So.... we reach the end of the year and things are certainly better now than they were at the beginning.
We have just come back from a great (and expensive) holiday in sunny climes and she has received a very expensive handbag for Christmas .... from me.
As this blog is about minutae, let me describe a bit of a blow up on the day before we flew. I had ordered some DVDs from a couple of TV serials dating from the eighties and was watching them peacefully. She had no interest in them but kept asking how many episodes I had watched. In the end, I admit, I did lose patience and said that given she had no interest in them, really had no emotional connection with the series or the time or the place, please could she not feign interest and ask me annoying questions? This did no go down well and I was told that I was grumpy, she was only trying to be interested in what I was doing and so on.
I did berate myself for a while - just a couple of words, 'Episode 4', would have saved the subsequent strife!
This may also have been a reflection of a comment I had made the previous day. She told off our son quite strongly for not tidying up. While I did not say anything in front of him, I did suggest to her later that she should take some of her own advice before criticising our son!
Anyway, off we flew on holiday - a beautiful hotel and beautiful weather. I had decided to spend some money and buy a (stupidly) expensive (£600) handbag - and she was happy as a child to receive it. And all is well! She had also bought me sweater or two and some shirts - nothing I needed but, hey, I just went with the flow. So now I have resolved to be even more careful about my words while not being a vegetable either.
The irony, though, is that she is now doing what I would have suggested to her in the first place. She likes the handbag but, post-Christmas, there has been a marked reduction in price and so she has resolved to return it, get a refund, choose a smaller bag but buy a wallet too. But had I suggested that she wait for the sales and then choose something herself, I would have been accused of not being romantic, of not caring and so on.
I really do not know when she will grow up or how? Or when she will learn to manage time properly and get things done that need to be done. Do I have to continue to 'manage' her?
