Fathers Day

Well it's a day early here as he has to work at 8am tomorrow.  And he's only just come home from work and crawled into bed at six am so he'll need to sleep a bit and then I think we're going to Wagga to pick up the outdoor setting.  I'm guessing we'll come home and have a bbq and he can open his presents then.  He knows he's getting the surround sound thingy, he picked it out.
Yes Emily refused school again yesterday.  I was firm but calm and told her that the only condition we set when we allowed her to come home after the arrest was that she go to school and that we were both very disappointed in her behaviour and once again told her how much she hurt me on Thursday night after all I felt I have done to try to help and support her and eventually she will drive away everyone who cares about her, yes including me, her mother.  Her room looks like a bomb has gone through it but I left her in there and drove Josh to school.  When I got back she was lying on the lounge in her school clothes for some reason looking like death warmed up.  I told her to go back to her room I wasn't having her lying around the house when I had things to do.  She told me she had vomited in her room and in the toilet.  She makes herself vomit.  The loo had water all over it and up through the laundry.  She said she would get ready for school and went to her room.  I cleaned up the mess and finished cleaning the house and she hadn't come out so I went to Young.
I had a nice drive in the beautiful Spring sunshine and my mood was good.  I cannot let her drag me down, this has gone on long enough and we're all just going to have to learn to live around her for the time being.  We have exhausted every avenue available to us and it's up to her now but she won't make our lives miserable anymore.
I got Phill's surround sound thingy out of lay by, man that thing was heavy but I got it into the boot.  Bought myself some more new tops (well someone threw out all my old stuff!!!), and a rug for the family room and some other bits and pieces and came home to this on my bed.

A hearfelt apology, admitting she was wrong, she has to face things, she's sorry etc etc, read it all before.  It struck me that she is like the domestic abusers you read about.  They inflict the most horrible injuries (physical or emotional) then they are all apologies, it won't happen again blah, blah.  When I mentioned that to Kate later on the phone she said "But that's just what she is Mum".  And she's right.

The note was on a scrapbooking page she had done about the two of us with that pebble that she bought for her "crisis box".  I didn't react to it.  On the drive up to Young, the radio played the old Seekers lullaby "Morningtown Ride".  This is a song I sang to the kids when they were little and I knew the radio was on at home and that she could hear it and it would have made her cry and remember that I wasn't such a bad mother after all.  Ah this mother/daughter thing is so fraught but like Kate also said (wise girl that she is), it is not about us "fighting" like Emily always likes to write it off, this is about her not doing what she is supposed to be doing, it's about her treating all of us abusively, it's pretty much just about her behaviour and the effect she is having on the family.

I didn't turn off the modem, or hide any of my stuff when I went out (I did take my jewellery), I am not going to live like that anymore.  She has her laptop and the net and all her other stuff in there and she can stay in there till she turns 16, as long as she doesn't bother ther rest of us. 

Last week Phill bought me some flowers and I put them in the tall glass vase on top of the tv unit and they looked so nice I have decided to buy myself a bunch every Friday until the garden starts blooming at least.  I'm still not sure what to do with that surface decoration wise.

Got a red rug for the family room, mainly so they can eat snacks in there without soiling the carpet, but it adds to the cosiness.  Josh tried it out after school.

Got a pretty little pot to put a plant in there.

And a couple of wind chimes to put outside.  That's my next project, getting the entertainment area fixed up.  I almost have this house the way I want it and it's been fun doing it after living in that little hovel for almost two years.

I watched a movie about Flight 93 last night, it was a bit dodgy but got me thinking about 9/11 and how it changed us all, and how we see the world.  We were living in Junee at the time and all the kids were little, Kate had just turned 12 two days before.  I remember driving down to the shops that next morning (I had watched it unfold the night before live on the tv while the US was still waking up to the awful reality of it) and thinking that none of us were safe, no matter where we lived.  That fear stayed with me for a long time as I'm sure it did with most people.

One thing I liked about the movie though, and they obviously had to make a lot of it up as there were no survivors to tell what really happened in those last minutes, was how they portrayed the three terrorists as the simpering, weak little cowards they were when the passengers banded together and turned on them at the very end. 

So today will be Fathers Day for us, and although a little misguided, he has really shone in his role as Dad these past few months, have to give him an A for effort, if not for thinking things through.  But since I was pretty well mother and father for a couple of years beforehand I deserve my cudos too.  And some presents.  (Already got myself those heh heh).

And Kate rang again last night to tell me she got a promotion yesterday and a substantial pay rise.  She is now ahead in the manager ranking system thingie in that company, of all the managers she has worked under in the past few years.  Here is a perfect example of kids not fulfilling the dreams a mother has for them, but going their own way, finding their own path and excelling in spite of their mother!  I'll say it again, I am so, so proud of the woman she has become.