It�s not the money, it�s the principal!
10:06 a.m.
We have always paid for everything the children required: clothing, school supplies, birthday presents (to give to friends), as well as giving them a regular allowance. Admittedly, compared to what their friends get, their�s is a pittance, but on the other hand, anything that they really need we still spring for. My daughter went to Europe last April with her English/History class for three weeks and, although we told her we wanted to be paid back (to the tune of $3,000+), we have yet to see a red cent (or a silver dime) of it. In fact, we have never insisted on it, and are considering the debt forgiven, although we haven�t told her that. In the meantime, she still continues to collect an allowance out of which she is required to buy those things we do not consider necessities. We still pay for her books and other school supplies, and when she and I go shopping together, I still buy her clothes and sundry items because I have a soft spot for my baby girl.
But money is just money; we don�t seem to be in the poorhouse, so it�s not really a big deal, except that I don�t think either kid is learning about value. The thing that really gets to me is the transportation thing. My daughter is 17 and has yet to get her learner�s permit. My son is almost 15, and we will encourage him to learn how to drive, believe me! The problem is that we live in an isolated neighbourhood public-transportation-wise. The walk to the nearest bus stop at the university is 20 minutes. It requires walking along the side of a steep road with no sidewalks, down which people drive entirely too fast (even though the posted speed limit is 30 kph) and which in the winter has been narrowed by the heaped-up snowbanks so that there isn�t even a shoulder to tread upon. We have strictly forbidden both kids from attempting this perambulation in the dark, since the lighting is poor and we don�t want some unwary driver plowing his vehicle into our precious offspring. And in the winter time, the sun can set as early as 4:30 p.m. My son�s friends live �in town�, which means a half-hour-plus walk away, and we end up driving him hither and yon. He also has a good friend who lives in Waterville, a town down the highway by about 10 minutes (one way). Happily, J-D�s parents usually do one leg of the trip (either to drop off or pick up), so we tend to reciprocate when J-D is visiting our son.
But the worst is this driving to Ogden! Ogden is the name of the municipality just north of the Vermont border. It is extremely rural. When asked what they do for fun, teachers at the private school in Stanstead say, �We drink a lot.� Daughter�s BF�s mother rented a house on a lonely country road next to a cemetery in that neck of the woods after she and her long-time conjoint split up and he kept the house that they had just bought together. She is admittedly a member of the �counter culture� (whatever that means) which I take to signify that she is an aging hippy with no regular gainful employment. She has two kids living at home, BF (16) and his younger brother (12). The younger brother is getting to that age now where he wants to see more of his friends, but it hasn�t yet reached the proportions of BF�s predicament. He spends an hour on the school bus each way (in good weather), has all his friends in town (they are all older than him, students at the college), and is madly in love with my daughter. Can you see where this is going?
In order to mollify him, Mother tries to make living out in the boonies bearable by inviting Daughter to spend the weekend. We are not pleased with this arrangement, but what can we do? If we say no, we risk alienating her, and she is trying (to her credit) to make it less work for us. On Friday she caught the school bus at the bridge that takes her BF home regularly, and assured us that she would get a ride home Saturday or Sunday and would keep us informed. Mother�s car has been on the fritz and she was supposed to get it back this weekend. She didn�t. Which meant that Hubby and I (I was going to go by myself because he is so busy, but he didn�t want me driving all that way by myself when the roads could be icy) made the trip (45 minutes one way) to pick her up, and then bring her home. At the same time we also picked up Son, who had stayed the night at his friend�s place, but that was just �in town�.
Now, here�s the clincher. Daughter has a friend, a male friend, who lives in residence at the college, and who called her last night and asked her to come over and just hang out. So she asked me if she could, and I said no. She asked me repeatedly, and I just kept saying no. Then she said, �I�ll go ask Dad,� whereupon I said, �You do not play one parent against the other. If my answer is no, Dad�s will also be no.� I found out later that she did not, in fact, ask him. Here we had just spent close to two hours of our life driving out to this god-forsaken part of the province to pick her up, and she had the gall to ask to go to this guy�s place, which would entail another ride (just into �town�, mind you), but she would also have to be picked up, and it�s a school night, and this sentence is going to lose steam pretty soon and peter out�as has this diary entry.
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