@PonderingPanda Thanks for checking in but you couldn't have picked a worse day for it! I cracked up when I saw this... today is a big FAIL on the 'not being a doormat' front. I have been using an online calendar to mark days when they're with me and then with him, so we're clear and that's good. Except he still gets home an hour or two later than he's supposed to almost every time, and then asks me to watch them when he goes 'food shopping'. I do comment on the lateness and ask for him to add an hour to his time, and I've told him no on the food shopping (it's a ridiculous request, I know!).
Today, though, was a disaster. He's taking the kids away for a couple of days and that in itself has been a non-stop messaging nightmare of 'Where are there X' and 'Should I take the Y?' and "Where can I buy some Z?" I hid the phone so he could figure these things out himself, then the kids started calling me to ask the same things. I turned off the phone. Then he's packing up the car and I'm waiting to say goodbye. He suddenly asks me if the kids have got sunglasses, to which I reply yes, somewhere but I don't know where (we are outside his house, our original family home). He asks me if they can borrow mine from my car because I have 'loads'. I say no, I've only got one pair in there and they're my good ones. He groans and asks me again to look in my car for another set. I repeat that there aren't any in there. He groans again and says WAIT FOR IT... Well, you girls are just going to have to do without sunglasses as your mother is clearly too lazy to find some for you.
The kids are standing right next to me, so I take a deep breath and just say to them, "So I'm lazy because I'm not willing to look for sunglasses in my car that I know don't exist?" and then laugh.
It gets worse! Everything is packed and then he suddenly realises that one of the car doors won't shut! Not because of anything jammed in it, the mechanism is broken somehow. Cue about 20 minutes of slamming the door, turning engine on and off, locking and unlocking and more slamming but it's buggered. This means they can't leave. They can't go! They only have two nights away so it's not like they can delay a day. So I say, Take my car, I'll take yours to get fixed tomorrow. He IGNORES me, and carries on slamming the door. I start moving stuff from his car to mine, realising it's the only way I'm going to get them to go (by now I've been standing and saying goodbye to the kids for nearly two hours!). Eventually he gets in the car and they go off. NOT A WORD OF THANKS. I was actually laughing because he's SUCH A KNOB. Which makes me so glad I've left him.
Anyway, it is all annoying for me, but I'm just glad the kids get to go on their trip. And I'm on my own for a couple of days and bought myself a little bottle of champagne to enjoy. But yeah, I'm still doormattting - but ONLY when it's for the benefit of the kids.