It's always a shame when you lose a good public holiday to having to do annoying things. This post started life as a response to Ampersand Duck's post about Anzac Day, but it got too long and whingy, so I put it over here. She had to work on hers, but mine was lost to other reasons.
I was already annoyed that they put the school holidays around it and not Easter. I'd much rather have had it during the week when a day off school would be more appreciated by D'Arcy than in the middle of the hols, when the first time he says "I'm bored" is at 9am.
My Anzac day involved grumpy children. Well, one grumpy child. And the movies. He was slightly grumpy before we went in, and then really grumpy when we came out. He claimed it was because he'd been scared by the movie (which he had - bloody Disney!) but he was totally obnoxious for the rest of the afternoon.
It had started badly by being on a Wednesday. Wednesday is a swap-over day for D'Arcy. Usually it is not too hard, his dad brings him to my house on his way to work. Being a public holiday with no work for his dad, meant that I would be expected to pick him up at his dad's. This is a slightly bigger deal than you might think. When we first separated, I moved to a place about 10 mins drive away, so picking D'Arcy up from his dad's was no big deal. Then when we bought this place, we chose it becuase it was much closer. All well and good until about May last year, when his dad decided to sell the house and buy a farm. This has made swap overs hard. My house is on the way from the farm to the city, so it's much easier for his dad to drop D'Arcy off, or pick him up when he's in town. However this has led to white-trash tantrums on my front lawn about "you never come to my place to pick him up or drop him off" so it can be a bit tricky. On top of this, D'Arcy has been harbouring some tiny hope that we might live together again as a family. At least his dad's tantrum brought it home to him that it's not going to happen. Still he does try to use the swap over time as an opportunity to address those feelings, which often manifests as not wanting to go with the parent who is picking him up. Dropping him off works better. But I don't think I ought to have to drive for an hour each time becuase someone decided to move a long way away. So yesterday's solution was to meet in a cafe half way, which was OK, but kind of weird. I don't think it is sustainable in the long term. Part of the problem is that D'Arcy is with us for half a week each. I've structured my work week around that, and can't change it easily. I'm starting to think that a week at a time in each place would be good, but annoying to implement at the moment. What a quandary.
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2 comments:
Gosh I relate to this, as you know! That travelling just adds salt to the wounds, doesn't it? I've tried to make the best of it by seeing it as a time to really connect with Bumblebee -- because we can talk, since there's not a lot else to do -- but it still doesn't change the fact that you're driving when tired/ busy/ grumpy and burning up all that petrol...
xx
Yes. I guess that the reality is that the drive in this instance is not actually that far, but more annoying that I've bought a house to be in the same neighbourhood and he's moved away.
As much as anything, D was just suffering from 'end of holiday blues' I think. Although it is clearly hard on him at the moment, with swapping over so often. I'm hoping that being back at school will settle things down somewhat.
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