*Missing pumpkin picture*

I’ve not got around to carving it I’m afraid – I’d just given my dad his tea last night when Tracy rang and I ended up going over there. She wants me to design the Order of Service booklets for the funeral and what with one thing and another we ended up chatting away for hours. Sometimes it’s a skill knowing when to just listen and throw in the occasional comment, last night she needed to talk.

And of course I ended up sorting her computer out, yet again. I’ve never known a woman like her. This time the email had stopped working – about two months ago to be precise, she just hadn’t said anything. So we sat and chatted as I eventually found a way of changing the password, the original password wasn’t being accepted. When I did log on via explorer I found out what the problem was and why Outlook Express has been saying sod off to her. 13,572 emails just sat there, most of them spam – God alone knows what she’s been up to, but it took me nearly three hours to delete all of them. Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange didn’t like it and kept freezing up on me. I could only delete a couple of hundred in any one go.

Within seconds of walking back through the door at home at just turned 9pm, my dad was demanding and I do mean demanding; ‘please’ never comes into it, that I dress his leg – he’d been waiting all night for me. I told him that I’d just put my tea on and then I’d do it. Not good enough I’m afraid – I didn’t want to do anything for him anymore; I was only interested in helping other people (such as Tracy) - and that was the root of all this, I'd spent time with her and he wanted something doing and had had to wait.

I’m afraid this has been building up for weeks now and it ended in one God almighty argument, one that for once I wasn’t backing down from. So he informed me of the following:

1. To Fuck Off, he didn’t need my help anyway.
2. He’ll leave and go into a home, where he would get looked after and everything would be done for him – I needn’t bother then.
3. I’ll come home one day and he'll have killed himself, then I’d be sorry.
4. I don’t do anything for him.
5. He’s very ill and I only care about my job. I should come out of work and take him to the doctors, he shouldn’t have to drive himself.
6. I only want him for his money (a throw back to when Himself broke his shoulder earlier this year and he paid the mortgage to help out with the loss of earnings during the month.
7. I only care about those people on the computer - I shouldn’t go on it at night. I think more of them than I do him.
8. I go out every weekend and leave him on his own.

Actually the list went on a lot more than just that – all about what an awful daughter I was and how I didn’t bother with him, how very selfish I am. I’m afraid I’d really had enough; for once I fired both guns back at him and told him that I wasn’t married to him, I wasn’t a doormat to be walked over, I wasn’t his personal servant – my mother didn’t have me to ensure that they would received round the clock care 24 hours a day/ day in day out. If he had decided to have a child for just that reason he was in for a big surprise. I was fed up with working all day, and coming back to his demands, sulks and tantrums when I refused to jump immediately to his orders on what needed to be done. I recognised that his health wasn’t at its best, but a lot of people were a lot worst off and still didn’t expect their children to jump instantly to their every whim. I’m afraid I may have been very blunt and hurtful but I’ve had enough of him trying to control my life and make it as unpleasant as possible and now he knows it. Oh boy, does he know it.

Things settled down eventually and once again he apologised – but I’m not standing for it anymore. I’m sick to the eye teeth with the emotional blackmail, he knows what to say to me to make me feel I’m not keeping my promise to my mum to watch over him. If I’ve let her down, then tough – I’m entitled to a life too and so is my husband, who very wisely just stood in the door way and let me vent my spleen last night. Although I honestly don’t think my mum wanted me to give up everything and focus on looking after my dad – she’d tell me that he’d always been like that and that I had the right to do my own things – he is more than capable of helping himself more than he does. The trouble is he’s on his own most of the day and he refuses to do anything about it – I did agreed that I’d spend half an hour every evening just talking to him, and I’ll keep to that. As I do things for him I’m in and out constantly, but that apparently doesn’t count. But I won’t be stopping going out with my husband over the weekend, it’s the only time we have together without interruptions and I won’t stand for him trying to tell me what I can and can’t do, it's none of his business – although I think that at least has died a death for a time.