China Part 1

It's difficult to know where to start describing what this trip was like, so I guess there's nowhere to start but the beginning!

DP and I have been fundraising since the start of the year to do this trek on behalf of Scope, a leading UK charity who campaign for the rights of those with disabilities to lead a full and inclusive life in society, and help those with disabilities to do just that through schools, support for families and independent living support for adults. On the 17th September, we got up for an early start, after a few days of frantically running around for our last bits and pieces (lots and lots of handy packs of tissues and alcohol hand gel), and made our way to Leeds and Bradford Airport for our flight to Gatwick to meet our trek buddies.

As it happened, we met three trek buddies early - a girl with stunning red hair caught my eye, and I wondered aloud how on earth she managed to get her hair that colour. I also noticed that she was wearing hiking boots - as were her two companions. They turned out to be the first of many great people we were to meet on the trip, and we all headed towards the Emirates check in desk at Gatwick together, where we all met our rather subdued fellow trekkers - all of course on best behaviour, since we were all strangers and no beer was flowing!

A couple of hours killing time at Gatwick and we were ready for our flight to Dubai. The food on the plane was surprisingly not inedible, though there was the inevitable bread roll that you could bounce off the walls. We arrived in Dubai at silly o'clock, all with red eyes, but after a bit of idle duty free browsing some of us gathered at the coffee stand for a chinwag, so the ice was broken. I can't say the flight to Beijing was as pleasant - DP is 6'4", and while the London crew had given him a seat on the emergency exit, the Dubai crew could not, because the plane was full, so poor DP had to cram into the sardine seats with his knees pushed against the seat in front for 8 hours.

We arrived in Beijing mostly tired and red eyed, and fairly aghast at the sheer scale just of the airport - you have to get on a train to get from the terminal where you arrive to the baggage collection point! We were scrutinised by the impassive masked officials for signs of the dreaded swine flu, our passports peered and frowned at, before being impatiently waved through to start our incredible Chinese journey.

Meeting us at the airport was Fiona, our trek leader, and the Chinese crew - James/Yao Di, Grace, and Jenny, and not forgetting the bus driver Mr Han. James tried to cram some Beijing facts into our tired heads, but we were all too busy fighting sleep enough to take in some of the sights of the new city. Bikes everywhere, people pedalling rusty trailer bikes perilously balancing all sorts on the back, little kids sitting calmly on the handlebars of a parent's bike while the traffic whizzed past. The contrast of ancient Chinese pagoda-style buildings with utilitarian Communist austerity was everywhere, and the modern opulence of the Olympic village and surroundings seemed to spring from nowhere.

Our first hotel was located just near a large reservoir that seemed worryingly low. James told us that they used to have a problem with it bursting its banks, so they let some of the water out, but the water never came back to fill it, and so all the riverbanks are now being used by local farmers for growing corn, which seemed to be the favoured local crop. We headed in to check out our rooms, and get a much needed shower, ours was disappointingly just a dribble and impossible to get the temperature between freezing and scalding, which was not good as there is not much worse than long haul flying for making you feel completely, well, disgusting. But we managed to get clean, or, well, clean-er and made our way to the courtyard for the first of many local beers with our new "brothers and sisters" for the week. James called us all "brothers and sisters" as because of the Chinese one-child policy, he never had any siblings growing up. Bless!

The Tsing Tao local brew loosened tongues somewhat, and while DP headed to the table with the lads to do some boy-bonding, I went to a table with some of the girls where I quickly found several like minded lovers of innuendo and dirty jokes and soon we were competing with the locals for loud laughter. We had our trek briefing for the day ahead, and met our trek doctor Nina who extolled the many virtues of alcohol hand gel and blister plasters.

The night was tough - while we went to sleep straight away, the cicadas started up their chorus in the wee hours and I could not get back to sleep. I dreaded the first day's trekking on only a few hours on top of all the flying, but there were many of us in the same bleary-eyed boat, faces white against our red Scope T-shirts as we trudged through for breakfast. Breakfast was odd, to say the least - the Chinese seem to make their bread very sweet, which was a little strange with the fried eggs and sausage. Having travelled in Asia a fair bit before, it all had the familiar smell and taste of the Asian versions of Western food, which looks like Western food and yet has that distinctively Asian flavour. I made a mental note to seek out the Chinese breakfast when I could do. At least the fresh watermelon was lovely.

