Dad wishes I'd been born a boy. If not me, then perhaps my 22 year old sister, and if not her, my 17 year old sister.

The 22 year old was more outgoing and tougher than I was as a kid, so I guess she filled the gap a bit. On the life-style block in Bethlehem, Tauranga where we grew up, this tiny red-haired tot would keep pace with his six foot strides, moving the cows and doing farm shit. In comparison, I was always dripping round on my own writing songs or poetry or reading, and I nearly turned myself inside out whenever I stumbled across a still born calf or a chicken that had been savaged by the dog.

I was a mummy's girl until the two of them split when I was 12, and I don't have any defined sense of a relationship with dad until I hit the teens and entered this five-year long hormone-induced psychosis. Dad seemed to relate better to the fact that I was trying to assert some independence and liked engaging me on an 'intellectual' level, whereas mum wanted me to shut my yap and stay a kid and it took years before she could relate to me on a woman-to-woman level (I guess nobody should be expected to relate to a little bitch).

I have got older, got a boyfriend neither dad nor stepmum really liked (I didn't find out the full extent of this dislike until it ended almost six years later), and gone to Uni and got even more vocal with my beliefs. And Dad and I seem to piss each other off these days. We hover at different ends of the political spectrum with dire consequences at the dinner table almost every time we get together. Which isn't so often these days; I live in Wellington and they live in the far north. We went out for dinner last night, not quite a family unit with Chile sis leaving a huge gap, and perhaps to avoid confrontation, Dad sat and talked engines and motor racing with Auckland sis's boyf for the entire evening. I guess I could have moved seats and tried to join in, but I'm stubborn as fuck, and instead consoled myself by eating an exorbitant amount of food as I tried to identify a particular source to the cooling in relations. When things bother me, I tell people. When I'm angry or upset, I tell people. This usually happens without much thought between the emotion and the response. I shouldn't have called him an ignorant red-neck that time, no matter how heated the debate was getting, and I should call more often, even though he rarely calls me. And I shouldn't sulk just cause I don't like motor sports or follow rugby closely and there is only so far a conversation beginning with "So how's Wellington?" can go.

At least I have managed to impress the little bro by getting the PS2 to work. Ha ha, he just stood in Boo's crap. Culprit above left looking suitably repentant.