Looking Forward To The Summer?

Grrr.  Somehow I managed to survive half term, but I'd forgotten how infuriating other people’s kids are.  And my own is difficult to live with when she’s suffering from toddler flu.  Toddler flu is similar to man flu, only it’s much worse.  Ten times worse.  It has a much larger impact on my life for a start.  Now that I’m single, man flu has minimal impact on my life.  So being single isn’t all bad.  I can’t begin to imagine how painful this past week would have been had I had a sick man as well as a sick toddler to look after.  Though of course, as with The Ex, I would have expected him to be capable of looking after himself.  I don’t really do nursing, except where The Toddler’s concerned.  But she’s my little baby, even if she is not three years old, and a big nursery girl, as she keeps telling me.

And such bliss.  She started back at nursery today.  And so I have enjoyed a couple of hours to myself.  Lovely.  Of course, in a matter of weeks, she’ll have her Easter holidays.  And then there’ll be another half term, followed by the agony of summer holidays.  Grrr.  Now this is where I am torn.  I long for warmer weather, so that there is an end to the colds, and toddler flu.  I’m also sick of all the snow and ice.  We live at the top of a hill, and the ice really is lethal.  I almost ended up on my arse again, skating down that hill on the way to nursery.  By some miracle I remained upright.  But I am definitely craving nice warm sunny weather.  Unfortunately, such weather brings with it the tourists.  Hmm.  Not good.  This place is filled with enough weirdoes without adding tourists into the mix.  But it all starts here.  Well, last week, with half term.  Grrr.  We could be spending the summer pushing people off the pier.  While my best friend suns herself in Malaysia.  Grrr.  I’d love a holiday.  But unfortunately money provides a nice little issue there.  And I’m not sure that I could stand such upheaval with The Toddler.  She’s resistant to great change at the moment still.  But I need sunshine.  And heat.  I’m sick of snow, and cold, and wet, and grey.

Another bad thing about this time of year, is that there is a nice spate of birthdays.  The best friend, my little sister and my dad.  There’s also The Ex’s coming up.  I always struggle there.  I’m good, and get him something from The Toddler.  But he always makes an issue of how great it was of me to get him something, as if I really shouldn't have.  Not that I ever present the gift from myself.  Not appropriate to really, given that I only get him something because of The Toddler.  It makes me feel really awkward.  And you can tell when he’s disappointed by what he got.  His family are so materialistic.  It’s not about the thought or effort with them at all.  And bearing in mind the fact that we aren’t seeing each other anymore, well, it’s just awkward.  It’s like he forgets that I only still have anything to do with him because of The Toddler, and if the present doesn’t meet expectations, he acts as though I’ve slighted him.  I just don’t think it’s appropriate to spend a fortune on an ex-boyfriend.  It’s not like he gets me amazing, super expensive presents.  But I wouldn’t want him to, to be honest.

Psycho was apparently arrested last week.  For cutting a clamp off some car.  Apparently he cut clamps off his own two cars as well.  I still can’t help but wonder why he needs two cars when he lives and works in town.  But there we go.  I manage without a car at all.  But I can’t drive.  Anyway, he was arrested, but was released after only fifteen minutes, without charge.  Gutted.  But then again, if he got put away, who would brighten my day by being such an idiot?  I doubt anyone else could match his levels of stupidity.

How To Be A Doting Dad. Not.

Ok.  This week I am presented with an interesting dilemma.  It is also the week that The Ex may have to realise that there is more to being a father than getting to see his daughter when it suits him.  I am rather annoyed right now, but that shall pass.  And to be fair, it is allegedly something medical.  But in all fairness, if he’s known about it for a while, he could have rescheduled the appointment, surely?  For his daughter’s sake?  Oh wait.  Of course.  That’s putting someone else first.  And let us not forget that he, and everyone else in his family, are incapable of putting anyone before themselves, their own children included.  Grrr.

Anyway, The Toddler normally sees her father on Saturdays.  He can’t make it this week because of some medical appointment.  That’s what he told me anyway.  I didn’t ask questions, as what he does with his time really isn’t any of my business.  But he did allude to this last week, to which I said something about rescheduling.  He had asked about meeting midweek, bearing in mind he does know that The Toddler attends nursery every weekday.  Hmm.  Anyway, I of course told him we couldn’t, because of nursery.  And anyway, why should we have to give up our lives to suit him?  He could have easily rescheduled his appointment.  Surely?  Or maybe I’m missing something.  All I know is that I’m going to have one grouchy toddler on my hands when I have to give her the news.  As she is getting older, she now knows that she sees Dad on Saturdays.  She knows that Saturday is the day after the last day of nursery for the week (Friday to you and me).  She will be cross and upset, and will not care in the slightest about excuses.  Oh the joy.  But next week is half-term.  And so she may get to see her father midweek.  I do wish he’d learn to put her first.  It was one of the many things we argued about before I left him.  It’s also something he claims that he does do.  Hmm.  Yeah.

But this whole thing has reminded me of a bizarre incident from a few years back.  Me and The Ex had only recently moved in together, during my final year of university.  He’d just been offered a promotion at work, for which he would have to complete a three day course, and pass an exam.  He called his mother (Matriarch) with this excellent news, putting the call on speakerphone for whatever reason.  But I was astounded by Matriarch’s response.  There was no “Well done son, that’s great!”  Instead, it was “What dates?”  The Ex dutifully relayed the information, and she replied with, “Well you can’t do that.  You’ve a dentist appointment…”  I could not believe that she was proposing he miss out on an opportunity for promotion for a dentist appointment.  I could just imagine what his former boss’s response would have been to that.  Impressed she would not have been.  Least of all because the dentist appointment could be rescheduled.  The promotion course and exam of course could not be.  He went for the promotion though, when I pointed out that the appointment could be rescheduled. 

It’s small wonder therefore that he feels unable to rearrange this Saturday’s appointment for the sake of his daughter.  But I can’t help but wish he would learn to sort his priorities.  Is it wrong for me to expect him to put The Toddler first?

Spies Are Onto Him!

Well, I could barely believe it today when The Ex told me that his brother, Psycho, believed that he was being spied on by MI5.  Apparently his phone is tapped and everything.  Something to do with an occasional clicking sound when it’s in use?  I wouldn’t know.  I’m not into all this conspiracy stuff that Psycho is obsessed with.  What I want to know though is what it is he’s up to.  Why does he think that MI5 would be interested with him?  Surely they wouldn’t be fussed with some small town idiot for refusing to pay council tax and parking fines.  What is Psycho involved in?  Or is he just randomly paranoid?  I suspect the latter myself.  But you never know.  I do find the whole thing thoroughly entertaining though.

There are of course other things fuelling his suspicions.  At about the same time that the clicking phone started, people started loitering in a region near to the house in which his flat is located.  Hmm.  Suspicious.  Especially when you take into account the fact that the flat is right outside the town centre, and there is a parking zone there.  Hmm.  Besides, surely MI5 wouldn’t loiter outside in order to listen to a tapped phone line?  Admittedly I don’t know much about these things.  Hmm.  I don’t know.  It is all to do with his Canadian girlfriend’s phone calls to her father of course.  He lives in Cuba you see, and they always joke about him “sending over the guns” or something random like that.  Psycho feels so strongly about this, he feels the need to warn his own father, who lives down in London, and is apparently going a bit mad.  Poor bloke, having a son trying to convince him that spies are after him.  Madness.