Our first day's trekking took us to Mutianyu, where James informed us that this was our "warm up day". One of our members, personal trainer Lloyd, took us through a warm up, of some stretches and general doing of silly bouncy things, much to the amusement of some locals. He earned himself the nickname "Terminator" for his so called "light warm ups" but more later about how he was eventually terminated....

"Warm up Day" once we got to the wall, consisted of steps, steps, and more steps. We climbed 16 watchtowers, and at the end tackled the "Oh My God" steps - 450 damn near vertical steps climbing up to the final tower, but it was so misty that day we couldn't see a thing! The vertigo sufferers had their first challenge of the day coming down those, and we were all glad to stop for lunch, though I have to say another thing that the Chinese cannot do is sandwiches. For the love of God, stick to the rice and noodles! We can deal with not eating bread for a week, I think they have this idea that it's all we eat here!

The descent from the wall on Day One was a luge, in other words a big metal slide running down the mountain, where you sat in little dodgem kart type things with a stick in between your legs (oo-er missus) that either made it go or stop. The boys were discouraged from playing bumper cars by Fiona, whose inner teacher came out complete with wagging finger, but of course, like boys, they didn't listen. The Chinese also don't really do health and safety, and I did have a "whaaaaaat" moment when I got on to this little plastic thing and held on to my stick and realised that there wasn't really much keeping me on this thing.....but hey, I'd paid my 40 yuan and didn't know the Chinese for refund, so off we go....a few "oh shits" later and I was thoroughly enjoying it, and would gladly have walked the wall again just for another luge ride!

Our first taste of haggling came at the market at the bottom, where DP secured himself a "I Climbed the Great Wall" T-shirt for 20 yuan for himself and one of the other guys, and was pretty chuffed with his bargaining skills until one of the others announced he got one for 10 yuan (about £1). It was here that we also got our first taste of Chinese public toilets, and the Art of Squatting and Aiming. A few of the girls had bought "she-wees" which are meant to allow women to pee standing up, but most chickened out of using them, and I don't blame them because one of the reasons I didn't get one was Overflow Fear - peeing into a plastic funnel just doesn't seem right, and what if you pee quicker than the thing can empty? Mess! I think we just need to accept that we are not men, and we don't have the appendages to pee standing up. End of.

Day One of trekking also happened to be DP's birthday. I had been organised and brought his card out with me, and in the evening, our Chinese crew had organised a birthday cake for him and got all the trekkers to sign a picture of where we had trekked as a birthday card. Of course, he was bought more than a few birthday beers, but what better way to spend your birthday than trekking one of the most amazing sights the world has to offer, among people who were rapidly becoming good friends.

That night, we slept peacefully, having been donated some earplugs by some of our charitable co-trekkers. Trekkers 1, Cicadas 0.

Belated Bloggy Award Acceptance

It's official! My Blog is Swank!

Thank you to the amazing dragonflymama for bestowing this upon my humble blog! You're not so bad yourself, dontcha know! I do apologise for my lateness in accepting and passing on this award, you thought I'd forgotten now didn't you!

So....in time honoured blogging tradition, time for me to pass this award on to three other blogs that I think are particularly noteworthy, and of course, fabulously Swank!

First award goes to that very swanky feline.....The Smirking Cat!
I love her mix of heartfelt honesty and kitty anecdotes, and her sense of humour so sharp that she could be an honorary Brit!

Second award goes to the lovely and swanky Eyes Wide Open.
Apart from the fact that I love the art on this blog, I love how laid bare and honest she is, with of course more than a sprinkling of wry humour.

And last but not least, my third award goes to the uber-swanky Tool Box Girl
Peggy is an inspiration to me on my quest for stepmotherly wisdom, she has an unfailingly positive attitude and an arsenal of fabulous tools (hence her Tool Box moniker) to help us on the way. Reading her blog is like my daily dose of therapy!

There are countless blogs that I love, and I wish I could give an award to you all, but I'm on here in my lunch break so unfortunately I can't keep going, or my boss might start to get suspicious and ask me what exactly reading blogs have to do with IT Support...well, maintaining my sanity of course!

I have begun to piece together my musings from China and will be putting China Part 1 up very soon...

Love you all - Mwah!

Long Time, No Blog

Yes, fellow bloggers, I know it's been a while. I couldn't believe it myself when I saw my last post was on 31st August! Whaaat....

