Land Grab

Wednesday is switch-up day, the day my girl goes to stay with her father until the weekend. The routine is that I bring her bag of stuff (mostly stuffed animals) and the dog over to his house in the afternoon before she comes home from school. I haven't been back in the house for months, but even just looking around outside in the yard reminds me how little I understand about the way he judges what is important and what isn't.
The house is older and looks it. There used to be railings up the front stairs and stairs coming down off the small back deck. Now there are rusted off metal stumps where the handrails used to be set into the concrete stairs in front. Out back there is a two and a half foot drop off from the deck, which is missing not only stairs but also a couple of floor boards. The flower beds in the front and on the side of the house have been left to the weeds. In other words, it doesn't look so good.
If the rest of the property was also neglected, that might go along with the general tone of things, but what's odd is that the grass is always cut short and my ex has obviously spent a lot of time and effort clearing away a whole bank of blackberry bushes off one edge of the property and clearing out small trees and brush from the other edges of the yard. He has also moved the dog's house progressively further back in the yard so it is now about as far away from the house as it can be while still being on the property. I'm not really sure what the point is, but if he doesn't want to deal with the dog anymore I'd be more than happy to keep him (the dog) here. In an odd and politically incorrect (because the ex is Japanese) way, it reminds me of Japan in World War 2 when it got all land hungry and was more focused on capturing as much territory as possible than just about anything else. I guess I don't see how it's okay to sacrifice the wellbeing of the home(land) for the sake of claiming more land.