Divorce can be wonderful

I am in celebratory mood. Divorce can be a sad and stressful time for may people, but for this particular fruitloop it's a cause for much celebration.

Hands up anyone who's tried to divorce a narcissistic psychopath. OK, so in the absence of my being able to actually see you right now, I guess I should give the heads-up for anyone who suspects that they're married to one and wondering how to achieve such a mind-blowing coup.

Rule Number One:

Just remember, you can't divorce a narcissistic psycho, they wont let you. Use reverse psychology. Apply for a divorce. Wait about 8 weeks before they slap an anti-suit injunction on you. Haha! that's a good one, because they don't want you to divorce them, they have to divorce you.

Rule Number Two:

Be damn sure you have money to burn. I'm talking eye-wateringly, serious amounts of money that could be used for something far more constructive like your children's education or your shrink bills. You'll need the best lawyer you can afford. Firstly, because you have to deal with someone who is more cunning than a friggin weasel and has the charm of one of those guys who do tricks with a snake in a basket. You simply must have a lawyer who's got teeth and balls. Frisk the bugger's crotch and ask him to open his mouth. I'M SERIOUS. We all know though, that lawyers with a full set of teeth and mammoth balls don't come cheap.

Secondly, remember... the psycho will always try to out-do you. They simply have to have the best lawyer. It's a matter of entitlement. So, you can't be caught with your pants down and relying on the legal skills of a toothless, impotent, eunuch when he wheels in the big guns.

Rule Number Three:

Patience. Be prepared for the longest, most acrimonious, frustrating, expensive, divorce and settlement in f**ing history. The narcissistic psycho will get these expensive lawyers to communicate about all possible minutiae from weekly letters regarding access to the dog, to a spreadsheet showing who owns the contents of the bloody refrigerator. I jest not! Oh, and you'll need to sort out that anti-suit injunction.

Rule Number Four:

Keep your marbles intact. There will be times when you get to read and respond to their 100th solemnly sworn affidavit, and you'll wonder if you've lost the plot. These things are amazingly convincing works of fiction, and reading them will make you want to vomit...you'll probably want to slit your wrists too! DONT. Sure, they'll contain a grain of truth, but the truth will be so twisted that you'll doubt your own sanity. Reach for the diary, the photographic evidence, the forensic accounting report and the bloody Valium....but keep your marbles intact.

Rule Number Five:

When the decree absolute comes through, and he sends you a pompous message reading "I find it so very pleasing that I have finally stopped your divorce and divorced you" .......f**ing well CELEBRATE! You will be finally free of the bastard.

Today, I celebrated with a spot of fly posting around the village. This weekend I am having an enormous party.

BECAUSE DIVORCE IS EXPENSIVE..... BUT FREEDOM IS PRICELESS!

Mouthing Off

I'm mad as.

I'm still wall-kicking, door-slamming, talking-to-myself, angry-mad. I shouldn't be this angry surely.

Yesterday afternoon as I kissed my children off for a weekend with their father I committed a cardinal offence...I forgot to pronounce the 'T" in later - as in 'See you later". Seems I have picked up a bit of an Aussie accent and, horror of horrors....it came out as a soft 'D"

Now, the father of my children has always had a bee in his bonnet about accents and their relation to social class. In the past I have been absolutely, categorically forbidden to socialise with anyone who might be deemed to have a "working class" accent. Oh yeah, and that includes some of my family. Hell, I've been hauled away mid-sentence in the street when one of these 'offensive' people have brightly smiled and asked how I am! The man has even visited both school and pre-school to instruct our children's Australian teachers on the importance of correct pronunciation of "The Queens English".

I don't have to put up with his shit any more. I left it behind. Bollocks to social classes and superior, judgemental attitudes. Let's judge people by their deeds and not their f***ing words.

The superior bastard still felt completely free after 18 months to smugly correct my pronunciation of the word 'later' by shouting it at me in the street and in the presence of our children (who, poor things, shot me a look of complete resignation and embarrassment)

And the other reason I'm still mad?

Well, apart from the fact that this little problem is obviously here to stay, as a lovely English acquaintance of mine pointed out rather furiously recently..

