that's nice, Alison, keep it up smile Gratitude has been shown to increase happiness, so even doing it just for you is positive!
Ha, yes that's true, Blu. Though my kids are not really whiny, even ds2 in full blown teen time. They are also better at communicating than H though, I have been nagging ds2 about something he needs to do for school that he was hesitant to complete. He turned round a few days ago and told me to stop nagging, and I backed right off and agreed that the consequences would be for him alone and validated that he must have found the nagging annoying. I don't usually nag anyone much, but I was doing it out of frustration and concern for him. I do know though that the more you try to control someone the less well they respond smile
I've had a nice, busy week. Lots of socialising, art classes, rushing about taking the kids to appointments and stuff, and squeezing work in. I've been making the most of life this week. I've been missing H though, not really contacted him except about house stuff and kid stuff. He texted me yesterday saying he's coming home on Sunday if I'm home and that he fell over playing sport and injured himself a few weeks ago. He seemed sorry for himself and I was sympathetic. I seem to have trained him to tell me when he's coming home at least, and not to take for granted I'll be sitting here waiting for him. I have zero expectations nowadays when he temp checks me. I'm waiting to see what happens when he has this time off in a month or so, again no expectations at all, he might wake up a tiny bit once work pressure eases, or he might completely retreat once he has the energy to do something towards D. The latter is what happened last year, but as the ads say, past performance is no guarantee of future performance! Either way I'm not going to let his actions affect me too much, even if he made micro moves towards R he has such a massive hole to dig himself out of. I can feel the power shifting subtly in any case. If he made moves towards D then I might even feel relief as well as sadness. I certainly wouldn't be as devastated as I would have done previously. But again, that's expectation talking. No point in expecting anything even if it's to do with my feelings!