Sometimes I blog here without a question or a purpose...just to get some poison out of my system and also serve as a running chronology of our lives (it’s been interesting for me to go back and read and see what has changed and what has not). Anyway, this is one of those times.

SO, who I guess is now DF or DFH because despite his daughter, I’m about 98.5% certain I will follow through with his marriage proposal, has sort of swung pretty far the other way with SD. Or rather I should say his reactions to SD have swung pretty far the other way. In his head-in-the-sand kind of way, he continues to allow her to do whatever in the hell she wants to do because of the tried and true:

1. He can’t help the way her mother raises her
2. He doesn’t see her often enough to have any positive effect (you know, every SINGLE weekend and random weeknights, comprising > 1/3 of her life is not often…)
3. Any positive effect he might have will be undone during the time with her mother
4. She has been through so much (you know, as a Child of Divorce)

While he continues to let her do whatever…instead of pretending none of her bad behavior (whining, demanding her own way, lying, being mean, ruining stuff) isn’t happening, he has begun to fly off the handle. Yelling at her, sending her to her room occasionally, but mostly yelling at her. It’s like it took him 2 ½ years, but he’s finally had it with her. I guess it’s the blood is thicker than water thing, because it takes me about 2 ½ minutes to get sick of her crap.

I’m not impressed with his method of dealing with her, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to see him notice how she behaves. I’ve been saying for the whole time I’ve vented on here that if I could just get a little ACKNOWLEDGEMENT or validation from him about her behavior that I could handle this so much better. From here, though, I hope that he swings a little bit more back to center and can start being a little more proactive and preemptive with her behavior…but maybe it took this big blow up on his part for some change to start taking place. I mean REAL change, not just the little things he has altered because I said so.

In the meantime, I also have to admit to taking advantage of it a little. I’ve let loose with some things I’ve kept bottled up for a couple years now. As long as he’s now open to the idea that she is less than perfect (and I mean what kid isn’t, including my own), I go ahead and throw in a few “hey maybe you could teach her to chew with her mouth closed” or “hey maybe you could not let her do that”, privately and out of her ear shot. I seldom personally correct her in any way, but a couple days ago when she was pointing in another kids face, chanting “fuzz-head, fuzz-head, you are a fuzz-head” to this unfortunate kid who self-admittedly was a little behind on getting a haircut, leading him to a sizable ‘fro, without thinking I said “SD, that’s not nice”. SO, I mean FDH, backed me up and told her sternly to cut it out. In the past he would have looked the other way. Small thing, but it felt huge to me.

Nutshell. SD isn’t particularly better lately, in fact in the preceding month she hit peak velocity, I think (note to self: remember 4th of July 2012 for some of the worst ever behavior, including loudly heckling Shriners dressed as clowns, kicking her brother, demanding her 60+ pound body be lugged around piggyback on a 90-something degree day, and yelling at a man that his dog was Creepy). And maybe it took this peak to set FDH over the edge. But what is better is that he ADMITS that she is a problem. Next step: getting him to realize what part he plays in the problem (see reasons #1-4 above).

As long as I’m doing the chronicle thing here, in the rest of the skid world, I might as well mention that SS continues to be a great kid and is my favorite in the whole house right now, including my own bios. He treats me better than anyone in the whole house, is helpful and polite, and as an added bonus can now drive me around. I'm really happy he came to live with us, and I hope he is too. In the BM world, it appears she is pretending to still have her job so that Grandma will continue to babysit and BM’s BF was spotted walking down the road with a shotgun (surely due to an argument with BM, but it remains unclear whether the shotgun was part of the altercation or if it was merely him walking away from the house with his last physical possession that had not been sold or destroyed by BM).