she wrote her letter, which I chose not to sign, and told daughter that it was her decision to give the letter to the teacher or not. I also reinforced that it was daughters decision to make. I was so tired yesterday and really not in the mood for STBX's frantics. What tends to happen is that she gets all worked up and I play the voice of reason and therefore get told "you just don't care" so I tried my best not to get pulled into that old trap. At one point I almost let her have it on the phone but held back. It's usually better that way than engaging her in combat, usually she burns herself out and calms down but if I make an angry or flippant remark the fireworks go off and I just wasn't in the mood for that. So hopefully all will be well on the daughter front, we'll see.
