Biting my tongue: example

Three posts in one day!  If my regular readers were popping in to see the latest, you're in for a triple-treat.  Hello, readers!  (Three posts is what happens when it's my weekend without the girl, and I spend most of it working on separation issues, and I am too tired to accept invitations to go out with friends.)

Lest you think I am living in happy la-la land, let me describe something about Bryan's fatherhood.

He only has her two weekends a month.

He's off the bench and working out of town, so he doesn't see her AT ALL four to five days per week.  I have her two weekends a month, so he has her two weekends a month. 

That means he has her four days per month.

He had her this weekend.

Friday night, he got in at 7.  They hung out for an hour - yay, Daddy! - watching a video together on the sofa, and then he came upstairs and said, "I'm tired and going to bed so you need to put her to bed."

Bite tongue.  I did not mention that I'd been doing double duty all week, that I was tired, that it was his weekend, that his daughter had been counting the hours til his return. 

Saturday he booked an appointment to get his glasses prescription renewed.  Fine, I'll watch her.  Then he got her a playdate.  Which lead to a sleepover.  He did join them for about two hours for dinner, but the spent most of the day and all that night and part of the next morning apart.

So this morning they hang out a bit.  We go to our daughter's end of year event.  We come home.  He naps. I arrange playdate at our house, she plays, he naps.  They go out for dinner.  They come home, and he says "I'm going to the neighbor's for a beer." (Yes, the neighbor of the tree incident, the one who isn't speaking to me.  Poetic, isn't it?)  He flies out tonight.

By my calculation, that means that of the past 14 days, of which he gets Wednesdays (but he's gone), and Friday night through Sunday night, he spent a grand total of about 16 hours with his daughter.  He managed to reduce his short time with her by greater than 50%.

Bite tongue bite tongue bite tongue.  OUCH.  Bite harder.

I want to yell, "How dare you give our daughter so little!"

I want to scream "You selfish lazy bastard!"

But I bite my tongue.

And this is how we get along.

I'm going to go read Anne of Green Gables to my beautiful daughter.  I will hold her and snuggle her extra.  She deserves it.  And I didn't need any Netflix time anyway.

G'night.

Edited update:  Katherine cried when he left last night.  She misses her daddy.  She doesn't understand why he doesn't look for a job in our town, instead of leaving so much.  I held her and agreed that it was no fun at all, and stroked her hair, and read extra chapters, and let her be sad, and let her love her dad.  I tried to give her extra of myself, but what she really wants is him.  (She has plenty of me already - she loves us equally, but she doesn't have us equally.  Even when he's there, he's not there.)