Well, overall, I am not too terribly unimpressed with the job my ex did in taking care of the kids Friday night. I mean, from what I understand, she allowed them to play down by the creek supervised only by some eleven year old... but, hey, I have done much more unintelligent stuff than that, right? Oh, and she dropped them off at the birthday party they were to be attending, from which I was going to pick them up, then took off... kinda the opposite of what we had decided, but who am I to quibble, right? But what gets me; what really sticks in my craw (yeah, I said it), is she cut Amber's hair. Now, this sounds pretty minor, I'm sure, but let me vent for a minute here. Some background: Amber and I have been trying to grow her freakin bangs out for around a year now. 'But Jer', I can hear you ask, 'surely it doesn't take a year to grow out bangs, does it?' You wouldn't think so, gentle reader, you wouldn't think so. Of course, it really slows things down when people CUT HER FREAKIN BANGS OFF! So far, my ex started the trend when, about this time last year, when she watched the kids, she lopped off most of her bangs. It was then that we discussed how much we liked Amber with bangs, and how we'd let her grow them out. Then, a friend babysits Amber about six months back and, without checking with anyone, gets the bangs cut professionally... and has the BALLS to say 'don't worry about paying me for the haircut, it was my treat.' Are you bloody kidding me? I mean, would YOU babysit a kid, get his/her hair cut without checking with the parent... then believe that they might have been thinking about PAYING YOU? I wanted to bash her head in with a tire iron, and she's talking about reimbursement? Next, about three months ago, Amber's aunt does it too! Are you sensing a trend? Anyone? Now, I'm not really upset with the aunt. A) she didn't know. B) Amber didn't tell her C) she's used to being the only one to do these things, from when my ex had custody. We discussed it, the hair cuts stopped. Now Amber comes home with freshly chopped hair, again. Oh, when I say chopped, that's not merely a nifty colloquial way of saying cut... I mean FRIGGIN CHOPPED; uneven, looks bad, isn't even CLOSE to nicely done. I'm a tard and I coulda done it better with garden sheers and a blindfold. Of course, I'm just bitter... but c'mon here. You stay out of the kids' lives for like, 5 months, then show up and ruin her hair? Why don't you feed em rotten meat and tell them that Santa doesn't exist, huh? Poke out an eye? Sacrifice a cat in a pagan ritual? Okay, for the record, even I understand that the examples used in the preceding paragraph are a TAD over the top, but I think I made my point... I'm mildly perturbed here. I'm thinking about saying screw it... giving Amber a nice, short hairstyle that will make my life easier, and telling everyone to leave her damned hair alone. Maybe throw a Sinead O'Connor down on her.