This weekend was a long weekend here, for the Queens birthday or some such nonsense.

Daughter had agreed to go to her fathers a few weeks ago and there was a lot of hoo-ha from him because I could not take her and said I would instead pick her up. And daughter decided she really didn't want to go and has been asking me for months if she can stop going to his house so we made an agreement that I will tell him she cannot go every 2 weeks any more and she agreed she would have to be truthful with him and tell him she wants to reduce the frequency of her visits. Because if I say she can't go as often and she isn't honest with him he will fight harder and say I am preventing her from going which is not the case at all. I don't want to force her into uncomfortable situations but at the same time she can't ask me to tell him she is unhappy and then act as if she never said any such thing to him; he already dismisses every word I say as a lie so I won't offer myself up as a scapegoat unless she is willing to be a little bit brave and honest. 

Anyway, blahdy blah blah he was super angry about me not doing the Friday drop off this week and it was nasty texts galore. I have a feeling he was planning his trust old favourite trick where he has me spend 8 hours taking her to him on Friday night and then turns around on Sunday morning and refuses to bring her back, so I then get to spend 8 hours travelling on Sunday too.  His grumpy wife of course came to get daughter while he stayed home so daughter got to ride with the quintessential wicked step mother that I am no longer trying to convince myself is a nice person. In fact now that I am allowing myself to feel negative emotions I believe I may in fact passionately hate her. 

So I knew that the next move would be to say she would not be brought to the train station on Sunday to meet me (it's a 10 minute drive on the freeway but much too far to walk, like over an hour each way) and that I would have to go to their house which is not even possible. I am broke broke broke and haven't been receiving child support at all but I am still having my student allowance reduced as if he were paying correctly (stupid system) so taxis or driving all the way there is out of the question.

ANYWAY I decided to try to make something better of the situation and arranged for my parents to collect daughter from his house (they drive past his house on their way back from their beach house) and I would meet them at their place and spend an hour or so there before going home. They loved this idea and they decided to take us out for dinner. Yay! So I am very pleased to have turned a horrid situation into a nice one and we had a lovely meal and my sister came as well and surprised me with a gift she had bought me, for no particular reason. That made me smile Thanks little sister! We made an agreement to do the same arrangement once a month (and next time I will take groceries to their house and cook).

Daughter unfortunately was being quite unfriendly and rude to me which was a surprise. After asking me to stop her having to visit her dad she decided she had a nice weekend there and wanted to go back again next week. The reason? He bought her a new video game and she wants to play it and also some clothes which she wants to wear. Note that I let her take her things to his house because they are HER things and she should feel like she can have them wherever she is. Not so with him; nothing he buys is allowed to leave his house. Grrr. However this time around he made a deal with her that if she left her new jacket (which I bought her a few weeks ago) at his house he would let her wear one piece of clothing home. I am happy for her to take her things there but not leave them there as they "lose" them and then say "she never brought it here, we never saw it". So I doubt I will ever see the new jacket again. Great.

Anyway I struggled to have travelled so far to find rude grumpy daughter telling me she wants me to take her back to her dad's house next week because he bought her some useless frivolous stuff. Meanwhile I'm trying to work out how I will pay for her bus fares for the next week, how much I can afford for groceries, how I will find money to buy her winter clothes as she has outgrown everything, she needs a $50 book for school in 2 weeks, blah blah blah. The boring stuff. I always get to penny pinch to pay for her survival and schooling and he gets to do overseas holidays and spend money on whistles and farts and stuff that she enjoys and from the sounds of things he has gone back to being her hero. Yippee.

Anyway we came home and she decided she feels sick (again???) and is now in bed with a bucket after vomiting everywhere. I feel like he just wins no matter what; he gets to be her hero without making any actual effort and I am grumpy tired broke mum who gets the bills and the vomit and the grumpy moods. Very much what life was like being married to him in fact. Hmm.

And now he is texting demanding I take her again next week. I won't, and it struck me that he expects her to be delivered to him and he doesn't even do the journey himself; he dispatches his wife to do it. I am very fed up with him, with his games, demands and refusal to do anything practical or helpful. When we were married I used to say he just sat on his throne demanding everyone do for him and surprise, nothing has changed except now he has a new wife AND an ex wife running around doing his bidding while he wallows in his own crapulence. I am fed up and I want it to change. Immediately.

When they took her to the caravan park 3 weeks ago they didn't bring any clothes for her but instead very rudely gave me a list and demanded I pack clothes, bathers etc for her. They returned all of her clothes stuffed in a garbage bag with her shoes and covered in mud. It was so rude. Remember my mother bought daughter a $200 bikini for Christmas? She took that at their request, and he and his wife both knew it was very expensive and I requested it be rinsed properly and looked after which he agreed they would do. So she brought it back tonight and it has obviously been through the washing machine, and has bleach stains and is ruined. It's not an oversight; step mother is extremely organised and fastidious about such things and in fact when daughter first got the bikini her stepmother SENT ME AN EMAIL TELLING ME HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO HAND WASH EXPENSIVE SWIM-WEAR AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW TO DO SO. (She does this, often. Sends me instructional emails on how to do basic household tasks. I just laugh, because whatever). But this isn't funny, she has deliberately destroyed the bikini which has only been worn maybe 5 times in total and daughter was crying when she took it out of the bag tonight and saw what had been done to it. 

I'm so sick of their games. I don't see that I can forgive and forget when they continue to go out of their way to make life as unpleasant as possible and sabotage me, destroy property and basically turn life into one big game of vengeance. 

So I don't know how to change it but I know HP will help if I let go of the outcome and the anger so I'm going to try to do just that. I do not want to be at the mercy of these people any more. I don't want to be always having to plot and predict what they are going to pull next so that I can circumvent it. It is tiring, and it makes me unhappy and resentful.

Meanwhile in my bank account tonight, FINALLY, child support. Back-paid and collected from him by the child support agency. And since I have been managing without it for a couple of months now, it's basically surplus money. So I have just paid up our rent and bills, topped up daughter's bus ticket online, paid for a delivery of groceries and there is money left over.....and whilst I can't afford to be too frivolous I think I might take out $50 and go and get my nails done tomorrow. I've never had them done before. After paying for everything for our daughter while he pays for nothing, I think using just a little of that money for something for me will feel pretty good. They won't know, and that doesn't matter. I will know

Thanks for letting me vent and babble.

(((everyone)))