But shortly after that, things went spectacularly downhill. I was rejected for promotion at work, things with SD and the BM continued being difficult, and things at work got more manic, and seemingly nastier, although I'm sure that was partly my perception of it, because I was so devastated at the prospect of remaining in the job indefinitely with no prospect of any change. It became an odd but lethal cocktail of boredom mixed with intense pressure, and it eventually resulted in a massive 3am meltdown, DP pretty much marching me to the doctor and the doctor signing me off with stress until I was due to go on the China trip, from which I have now just returned.

The 8 days I was off work, plus the trip to China gave me a lot of chance for contemplation about where I am, what I'm doing and why. Suffice to say, I don't really know what I'm doing in that job, other than earning money and paying bills, going through the motions and taking shit from people who think their computer problems amount to the dawn of Armageddon. Surely, no job and no amount of money is worth crying for 3 hours in the middle of the night because you can't switch your head off enough to sleep for dreading the day ahead? I also read Oliver James's Affluenza, which was enough to remind me that no, it is not worth it, and that life is not meant to be like this. The more you earn, the more you want. The more you get trapped into thinking that if only you could afford this car or this TV, you'd be happy. But you get them, and a short time later there's a new model and yours is no longer the best....so you want the next one.

Don't be alarmed, fellow bloggers, I'm not about to pack it all up and go live in a caravan, turn Freegan and go dumpster diving. But it is time to make some changes in Wicked Steppie world, and I look forward to sharing those with you all over the next few days as I try and write about my incredible experience trekking the Great Wall of China with some of the most fantastic people I could ever wish to meet (including of course my own beautiful DP) and some of the things that I've learned about myself and about life over the past few weeks. I'm not sure I've processed it all quite enough to write about it just yet.

I have to warn you though, this is not going to contain any major revelations about how to deal with stepmotherhood. The Great Wall held no mystical secret answers on that front, and when we got back yesterday, and DP phoned SD, I still felt the familiar bubble of annoyance when the first thing she asked was "did you get me a present?" and "what are we doing at the weekend?" expressing disappointment when DP told her that we had only just got back and nothing was planned as yet. But, SD is a product of a typical Western upbringing where being materially spoilt is the norm, and I can't really blame her for that, though I do feel sad that sometimes, she looks at us with pound signs and not love in those wide blue eyes. Would she want to come to us if we couldn't afford the horse riding lessons, the new bike for Christmas, the trip to the cinema? I am not so sure that she would, and I don't think DP is either, which is why until now he has ensured that SD remains pretty indulged, and it's sad that the poor kid can't separate the spending of money and love. For her, the two are inextricably intertwined.

Dig Deep for Victory

DP and I have spent most of the bank holiday weekend trying to sort out this allotment plot that we took on. As I mentioned in another post, we took this plot on last year, but didn't quite know the amount of work that we were letting ourselves in for. The soil is stony, weeds flourish in no time, and I don't know what was there before but we are digging all sorts of stuff out of there including bits of an old toilet. Go figure.

We started off enthusiastic, as most do. But it tailed off, and as the weeds grew, our enthusiasm waned. We spent less time up there, and did less when we did go up. The whole task just started to seem too daunting. No matter what we did, the weeds came back in a matter of days. It's a wonder we got anything out of there really, but we did, when we pulled back the weeds, see that the onions and squash plants had actually done really well.

This weekend, we hired a mechanical digger to dig the plot over again, we've dug in some horse manure and the plan is to cover it over so that the weeds don't come through and we can, bit by bit, uncover and dig beds and paths and so on after the winter. We've strimmed back the overgrowing grass and weeds, DP and my
Dad have mainly done the digging, me, my Dad and SD have harvested the remaining potatoes and SD and I have picked stones out of the newly dug soil and raked the manure over it. Just a quick note on the manure - when we took SD for her horse riding lesson on Saturday, DP and I stood on a mighty mound of horseshit and shovelled no less than 20 bags of steaming poo. Yummy....

DP is now in the bath soaking his aches and pains after the weekend's work. SD has gone home to BM and the Hatchet Face, they insisted on having her home at 9am this morning, on a bank holiday no less. Not one extra minute is allowed any more. Oh, and by the way, we put the clothes BM wanted back in one of those Bags for Life, not a binbag! And I'm contemplating the allotment, and the fact that this year we are going to actually have to put more than a halfhearted effort in. We have been spinning too many plates this year to actually be able to concentrate on any one thing properly. I think it's time to get back to basics and figure out what it is that we want to focus on. DP and I both enjoy working outdoors, and we like the idea of growing our own, and being that little bit more self sufficient. But it takes work, and commitment, and it means that you have to be disciplined and devote time to it, or, like this year, it quickly gets overgrown and you can't see your veg for the weeds.