"But he's got a f**king working-class, northern accent, can't he hear himself?"

(Think UK TV Coronation Street)

Too complicated to explain, but does anyone know of an elocution teacher prepared to tutor a psychopathic narcissist in the 'correct' pronunciation of baath and doock?

Who is Fruitloopmum?

They seek her here,

They seek her there,

Those readers seek her everywhere,

Is she loopy or just plain dumb?

That damned elusive Fruitloopmum!

Hi Fruitloop fans. I got a polite but terse email over the weekend requesting that I submit my photo for inclusion on a mummy's blogging site. Uh-oh, sorry guy's no can do. Well at least not a real photo of me anyway. There are some very good reasons for this, and they're pretty obvious to anyone who reads my posts:

- I have recently made a dramatic and long-awaited escape from a psychopathic husband and have actually been writing humorous posts about him. Yeah, that pretty much confirms the loopy part of me. Probably not a good idea that he finds out about this though. You've all seen the film "Sleeping with the Enemy" right? Well admittedly, I haven't actually had to fake my own death (I just managed a disappearing act that David Copperfield would have been proud of - along with half the furniture one day) but that film is pretty close to my story. However, I don't want to fake my own death just yet. I've only just re-discovered fun, love and laughter.

- Even if I managed to escape the physical attentions of said psycho, I can guarantee that I'd be in court for defamation quick as. See, although many people have witnessed said psycho's behaviour, he's oh so desperate to make everyone think he's normal. My defence would be that I haven't written anything that is untrue, and I have the paperwork to prove it! But, I've been in court more times than the f**ing bathroom in the last few years thanks to this bugger, and I really don't fancy any further courtrooms just yet, thank you.

- Here's another really good reason for not identifying myself.....My posts are absolutely FULL of swearing, sex and body parts. In real life, I actually look like a sweet, innocent, yummy mummy. Hell, most of my casual acquaintances would be mortified if they knew about the real me. I would probably be barred from the parents association, the library and the women's knitting circle if they knew I was Fruitloopmum.

Okay, so my close friends and some of my family are aware of my identity, but I reckon they love me warts, wicked indiscretions and all ,and they're not likely to dob me in to The Psychopath or the school committee, but I still have to be careful. So, my apologies to anyone who is remotely interested, but I will not be posting my picture or revealing my identity any time soon. You'll have to make do with some colourful fruit loops. Come to think about it, I'll probably be barred from the nice mummy blogging site anyway once they actually read my blog!

The parable of the psychotic squirrel and his nuts

Help! I am being driven insane by a psychotic squirrel.

It's the guilt you see. My squirrelly offspring keep complaining that they're cold and hungry. Now as any mummy squirrel knows, this type of complaint from your offspring elicits a very strong primal response. I'm bloody determined to find where that bugger has hidden our nuts!

Oh, what to do about that mad daddy squirrel who I so stupidly left in charge of family 'nut duties' while I looked after our baby squirrels? The injustice is killing me. Seriously, his antics are driving me nuts! I keep encountering him scurrying industriously around the tree-tops with his cheeks stuffed to bursting, but I can't seem to catch the slippery bugger.

I've tried to get him to squeak, but his cheeks are so bloody full with booty that he can't utter a single, sensible word. He just mumbles inanely and holds his empty paws out in a mad gesture of 'look, nothing in here!" Hmmmmm

I've watched him zip enthusiastically up the fat,red female squirrel's tree with his cheeks full to bursting and then mysteriously reappear flaccid-cheeked, paws behind his back and whistling innocently. Suspicious, very suspicious.

I've used up my own meagre back-up supply of acorns and nuts since we fled the family tree. I had naively hoped that by now he would have done the decent thing and disclosed the location of our family store so that we can share it fairly. I mean, I happily handed over my entire store of nuts when we set up nest together and I want to know what he's bloody well done with them. It's one thing to be a selfish, greedy rodent, but making your offspring suffer cold and hunger is something else entirely. It goes against nature...thats where the psycho bit comes in I think.....

So this week I've hired me a professional squirrel catcher on a 'no result, no fee' deal and if he doesn't catch the fat rodent then I'm calling in a taxidermist.

