Chippendale and I were married a year ago yesterday, just us on a jetty on the beach at a resort in Fiji. We were in flip flops and turquoise clothes, covered in frangipani and it rained. It was glorious.
It is very hard to maintain a romantic relationship amidst the challenges of these five children but we are generally very happy with each other. Actually it is only situations with the children which cause us problems. We have different parenting styles and backgrounds and a natural preference for our own children.
Chippendale left me a beautiful card yesterday which he had adapted to include a picture of us getting married and an image of the Eiffel tower where we plan to go one day. Coincidently, my card to him also had the Eiffel tower on the front. He also left me some flowers and a couple of mangos. We spent much of our honeymoon eating mangos - which were $1 for ten in Fiji. We rarely buy them here at $3 each. I bought him some aftershave.
We spent the day doing our things - working, children, taxi and after school sports. We had a bottle of bubbly to celebrate with but Master 19 thought once all the other children were in bed, this was his time for "adult" company - so it is me, hubbie and stepson on the couch. Not quite what either of us had planned and not romantic. We are planning to escape the house tonight for a date.
Master 19 is home for ten weeks from university. It has been four days and already I am finding it frustrating. He plays on his computer most of the time, plugged in with headphones. He sleeps most of the day and is up most of the night. His clothes are left wherever he was when he took them off. Yesterday they were in a pile on the bathroom floor; this morning they were in the middle of the lounge. It is like he evaporated and just left his clothes. I think this is just general teenage male behaviour.
The challenge for me is not getting annoyed with the single focus he has with his intellectual amusement - to the exclusion of everything else. He loves games, scavenger hunts, quizzes, computer games, crosswords, etc. and has the ambition to be a Game Show Host or Quizmaster. He is planning a photo scavenger hunt for the family in January which will be fun but as it is over a month away, I wish he would focus on more important things like getting a job for the holidays, doing his month-worth of washing or just being part of the household and doing his share of chores. I try not to nag but it is so hard when it is my house too and Master 19 leaves parts of himself just about everywhere all over it. His hair has not been cut for four months and looks like Art Garfunkal on a bad day. I have resisted the urge to tell him to cut it. It obviously does not stop the girls being attracted to him. Master 8 says it like it is - when he first saw his step-brother his reaction was "woooo - that's a big lot of hair". Miss 17 went into town with her brother yesterday and immediately tried to get him into a barbers. Unfortunately, because of Master 19's procrastination for the last few days, he has now missed the barber who has gone on holiday. Being the lover of familiar and routine (definitely an Aspbergic trait), he can't go anywhere else so his hair will look like Michael Jackson when he was still black by the time the barber returns.
Miss 17 has a reputation for dressing like a tart. Parents of one of her school friends have refused to let her go to their house as she dresses provocatively and flirts with the father and 13 year old son. Classmates have commented how Miss 17 makes a point of wearing very low cut tops, tiny skirts and making everyone look at her, especially other people's boyfriends. We have spoken over and over again to her about this but it makes no difference. Today she went to school for an exam dressed in the tiniest of shorts (even her grandfather commented "they don't even cover her fanny") and a lacy see-through top plus the customary heavy eye make up. I asked her when she was leaving - was she aware how much of her body she was exposing and what other people would say about it? She shrugged and said it was the current style. Chippendale is not here to see this every morning but if that were my child, I wouldn't let her out of the house looking like that. Just one of the challenges of this blended family...... Argghhhh. I think I need to have a cup of tea and listen to Dire Straits very loudly to recover.
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