beef with broccoli

we did it. we're engaged.

it's been a while since i've posted, and we've been busy.

we got engaged. i moved in. we painted my old apartment, i found somebody to relet it. we spent thanksgiving with my parents. we spent christmas with the fiance's (formerly the boyfriend, heretofore referred to as the fiance) family. we visited some old ghosts surrounding the resurgence of the family christmas decorations. we survived the holidays and welcomed the new year with a slumber party full of elementary school girls, and we gave them noise makers and sparkling grape juice and fed them chocolate croissants for breakfast. we faced the plethora of challenges and joys these changes have brought head on, and we've grown a lot closer.

macy has done well. she was very excited about the engagement. she told her friends at school and they surrounded her and screamed. a gaggle of girls. she ate up the attention. their parents have been supportive. my friends have been supportive. my family has been supportive. friends have taken us out for dinner, had us over for dinner, sent cards and letters of encouragement. the fiance's family has been supportive. even macy's maternal grandmother has been supportive, which means a lot to me. the fiance isn't and never has been close to her, but it means a lot to me to have her support for some reason. it just seems to make things easier.

my family handled the fact that i wasn't home for christmas very well. this was my first christmas to not be home, ever, and they handled it like champions. i couldn't ask for better parents, i really couldn't. they sent presents back with my brother, and macy opened gift upon gift upon gift. my father is a race car enthusiast, and sent macy a model car of her own. she has played with it, and even took it on a sleep-over with her to her best friend's the next day.

macy drives me nuts sometimes. can i just tell you that? i love her, but she drives me nuts. i don't really have another outlet to say this, so i'll say it here. she acts like a baby at times, and i really can't take it at times. she is pre-hormonal, and man oh man, what a drama queen. so needy. unnecessarily needy. she really has the fiance wrapped around her manipulative little finger. i'm not sure how to deal with this often. i hate it when she acts like a baby. i really want her to stop it. i think she's too old to behave like that. she has this fake baby laugh that she does, and i want to slap it right out of her. of course, i'd never, ever lay a finger on her, but it grates on my nerves. she has also taken to coming into our room every night around 2:30 in the morning and saying, "daddy, can you tuck me in again?" this drives me NUTS as it wakes me up.

i think it's regressive behavior of some sort. she has also started having what she refers to as "accidents" at night and sometimes during the day. it's not really a wetting of the bed, but she wets her pants. so much so that when she stayed at her friend's house the other night, she wanted to take her sleeping bag rather than sleep in her friend's bed. we are taking her to the doctor as we have done some research and found that it could be a bladder infection, or it could also be stress related. i was asking the fiance how long these have been going on, and if he thinks it is related to me being in his life, as she has been having these "accidents" for as long as I have been sleeping over. It used to be that every night she would come in, wake him up to tell him that she had an accident and was going to change her underwear. She has moved past that and now just changes her underwear in the morning, but I'm unsure what is going on. I just know that I think she is too old for this to be happening.

Her mother, as I believe I mentioned before, died when she was almost 5. She has been through a lot. I think we should get her some therapy. She goes to some sort of group at school for children who have lost somebody in their immediate family, but she knows too well how to manipulate the system. I personally think she needs something a bit more intensive. She needs somebody to get down there and get in the nitty gritty and find out what's really going on. Some good one on one time. I also think we need family therapy, together. She and I seem to fight a lot, or at least have a lot of underlying tension, and I don't like that. We are going to be living together for a long period of time, and I'd prefer it if we could get along. It would be easier if she weren't such a brat. I'm sure she feels it would be easier if I would just go away, but what she doesn't realize is that if I went away, there would be a lot of good things that would go away with me.

I wish I could get her to realize that I'm not the root of her problem. That's it not my fault her mother died. Ya know? I don't think she holds that against me at all. She's never said she wishes her mom were here instead of me, what she says is that she wishes she just had her dad to herself again. One day I tried to explain to her that I wasn't here to take here dad away from her, I was here so that we could all be a family. She said that it felt like I had already taken her dad away. She went upstairs and threw things at the wall until she created a big hole in it. (She's got some anger management issues).

I need to remember that she's still a little girl. It's hard, especially when she says things that are so hurtful. I've been working as a nanny, as you all know. I've had several jobs that are in the evenings, and she is so angry at me when I'm not here at night. It makes the next day very difficult. So, the fiance and I decided that it would be best for all of us if I quit those jobs and concentrated on getting a day job. I told Macy that last night, and she started crying, and telling me that she didn't want that because she wanted more time with her dad and if I was home, she wouldn't get that time with her dad anymore, she had these big crocodile tears, so maniuplative and mean, going on and on about how she never gets time alone with her dad anymore, blah blah blah blah blah. All I could do was kiss her good night and walk away from her. Then she
shouted at me, "WAIT! I'm not even going to bed yet! Where are you going?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!" She doesn't know what she wants, she just wants me to listen to her bitch, and try to boss me around to see if she can. That's the stuff that drives me nuts. She doesn't seem to know she's a child, and I remind her of it all of the time, not in so many words, but by setting boundaries. The fiance, God love him, isn't quite so good at that. She'd have him running in circles, and frankly did before I came onto the scene, and now there is not only another woman to share the scene, it's a woman who sets limits. It's exactly what she needs, and I know it, but it doesn't make it any easier.

Well, they are watching tv, and I'm writing this blog. I should go spend some time with them. I know the minute I walk in the room Macy will say something tart like, "Lucy, I'd like to spend some time alone with my dad, could you please leave?" And I'll have to figure out a way to deal with it. I really would prefer to hide out from her, but I can't do that for the next 11 years until she graduates from High School, though it is really tempting, so I best go face it now...

Signing off for now,

Lucy Blue