Yep, as you can probably tell, I'm spitting chips here. The whole situation has gotten me so bloody mad and frustrated that it's made me even more determined to have that offending squirrel's nuts!

Confessions of a fruitloop

"Mum, what about that time you shaved dad's eyebrow off? Or, when you stuck prawns under the bonnet of his car and it took him weeks to work out what the stench was?"

"Yes, but he deserved it!"

... I'd sort of forgotten the pranks that I used to get up to with my first husband. The trouble was, he was a bit of a prankster himself and during an argument he always had to have the last word. Now, as every women will tell you, from a female perspective, that's way too frustrating. So, to vent my frustration I would dream up the most creative retributions. The longer we were married, the more creative my pranks became until the thirteenth year of our marriage....better known as 'the year of the eyebrow' where I think I went just a tinsy bit too far!

In my defence though, my first husband was pretty good at pranks too. His absolute best was getting me out of the shower to answer the door to him under the guise of loosing his house keys. Now, we lived in London at the time on a busy commuter road. So, dripping wet and swearing profusely, I opened the door with nothing but a towel wrapped around me.

Swiftly and expertly, and with the grace and guile of a stage magician, he stepped inside, swiped the towel away, manoeuvred me onto the doorstep and closed the door! To this day I don't think I have ever moved so fast. Covering my bits with my hands, I sprinted across the front garden and spent the next fifteen minutes hiding in a hedge bordering the roadside with commuter traffic only a few feet away whilst he made faces at me from an upstairs window. Bastard!

The Prankster and I divorced amicably many years ago. In fact, he 's probably reading this blog right now and laughing his head off. Now, my wonderful 'fruitloop logic' told me that I should try a sensible, reliable individual next time around, even if that did equal boring. So, fast forward a few years and by a complete mistake, I somehow managed to marry The Psychopath.....see my archive post.

Now, I blame that film 'The War of the Roses' with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, for giving me some really naughty ideas. Let's have some sympathy here.....Living with a psychopath is infinitely more frustrating than a living with a prankster. Yeah, yeah, I know. Playing pranks on a psychopath is pretty mad and very dangerous. That's when that film popped back into my head.....Think dog food pie, toothbrushes to clean toilets, laxatives in coffee, itching powder in underpants........Enough. Enough.

Eventually, I popped in and very quietly confessed all to The Psychopaths' psychologist, seriously fearing that I too was beginning to lose the plot. Guess what?

Yep, I got complete absolution! It would seem that cleaning the toilet with a psychopath's toothbrush is completely normal.......

So, when exactly did you realise you had married a psychopath?

It was a straight forward enough question, over a glass of wine at a party.

We had been chatting about relationships and there was a frisson of something in the air between us. I felt a nervous twitch coming on. All his fault of course...'the ex' and the twitch...not the very cute guy interrogating me.

The trouble was, it was a bummer of question to answer and the cute guy knew it because he was grinning mischievously at me. I mean, how do you explain a ten-year marriage to a psychopath without making yourself look like a complete fruit loop yourself?

Obviously, I could have gone on the defensive, explaining that psychopaths are masters of disguise, you know, seemingly normal and often charming people until someone or something tips them over the edge.

I could have recounted the psychologist's explanation that 'the ex' suffered from the same personality disorder as both Hitler and allegedly Stalin. Shouldn't that elicit some degree of sympathy and understanding from my sexy interrogator?

Or, I could have given a boring monologue of dates and times when I noticed that 'the ex' was behaving just a little left of centre, and then cleverly lifted the conversation with the hilarious story about my 'aha moment'

Hell, even the explanation that I am a truly benevolent soul, believing in the best in people until proven otherwise makes me sound like a naive nutcase given a ten year marriage.

Now let's face it, it's not often that a divorced mum of four gets chatted up by a good-looking younger man. I damn well wasn't going to let this opportunity pass without some attempt at making it clear that I consider myself to be a balanced, emotionally mature, exceedingly yummy mummy.

I took a sip of wine, gave him my sexiest, most mischievous smile back and told the absolute truth.....

"Well, I suppose I realised the day that I stood in the laundry dosing all of his underpants with itching powder"