Things between DP and I are a little strained at the moment for various reasons and with all the dramas relating to SD/BM, I think the veg of our relationship might be buried under weeds at the moment. Pleasing each other and seeking out each other's company has certainly taken a back seat of late, that's for sure. And like visiting the allotment when you know it's going to be covered in nettles, reconnecting with one another when it's been tough isn't always the easiest thing to do, so sometimes it feels easier to stay away and stay busy doing other things. But that only makes the carpet of weeds grow thicker, and it's harder to see where the good stuff is, or was, or maybe you're even afraid to peel back the thicket of weeds in case the good stuff has all withered and died underneath. The bio-mama-drama certainly does choke the life out of everything around it sometimes, that's for sure.

I just hope that we can do a little work to find each other again, with our trip to China coming up soon, and that it won't take the same amount of effort to get back on track that it did to get that allotment back to a usable state. Like everything else, relationships need nurture, care, and effort, and it's not enough simply to abide in the same house side by side when both of you have your mind on other things. We've got to find a way back to each other somehow, and stop this ongoing crap with BM having the ability to drive us apart and make us forget why we are both here. An embargo on discussing her would be a start I think - she's had far more airtime over the last few weeks than either of us would like. Instead, I think we need to talk more about anything that ISN'T anything to do with her, actually. I have a feeling that our best inoculation against her is to concentrate on anything but - in other words, our future and the things that we want to achieve as a couple, as just us for once.

The Binbag Kid

SD turned up this weekend with 2 binbags full of clothes that have gone from ours to BM's over the last few months. BM's latest edict is that SD is to come back in exactly the clothes she came to us in from BM, and that none of her clothes are to stay at ours, and none of our clothes are to go to hers, apart from school uniform.

Well, I guess this means that less of SD's half decent stuff will get chewed up by BM's feral dogs, and we have an excuse to offload all the horrid chavvy "Golddigga" stuff back to BM.

I just felt so sorry for her when I saw her dragging the binbag of clothing in from the car. She looked so unhappy - all her stuff in there, basically any reminder that SD has a life with us has been ejected from BM's house, and the two lives forced to be completely separate. And of course, the whole life-in-a-binbag is a big sign from the BM that she thinks that her daughter's life here is trash that she wishes she could just throw away for good.

She mentions her mother cautiously now, looking for any sign from us that we are going to reciprocate the trench warfare that BM is now engaged in. But we will not. We sympathised when SD told us BM's beloved car had been stolen (although secretly thinking, boy, aint Karma a bitch) and that as a result, she hadn't been able to get to her allotment to care for her chickens and had had to give them away. We let her talk about what she's been doing all week. What kind of life would it be for her if she wasn't allowed to do this and she was constantly having to watch herself in case some reference to Mum slipped out? We could not do this to her. Much as I have a thorough distaste for the woman, BM is still SD's mother, and she won't get another one of those. I just hope that we will do enough to show her that just because one side decides to play dirty, doesn't mean that the other immediately has to follow suit.

BM and the Hatchet Face are now on permanent alert for any minor transgressions from us, and they are upping the ante with all these rules so much now that they are making it more and more likely that something will go wrong - will SD come home in a pair of socks that aren't from BM's? She won't have put the wrong pair of socks on by mistake of course, this will be us trying to get one over on them, us DELIBERATELY waging sock-war, we will of course have thrown her rightful pair of socks away, or something of the kind, and sent her back in these just to spite them. Sure, because we don't have full time jobs to worry about or anything, we just spend all our time thinking up elaborate plans to one-up the BM....

See this is the trouble. Because they care so much about this stuff, they automatically think that we do, and that we will be keen to engage in this charade of subterfuge and skirmish. They could not actually conceive that all we wish for is for SD to be able to move freely between the two homes, love both parents and both sets of step-parents, without remorse or guilt, and for everyone to, if not get on with one another, at least be able to show some degree of civility. If we ever express these sentiments, it is not seen as being genuine, but some kind of game-plan or strategy. But this is a CHILD'S LIFE that is being played with as though it is some kind of war-game! SD is not a pawn, she is not a trump card, she is not the spoils of battle - she is a human being. Why is it that the one person who professes to love her more, and better than everyone else in her life, is the one person who cannot see how much she is hurting, and thinks it's OK to stand her child on the street in the rain surrounded by binbags to wait for her father to pick her up.

My Car Smells Like Feet (and other tales of procrastination)

It is undoubtedly true that I am a master of the art of procrastination when it comes to certain things of the life-administration variety.

Filing my paperwork is one of them. I hate doing it, and so it piles up and up on all available surfaces, and I kid myself that piling it up is a form of ordering it, so it kinda counts. I have a mammoth pile of it to do this weekend, and I really have to not put it off any longer.

DP and I also play the game of "Bathroom Cleaning Chicken". Anyone who has ever shared a house with a bloke knows that we never win. DP would say that I have the annoying bathroom habits, like leaving my make-up on the side of the sink in the morning, and forgetting, when I have used up the loo roll, to replace it. But we know that man-bathroom-habits top ours in the gross stakes. DP is nearly 34 years old, and he still can't aim that thing right. And don't get me started on the not cleaning the sink post-shaving.

Other favourite targets for procrastination in our house are, predictably, the ironing pile, descaling the kettle, and defrosting the fridge. It's meant to stay cold, isn't it? Surely turning it off is anathema to it's natural function?? And let's not mention the subject of the allotment plot we rented, started out enthusiastically earlier in the year, and then let it get overrun with weeds....it's amazing that we have had anything from it really, but at least we've managed to grow a few potatoes among the nettles.

This weekend is a bank holiday weekend and largely needs to be spent confronting our procrastinations head on, and actually doing some of these less palatable tasks that we have put off the last few weeks in favour of doing more fun stuff. The allotment needs digging over ready for the winter, we need to go up to the riding stables and bag up a load of horse manure ready for digging into the soil so we might have something plantable next year. Not sure I'll get round to descaling the kettle, but the game of Bathroom Chicken does need to be decided at some point this weekend too. Maybe we could do "Paper, Rock, Scissors".

By far the thing I am looking forward to the least, however, is addressing the state of my car. I realised today when I got in it at the end of the day that it does actually smell like stinky feet, which is distinctly unappealing. And then there's the collection of parking meter tickets fading and curling on the dashboard, the boot that's covered in streaks of mud and chain oil from when I've thrown my bike in there. My windscreen is covered in a layer of grease on the INSIDE, now that's disturbing! So this weekend, I need to wash and clean my car.

I don't know quite why I am so averse to doing it, or why the task of cleaning my car makes me cross. I guess I just see it as a chronic waste of time, and that I could be doing much better things - I've always figured, if my car works mechanically, then it doesn't matter if I haven't cleaned it for months, right? It still does what it says on the tin, and the birds have to have somewhere to shit. But, when even YOU don't like getting in your own car, it's time to bite the bullet and get out the Auto-Glym.

I think it's because the idea of actually planning to use my precious leisure time to clean my car, instead of going out until 3am and sleeping til 3pm and having a vodka for breakfast, makes me realise the uncomfortable fact that I am officially No Longer Young. All those people I used to laugh at as I staggered home from the pub at 8am on a Sunday morning as they carried buckets of soapy water out into their driveways - oh my God, I am now you. On Sunday morning, or whenever I get up and schlep out to do the deed, I will stand there with my buckets and probably watch some panda-eyed students wobble home while shaking my un-hungover head and tutting. I.Am.So.Freaking.Old.

Ah well...maybe SD will be up for making some pocket money on Sunday and I won't have to clean the car after all. Stepkids have to be useful for something, and she will probably be more preoccupied with the smell of money than the smell of feet.

When you get it wrong

Firstly, I'm going to apologise for my posts having been on such a downer lately.

Unfortunately, it's not been happy times this week, either in the steposphere or otherwise. After some umming and ahhing, SD did come over this weekend and we got to find out some (I fear only a fraction) of what's been going on the past 2 weeks.

Turns out that Hatchet Face Granny's blowout was partly because the Social Services have been round to BM's. Apparently there have been no less than 12 complaints made about her. We, of course, have got the blame. OH HAS gone to them with concerns in the past, but not recently. Of course, the finger was easily pointed at us, because of what SD went back and said to Hatchet Face about us saying she isn't keeping clean at BM's. I suppose given that we have expressed those concerns about the, ahem, quality of BM's parenting, it might be a reasonable assumption that it was us, but it wasn't. No use telling them that though, would be an utter waste of time, they wouldn't believe us, and anyway, the fact is DP's quite pleased that the authorities are taking an interest, and he plans to ring them on Monday and get the details of what's going on. If it concerns his child, he's got a right to know. We know SD has been interviewed, but we did not wish to press her for any details, as it seems the last two weeks have been very distressing for her. BM has been on angry rants about us several times a day, putting a LOT of emotional pressure on the poor kid, and we are mud with Hatchet Face too. SD is banned from even mentioning our names with them. We told her that nothing's changed with us, that she can talk about BM or Granny if she wants to, that she can talk to us about anything she wants, we won't get angry with her or shout at her to shut up (OK, I really HATE hearing about BM this and BM that, but I am not going to tell a ten year old she cannot mention her own mother).

There's a bit though that I have to confess to here. I messed up with something, and that, while not the main cause of the troubles, has certainly added fuel to the fire and upset SD. It seems she overheard part of a conversation that I had with my friend one of the days she was with us, and I didn't know she had been there listening. DP and SD had just had an argument, in front of my friend, about her having a bath when she got home. SD was telling DP she didn't want or need a bath and why does she have to, Mum doesn't make her. My friend and I walked off to go to the loo, and my friend asked me what all that was about while we were in there. I gave her the Cliff Notes version - that BM thinks it's OK for her not to wash for days on end and that she'd started to suffer from BO as a result so we were really trying to get it into her head that she needs to keep herself clean as she's approaching puberty. And - I may have slipped in a comment about thinking that BM is a sub-standard parent as well. Unbeknownst to me, SD came in the bathroom while we were in there and heard it. She was upset, and she told Hatchet Face when she got dropped home that I was calling her smelly to my friends and slagging her mother off to everyone.

DP talked to her about this and poor SD said that she'd been upset, and embarrassed that other people outside the family had been told about her not washing at BM's and she KNEW full well that telling Granny Hatchet Face would get me in trouble - which was what she wanted at the time. However, SD did not know that the social services had been in touch, and that it would escalate in the way it has done.

I feel just awful that I let my anger towards BM get the better of me and SD heard me speak this way about her. I wanted to apologise to her, but DP said she didn't want me to be told that she'd done this as she was afraid I'd be mad at her. But - I'm the adult here, and I'm the one who should have been more discreet, or at least more careful there were no little ears around. I feel that I've let SD down and that she's seen a nasty side of me that I really would have preferred she didn't see. DP has done some damage limitation on my behalf, saying that I wouldn't have said anything to be nasty, but that I love her very much and I would have said it because I was concerned for her, that we both are concerned, we want her to be happy, safe and healthy and we worry sometimes that her mum doesn't always do the things that as a parent, she should. DP told me that SD said "I wish that Mum was more like you and Wicked Steppie". Bless. He's tried to discuss with her as well that if we do ever say anything that she doesn't like, or doesn't understand why we said it, then she should ask us - we won't be cross, we'll explain things, and that adults get it wrong sometimes too so if we say things that upset her, she needs to say so. Boy, did I get it wrong on this occasion. I have to say, DP is not my number one fan right now, and I'm not really surprised.

But one thing you have to do when you get it wrong in life is LEARN from it. I realise that I allowed the red mist to descend, and that I let being angry at the BM for being such a slack-arsed parent get in the way of doing and saying what was best for SD. In doing so, I feel that perhaps I was no better than BM herself, but the difference between her and me is that I will learn and do things differently in future. It's sad that BM's had no wake up call from the visit from the Social Services, and that all she's done is use it as a reason to be more angry with us instead of look at herself and focusing on being a better mum. I wish she would do that instead of blaming everyone else for her problems, because in the long run, it won't help her and it won't help the child who is getting more and more stressed out with all this conflict.

The other thing that I have learned from this, is that the bonds between SD and I that have been built over the last couple of years, are actually stronger than I realised. I had a view of them as being tenuous, and easily broken by a few choice manipulative words from BM. I know she won't stop loving her Dad, but who is Wicked Steppie after all - just Dad's girlfriend, no relation, no long history with her - I figured I was easily dispensed with and no big loss to her. But this is the first time that we've actually hurt each other, and that those bonds have been under any kind of test, so to come out the other side and for her to sit happily with me this morning laughing and putting sparkly nail polish on, I've realised that the bonds are stronger than I ever knew, and that we've survived. She doesn't know that I know this, but DP told me that she'd said to him yesterday that she still loved me. Knowing that despite my faux pas, she was still able to say that meant the world. And I'm able to say that I still love her too, and that silently, we've forgiven one another.

I might have got it wrong this time, but it seems like I've got it right often enough for the scales to balance. Not such a wicked stepmother after all, perhaps....and I am still very useful for shopping!