Yail - I am not a rainbows and unicorns person either. It is a phrase our au pair (from years ago) used to describe how my H was behaving after BD and before MO. I asked her if he had been OK with her (as he was being a real d***k to me) and she replied, "Nope. He thinks I don't see the way he treats you and I don't know what's going on. It's all rainbows and unicorns as far as he's concerned".
I have just returned from D13's (now D14) birthday dinner. It was outdoors at one of those posh pub places. They came around beforehand to bring our dog back (D14 wanted her to be with her when she woke up this morning) and to open the presents I had bought her. The present opening was actually pleasant. I saw D14 smile as she was opening them and I even got the odd "thank you". We talked about the presents she got from her dad and D10 was even happy - she scored D14's old Apple watch and Polaroid camera. D14 was responsive if not totally engaged !!!. I know this doesn't sound like much, but I will take the odd smile and a polite "thank you" over ignoring or the shrugging of shoulders.
We could have gone to the pub together but as I do not like being in his car, I suggested they go ahead without me so that I could finish getting ready. I had just finished my working day and was still in yoga gear.
The meal itself was awkward free (our first together as a family in months and months and months). We managed conversation which wasn't simply logistics/admin which was nice. Small talk, nothing serious. There were a few moments when I thought he'd be triggered, like when he asked me if I would be around the two weeks he has the children in August (for their spanish trip which is now looking very unlikely) and I responded, I won't be around for all of it. Normally this would cause an annoyed look to cross over his face, a quick shutting down of conversation followed by some seemingly unrelated punitive behaviour on his part. But he said something like "Oh, do you need to go into the office" and I responded, "No, I've just made plans" and left it at that. At the end of the meal, he paid the bill, and added it to our "spending tracker" app - which is actually really good (it knows that our split is 50/50) so it tracks what each of us spends and then based on the pre-agreed split, records how much either I owe him (if he has spent more) or he owes me (if I have spent more).
So, overall a pleasant night. I even got a smile when I said, you go first, you don't want to be stuck behind me the entire way home (it would have been narrow roads and he likes to drive fast and I drive overly cautiously).
