Far far far too much to do..no time for proper update. Wish I had a full time job that paid me so much money I could afford an extremely efficient nanny.
Things to do today:
1. Get cardboard boxes to start packing up house. 6 more days to go.
2. Pack the childrens stuff seperately. Will they need stuff for 1 week? 2 weeks? 6 months? New house is still such a building site, it’s very difficult to tell. They are indeed going to be sleeping at their father’s house. I will be there until he comes home from work (approx. 9pm), sleep somewhere else (don’t know where yet, but had lots of lovely offers from friends) and be back to get them ready for school at 7am. At least the children will feel relatively secure.
3. Rush to Magnets to sort completely disastrous kitchen order out – all wrong.
4. Meet flooring man at new house.
5. Speak to electrician about where I want plugs and TV sockets – no idea – must call my brother. Can only imagine where TV is going by imagining where sofa is going – how girly is that?
6. Buy biker boots – most fashionable friend (unfair because she has a new baby and is not allowed to have more of a finger on the fashion pulse than me – who currently has no pulse) tells me I need to have some. So far, the image is me wearing those and nothing else – not good. What are you supposed to wear them with?
7. Pick up book I ordered, but try to avoid person who took my order. I asked for a book called “Emergency Sex And Other Desperate Measures” and he said, “yes, I know how you feel, I am about to order the glow-in-the-dark Kama Sutra” and so I said, “actually, I think the book is about UN Peace Workers” and so he said “oh”.
8.Check unreliable friend is picking my daughter up from school today. Yesterday morning I received a text from her saying “sorry about that obviously need my eyes tested” and so I called her because I had no idea what she was talking about. What had happened was that she’d arrived to pick my daughter up, I waved her goodbye and then closed the door (because I was still in my dressing gown and had told my daughter I was not going to bother waving to her anymore because she didn’t even look round and my friends son consequently felt obliged to wave furiously). Then my friend drove off, saying “how are you?”. Silence. She said she looked in her rear view mirror to see my daughter running after her up the road. She’d driven off without her and her son (being a boy) didn’t feel the need to point it out.
9. Maybe think about learning Mandarin at same time as my daughter. “What’s ‘I love you’?” in Manderin? I asked her. “wan ker” she replied. Which is clearly wrong.
10. Should I check my son’s texts? That would be wrong. My friend has just done that and has discovered that her son is having sex, climbing out of the window at midnight and drinking alchohol(not necessarily in that order). They had a chat with him about it, pretending they had been worried sick about him and had nearly called the police, when in fact they had been fast asleep and hadn’t a clue. I assume he was pretty freaked out that they knew about it all.
11.Sort out cats – unfortunately my ex husband won’t have them.
12. 7 year old had bad dream last night and so in addition to busy day I’m tired – he said “it was awful, I had to fold loads and loads of towels”….I’m with him on that one, what a nightmare.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Gosh, reading your latest made me feel quite stressed out for you! I hope you manage it all – and if I was round the corner, you could come and stay here, with pleasure.
Keep smiling, or is it grimacing?
Margot xx
September 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
what a bloody nightmare. i found out via my daughter’s twin sister that the other twin was having sex during a ‘truth and dare’ game with their friends. i don’t know who was more surprised – the twin sister or me (who wasn’t, actually). i just made sure that she was taking precautions.
and if you want to know about BAD sex education, do email me. For example, “do not remove a tampon with a vacuum cleaner” spake madame tampax.
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hi Lucy, You may remember me from your long gone past. I’m Anne, Kirsten & Ben’s friend. I USED to be married to Craig.
Well, Kirsten thought I’d enjoy your site and yes, totally relate to the whole thing. I’m now divorced myself and totally agree that it’s the most traumatic thing that we can ever face, bar losing a child maybe??
I totally understand the feeling of betrayal and the disappointment at some counsellors too. More on that another time, perhaps?? I think I would like to have known that they are all just human and work on opinion a lot of the time. I would have been good to know you can keep looking until you find one that empowers you. I did in the end.
You know it all looked good from the outside, didn’t it, back then? All of us ‘happy couples’. To be honest I had probably just endured being pushed on the ground over and over about when we met.
You stay in these marriages because of some feeling of commitment and responsibility and the fear of what it will be like on your own. If you’re an optimistic person you think, ‘well today is another day. I can handle this’. The sad thing is that being on your own is every bit like we feared. It’s hard, it’s hurtful, when do we get time to find a new guy, can we ever trust a new guy? The things we hated about our exes we can’t get rid of because there are the kids that keep the contact going. So, we now still have the bad stuff but none of the good.
It’s bloody hard work, bloody lonely, bloody boring a lot of the time with a life full of jobs and work and no fun. I clutch at tiny little things that are fun and try and trick myself to believe that things are looking up. You can’t possibly say to anyone else that life is too hard or you get tarred with being bitter and twisted. So, you go around pretending that everything is OK.
It’s 3.5 years now and it’s getting easier, I admit. My anger for Craig letting down his side of the bargain is getting less and less. I try to say to myself “thank goodness he was so terrible to me or I would still be there, numb. Better things are there for me…in the long run.” This long run is REALLY LONG and keeps on going…still can’t really see an end to it. Not sure when my better life is supposed to begin really.
I can’t go to the supermarket for 5 minutes on my own without the kids. I’m now in Sydney (fought like crazy to get here against Craig still in Melbourne who really didn’t give a rats about his kids until I talked about leaving the state).
I really struggle with the idea that the ‘bad guys win” – Craig has the kids for ‘fun’ only yet I do everything else (and the challenges are there – my son is type 1 diabetic and he’s also likely Asperger’s), I have the kids 28 out of 30 days other than holidays, I fly the kids to Melb to see him (he pays nothing to share in that), his child support is about $18 per week, he has the girlfriend he met within a week of us splitting, she’s been teaching my daughter to pole dance! (need I say more).So, every now and then it’s fantastic to whinge to someone else who gets this life!!
So, hard this single parent life is – for the women anyway. Don’t you just wish these men could be more responsible for their actions back then? It just doesn’t seem right that families have to break up due to someone else’s incompetencies in making it work. It doesn’t seem that hard for them though I guess so they’re probably quite happy with the way it goes.
My girlfriend has met the most gorgeous man and he’s probably the exception. His wife cheated on him, and he has the kids more than half the time. So, let’s hope we find another one like that.
So, more than anything it’s great to be able to have a bit of a whinge today. It’s only so long you can keep the brave face up and the truth is only people who have been in it can truly understand it. Good for you for doing this site.
It will be great when you have a blog that’s about the new life and the happiness that you deserve. Take Care. Anne
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