My kid came back from her dad’s today, and whoa was that enlightening. As I mentioned in my post before this one, he pretty much called bullshit on me and the stomachache thing. Franny remembers it differently.

“So, I want to talk to you about something serious, and any answer is okay. I just want you to say what’s in your mind and what’s the truth,” I said.

“Okay,” Franny said.

“I talked to your dad on Friday and he said you don’t have stomachaches at his house.”

Franny looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.

“I get them ALL THE TIME, Mom.”

“Oh, okay. Well, I was kind of upset after I talked to him, because he pretty much said the stomachaches only happen at my house, and that they’re my fault, because of stuff that’s going on here with Strudel’s dad and stuff.” Franny gawped at this.

“That’s DUMB,” she said. She thought for a minute. “He makes it sound like a lot of things are your fault, Mom.”

We talked about gluten and what we’re trying to do and so forth, and I asked her if she felt like her dad could do it. “Probably not,” she said.

My point is not, surprisingly, to dog on SeaFed, but to just say, see what happens when you mate with someone 180 degrees different than you? My advice is to get a dog or hatch a child from an egg. Good luck.

FURTHER

We were coming back from the grocery store and she was talking about various shenanigans. I have conflicts with the devilry she gets up to, because from first grade on, from the time of the pants-wetting incident, I was an angry child who was not buying into the system.

“So they wanted to take me to get Santa pictures this weekend,” she said.

“Oh really?” I said.

“Yes, I waited until I had my dress on to tell them that I would not be doing Santa pictures.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, and my stepmom got really mad. She yelled and told me to put my dress away. But later I saw Santa and he told me to sit on his lap.”

“And did you?”

“Yeaah, I felt like I had to. So I sat on his lap.”

“What did you ask for?” I said.

“Welll, I always ask for an American Girl doll. But you know what, Mom? I knew it was not Santa, because last year he asked me ‘which one’ and I said ‘Kaya,’ and this year he didn’t. So I knew it was just a creepy old man.”

“Oh my.”

“My stepmom was soooo mad. She made me talk to my dad on the phone.”

My child is angry, too. And I have a dent on my lower lip where I was biting it. Not because I was enjoying the fact that she is tormenting her weekend hosts, but because she is kicking and fighting. She’s alive.