I hesitated before posting this today, because the vast majority of people who surround me; my family, my friends and the readers of this blog, are amazing and supportive and utterly brilliant and this post doesn’t apply to them. It’s just that, sometimes, just sometimes, over the last couple of years I’ve encountered unsolicited opinions and […]
Tag: money
Attrition
“Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material. The war will usually be won by the side with greater such resources.” It’s now approaching five months since E communicated with me at […]
Missing
Don’t laugh, but has anyone seen E? He seems to have completely disappeared. He’s paid no child maintenance for four out of the last five months, and he’s not answering any of my emails asking what’s happening. My solicitor wrote to him almost a month ago and he hasn’t replied to her. The Child Maintenance […]
Nero
Like most children, when I was little I was irrationally scared of ‘monsters’. My personal demons were the monster under the bed, the Cybermen, the Sandman (horrific concept), and (bizarre, I know) the Roman Emperor Nero I can’t remember how I learned about Nero – it may well have been because I was aware of […]
Frozen
I spent the rest of the Friday after E’s CMS bombshell, in shock. I knew I should be calling the CMS again to find out more about why E had applied for a financial variation, I knew needed to call the Secured Loan Company about the fact that he’d defaulted on the loan (handily a […]
Turn
It’s funny how a day can suddenly change, can suddenly turn from being a beautiful, positive thing, full of potential, into a nightmare. This happened the day I found out about E’s first affair (we had identical phones, and I picked up his, thinking it was mine, to find hundreds of texts between E and […]
Bigger
I was talking to my Aunt on Tuesday. As I’ve mentioned on here before, we lost my lovely Uncle last year, and she is at the beginning of the long hard path of learning to live a life without him. She was saying that she’d seen an illustration about grief, which showed grief as a […]
Heard
I got a text from Oldest Daughter yesterday. One of her essay questions is ‘Defend the thought that silence can be heard’ (she’s doing Philosophy, it was inevitable), but her next comment made me laugh out loud: she said, “Was thinking I could write about my father”. I’ve often talked about Oldest Daughter’s perception and the […]
Dishes
All of a sudden, in the weeks running up to Christmas, Oldest Son seemed to reach Peak Teen. My mild mannered, quietly sardonic son became slightly moody, his amusingly sarcastic comments became increasingly biting and his usual amused patience with me and his siblings was replaced with an increasingly bemused irritation. It was bound to […]
Trust
I’m pleased to report that E has now paid the January installment of Child Maintenance that the Child Maintenance Service asked him for. He’s still not paying anything towards his share of the mortgage, or any maintenance at all for the girls (I receive child benefit for the boys, so the CMS can only arrange […]
He-total: Life without Ex 