I write sins not tragedies

It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the perfect-circle household. Zoe had her 2nd birthday on September 9th. Me & Duncan took the day off work and took her to Pet’s corner, where she quacked at ducks, went chick-chick at chickens and tried to climb up every fence available. It was too cute. My flickr/facebook page has some photos of the present opening & the slide we got her (which she loved)

The weekend before that, we had to endure a visit from my father and his partner. Oh, lordy, what a weekend they picked. They drove up on Friday and wanted to drop in briefly on Friday night, smack in the middle of Zoe’s bedtime. I said no. Sounds mean but once her bedtime’s disrupted, sleep goes out the window for a few hours and I didn’t want to have to deal with that. I told them to come over the next morning around 10ish. We woke on Saturday morning to torrential rain (it was the weekend Morpeth flooded). They didn’t turn up till after 11, by which point Zoe was cranky and wanting a nap/food in either order. We’d planned to go to Alnwick Castle and then a fab 2nd hand bookshop in Alnwick, but the rain was so awful Duncan refused to drive to Alnwick and we nearly had a full scale row in the car. (luckily my dad was in a different car). We ended up going to the aquarium in Tynemouth, which Zoe loved, before coming home again. It was 2pm and what followed were the most excruciating hours of my life. And I’ve had 4 failed inductions.

We all sat around watching sport on TV whilst Zoe ignored my dad and his partner, despite her best efforts to get Zoe to come anywhere near her. By 5pm, I was ready to crawl the walls. At this point, being polite, Duncan asked what they were doing for the evening, and Linda started on about how we couldn’t go out, presumably, because of Zoe, so should we just get take away. I nearly died. This was not in the plan at all and I don’t think my dad was too happy either – he probably just wanted to go back to the hotel and get pissed, as usual. But no, takeaway it was. They finally made a choice, I put Zoe to bed and then we waited for 90 minutes for the food to arrive. 90 sodding minutes. I was ready to cry. They left pretty much after they’d finished eating and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Honestly, spending an afternoon with a parent should not be that painful. Duncan said yesterday (when we were discussing the weather/aborted Alnwick trip) that if we’d driven to Alnwick we could have died in the floods/road crash and I said that would have been more preferable to the painful hours we spent at home. Truly awful and they want to do it again soon. Why?

The thing is, I don’t know why I maintain this relationship sometimes. It’s awful. We barely talk and they just give Zoe money for birthday/Christmas and seem a little bemused that she won’t go near them. She last saw them around her 1st birthday, she doesn’t know who they are, FFS! It just feels like my childhood all over again, don’t see him for ages, he gives us lots of money when we do see him and he thinks he’s doing everything OK. I don’t want Zoe to grow up feeling the way I did – that I/she must have done something wrong when in actual fact, he’s the one that can’t engage with his own family.

Until there is a next time…

xx