Back to Scratch

And so things change. My last blog post was bittersweet. This blog post sadly will be bitterersweeter. Yes that is a word. Yes it is. Look it up.

To make a long, dull and frankly humourless story short, the Wife and I have parted.

There we are, it's said. But a public facing blog isn't the place to air my dirty laundry, so I won't go into details. Suffice to say the blog will continue, as the Boy and Girl remain fully part of my life as the Ex and I coparent.

This blog will now be for single dads, because there are a lot of us. For all those dads scratching their heads, wondering what to do next, and wondering how they went from building an awesome Lego robot ninja, to being soley responsible for two fully functioning sociopaths half of the week.

The Bin Lids appear to be largely unscathed by the current situation and dealing with it pretty well, albeit with somewhat different priorities to me:

"Yay! Two Christmases!"

Although I did get called up the Girl's school to speak with her teacher the other week because she was concerned about some of the things the Girl had been saying. I asked for an example:
"Carrots."
"...artery."
x

"The other day we had a class discussion about what they want to be when they grow up and the Girl said 'Mass murderer'."

Laughter, apparently, was not the right response. The teacher pressed on:

"She has also been talking about how she enjoys cutting things up."

I looked at the Girl.

"What did you mean?"


The teacher then suggested that she could have an exercise book to write her thoughts and feelings into, which brought me in mind of this...

Teachers, it turns out, have no sense of humour about these things.

The Boy being the Boy, doesn't really appear to have noticed, possibly because they haven't brought out a Minecraft mod about it. He's been focussed on his school work, which given his predilection for bursting into flames when asked to do his homework is disturbing in it's own right. It's had the knock on effect though with the Girl cheerfully relaying to a friend of mine

"At school the Boy put his finger up a pigs ar..."

"...."


Thank the maker.

The good news is then, on the Kids front things haven't really changed, which explains why the Girl threw a wobbler about some awful task she'd been given...

"Could you pick that sock up, darling?"

...and kicked me in the face. Normality reigns.

Oh, look. The Girl's brought me a cardboard box with a present in it...

All Good Things

For the past seven years I've been living in fear. What feels like many moons ago the Wife and I decided to get a cat. More accurately, I came home one day and discovered we had a cat. His name was Boris, and he was kind of an arsehole.

Boris was made famous in this blog for being the recipient of a endoscopy conducted by an 18 month old Girl and a spoon. Yet strangely he was always very fond of the Girl. It's possible he had a prostate issue.

The Girl has always been mad on animals, and in particular cats. Most of her life she has been adorned in cat merchandise. T shirts, trousers, underwear, flip flops, umbrellas,  you name it. So, our biggest fear was what would happen when he finally bowed out. That thought has given me the odd sleepless night over the  years.

Then, three weeks ago we found out the cat had stomach cancer.

Breaking bad news to a child is always difficult, and doubly so to a small Girl who can, at the age of nine, kill a man with her thumbs. Naturally the Girl was distraught, as was the Boy, and the pair of them dissolved into the consistency of a damp hanky.

They always surprise you, kids. And they bounced back quite quickly. Especially as, since Boris wasn't in pain, we decided to keep looking after him until it was clear it was the end. In fact the Girl recovered so well that when we bumped into some friends the next day she replied to their cheery Hey, guys! with an equally cheery

My cat's got cancer!

For the record, this doesn't work well as an ice breaker.

Three weeks went past in the blink of an eye, as they do when your kids are around ten. We went camping whilst Boris stayed with friends, we drove around Suffolk, we got home and unpacked. The Girl told us she's written graffiti in the dirty on the van

Oh, goodo. What does it say?

I wrote the mummy loves the builder.

(We're having some building work done)

Oh yeah? Which one?

Dick.

Dick?

Yes.

So... What you wrote on the back of the van, that we've been driving all round Suffolk in for the past three days, was...

Mummy loves dick.

In short, normal service was resumed.

Today Boris took a turn for the worse, and clearly it was time to do the right thing. So, this evening he went to the great cattery in the sky. Boris the mighty, the cat that shat on my pillow, the cat that got shot off a fence with a champagne cork, the cat that had a spoon up his arse, moved on to the next adventure.

Goodbye, you big silly bastard. We'll miss you.