Quote:

She has had five different casts and three operations, and guess who was with her each time?



Just wanted to clarify, when I asked who was with her, I meant at the hospital.

Today I dropped off D in town, as I was going out anyway. I literally just handed her over, I could hardly bring myself to look at H. He said, want a coffee? I said, sorry, I have to go...

Then he dropped D off back home later, and she came in with a lava lamp that he had bought her. She said, see, Dad has kindly bought me another present! I guess he is awash with money now that he has stopped paying me as per our agreement.

Then D got out a Sudoku puzzle book, which she said was for me from him. I know the advice on the NPD forum would be to send it right back. Do not accept gifts if you are maintaining No (inessential, if you have kids) Contact

On this forum think I will be told to thank him for it. So as not to antagonise him. But the NPD folk say, it will one day be used against you, like, *I* am so nice and look what a b***h you are!

Or I could do to him what he often does - just put it on my bookshelf among the hundreds of other books I have and forget about it. Then if he enquires about it, I need to look vaguely confused and say, what? oh yes, it's somewhere... LOL

(PS D looked interested in it and started doing one of them after I showed her how they worked... so it's HER book now.)

My sister asked why I even agreed to drop D off in town, when I had resolved not to ever do so, and I told her it really does take a very conscious effort on my part to be "unhelpful", that is, lay down boundaries.

Now Ellie will ask here, what is so bad about doing it if it keeps the peace etc. I would agree that normally it is the most sensible way to go about things, give and take and all that, but I just know that it will come back to haunt me, that I could do it once, why not again or some such. If I don't in future it is because I am a b*tch etc. I have to din it into my head that H is not "normal". It is taking its time to percolate into my brain.

Well, off to see the lawyers tomorrow.

Oh yes, another thing. When we were talking about arrangements on the phone H tried to suggest that (he "wondered" if) D's vegetarianism might be causing a problem with her bones.

Firstly, last time I asked the doctors at the hospital about that and they said her bones were absolutely fine. I also happen to know that vegetarianism per se does not cause brittle bones! On the contrary.

On the other hand, if an adult male throws a ball hard at a child... or she falls hand first off the high top bunk onto a hard tile floor, or she falls on a trampoline awkwardly... then yes, you can break a bone.

You know, at the trampoline place in the park there are individual ones all together in the same enclosure. One of the rules is that only one person should jump per trampoline. I used to try to get D to follow that, but her own father would get on and jump really hard on hers, and bounce her around. The time she broke her elbow H wasn't there. I was just lookng at someone I was talking to, and the next thing she had got on to another boy's trampline and had fallen awkwardly...

One of the major battle areas in our family life was over the issue of setting a good example to our D. H believed he could do whatever he liked. Like eat only chocolate for breakfast, in front of D, while I was telling her that no, she could not have chocolate for breakfast, she had to have the usual healthy stuff we had, like cereal, toast, fruit or whatever.

Well, that's all I have time for, folks...

Livnlearn


"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates