sueeeus

losing it

~*~*~*~

Actually, the day started out well.  I felt rested.  I’m beginning to sleep better, not waking at 4:09 a.m. each and every morning.  It’s very healing, to be able to sleep.  I think my whole self can barely take any more of the loads I’ve been subjecting her to for the past who knows how many years.  It’s been compounding this year, understandably.

I try fruitlessly to coordinate with the kids’ dad, and get little to no cooperation.  Things turn into bicker fests, and that’s the last thing I want.  I’m seldom fast enough on my feet (figuratively) to be ready for things said, so I seem to play into the games, each and every time.  It’s so wearying.  And ridiculous.  It’s been over a year since we parted ways, and nearly a year since we’ve been divorced.  There’s no need to continue bickering like immature hot headed teenagers.  I don’t want it.  All I want is a routine, simple and clearly defined.  He does his part, I do mine.

I can’t enforce anything.  I can’t make him do his part.

I feel like I’m under attack, and there’s nothing I can do about it, apart from roll over and let him kick me around some more, i.e., give him all he wants and submit to his stupid manipulative passive aggressive tactics.

And here I am, wasting my blog energy spewing this stuff out.  But it helps me to air it.  Otherwise, my composure is held together by the finest of threads, stretched to its near limit, on the verge of snapping.

I’m too close in.  Take it to the 30,000 ft level, and what do I see?

Bottom line – he doesn’t want to pay child support.  It’s as simple as that.  I don’t have to get sucked into his threats and shenanigans that revolve around this subject.  They all do.  What can I do about this?  Nothing.  (Well, I could cancel the child support order, which is what he wants.)  When my five year old goes on a whining bender, what can I do but ignore him?  If I acknowledge him, it provides attention, which is what he seeks.  Perhaps the best thing to do here, therefore, is to ignore as well.  If he tries to take me to court, I can get a lawyer to deal with him.

Another bottom line – he is scorned.  Why else would he accuse me of having boy toys and flavor of the month men?  He doesn’t get to live happily ever after with me, so he must attack any attempts I make toward the pursuit of a happily ever after for myself.  And what can I do about this? Again, nothing.  It’s an attack, but there’s no reason for me to acknowledge it or allow it to hurt me.

That’s that, then.

…ho hum…

I think I’ll go vomit now.

Oct. 24. Verbal exchange – seeing the kids in two weeks then…   […details to be confirmed]  Apparently, one party understood this to mean that I would drive the kids to his doorstep in two weeks????  WTH.  Since when?

Nov. 1-5. Me. Wondering if he’ll call regarding plans for the kids.  How many times I kept myself from contacting him, trying to stand by my resolve to see what he will do, if he will make any effort to coordinate anything.

Nov. 6. Around 9:45 a.m.  Him.  What happened to the kids this weekend?

Me. Hadn’t heard from you.

Him. When you were here last you asked so see you in two weeks and N said yes and you left with your bf.

Me. Even so, still need to coordinate the details when the time comes.  I expect to hear from you by Wed or so, to be sure we are clear on whatever the plans are.  Just because we have a loose understanding that you will have the kids at any given day, we still need a solid and clear communication as to what time, what day, where to meet, etc.  That needs to be clarified each and every time, until we have a routine determined.  So far, you have not been very cooperative in making any kind of a set routine.

Him. So now that it was agreed prior to the date agreed on you’re trying to shift the lack of communication to me, even after it was agreed upon.  So who has the kids on turkey day?

Me. Would you like to have them?

Him. Yes.  My mom is having it at her place then should be able to drop them off after dinner.

Me. Why not keep them for that weekend, so they can have more time with you?

Nov. 8. Me. You didn’t reply as to plans for enjoying the boys for the Thanksgiving weekend.  What would you like to do?  Also, if you’d like to see them this weekend, let’s try to work something out.

Him. We have plans this weekend.  That’s why it was very important that the kids were going to be here as you asked before you left.

Me. If it was that important, you should have confirmed pickup and dropoff time and location.

Him. Unless you are experiencing short or long term memory loss, you know location and drop off and pick up.   I don’t know why you play this game where you forget the money you take from me every month which was allocated for the fuel for picking up the kids for the month and planning special things to do with them.  I don’t know why you have this mind block you like to use mostly when you have a boy toy for two to three months around.  I don’t know how many times I have told you the fuel situation but that’s ok.  In December the judge will have all that information.

Me.  The child support you pay isn’t allocated for fuel to pick them up.  I am not a taxi service.  The parenting plan says you pick them up and drop them off here.  So what memory lapse are you talking about?  I am willing to meet at the p&r for transfer, as that makes things easier on you.  That is ME being accommodating for YOU.  Funny how you don’t seem to get that.

Him.  I get every bit of it. The money you are taking from me which you seem to forget you said, and I quote, you don’t have to worry I’m not going to ask you for child support, end quote.  And you never answered me about my proposal when M’s was all paid for.  Is the money I had set aside to use for the boys.  You keep thinking I have all this extra money hiding or laying around.

~*~*~*~

Communication can be a bitch, can’t it?  Listen to me.  That sort of language is atypical for Sueeeus Maximus.

Did I ever blog about his proposal, regarding M?  If not, here’s the recap.  And no, I didn’t bother replying to him, because how could I?  In his illogical and incomprehensible mind, he somehow thinks it would be reasonable for me to postpone any requirement for child support until he’s finished paying child support for his first daughter, who is currently 15.  That means, he won’t pay anything for three years, and at that time, he will start contributing towards his two sons.  Does anything accrue during that span of time?  In his mind, no.

When we met, he was buried in debt with collectors after him.  Oh, sigh, we know where this tale is going.  Yes, I bailed him out.  I extended a substantial amount of cash to clear his debts.  Meanwhile, he moved in with me.  When talking about the awkward subject of finances, when he would pay some money now and then, I’d ask him if he wanted me to apply that money to the loan or to the rent.  Almost always he’d say to apply it to the loan.  Meanwhile, the rent compounded, but he seemed oblivious to that, or couldn’t grasp that it was a debt as well.  In his mind, he was paying me back for that loan.  But what of the rent?  Room and board?  Who gets to live for free in this world?

How could he have any shred of dignity, basically free-loading off of me?  In his mind, he thinks he contributed.  He has a vivid imagination, but reality is less than inspiring.

I loaned him first, last and deposit for the house he lives in NOW.  In the days before his wedding, he was stretched and tried to ask for a loan (in his typical and indirect way in which he starts to say something then stops midstream and says he already knows the answer, so why bother finishing the question, which eventually led to the admission that things were tight), so I brought up the lack of any indication that he intends to repay me for the first/last/deposit loan.  To which he said “you know I’m good for it, I’m not that kind of person…”

I swear, I had to literally bite my tongue.  And held my silence and didn’t offer to help him out.  WTF?  Did I mention anything about shreds of dignity?  What kind of person even considers asking his EX WIFE for a loan to help him pay for things associated with his upcoming wedding to a woman (with four young children of her own) who is practically young enough to be his daughter? W.T.F.

Furthermore, what planet does he hail from, to thinly veil asking to borrow more money from me and then speak of court, judges, threats in nearly the same breath?  What kind of person would be receptive to even part of that conversation?

So.  What does he have planned for a judge in December?  And the comment about me having a boy toy for two or three months?  Hello, the man has already REMARRIED.

Like I said, I think I need to vomit.

I don’t even know what to say.  I put the conversation here, so I can get it out.  Getting it out helps me, somehow.  But I don’t know what to say or think.  I do know that I shouldn’t allow things he says to get to me, and to make me have this visceral reaction.

I can’t really put my finger on it.   The thing that turns my stomach inside out is that any kind of a decent man and father would do anything he could to spend time with his kids.  He plays these games with me, tries to hurt me, to put wrenches in any potential plans I might have, and all the more so if I happen to have a love interest.  All these things to poke at me, without any consideration for the boys.  Does he or does he not want to be a part of their lives?

It’s bullshit to say that the $150/month that is garnished for his boys was previously allocated for fuel and fun.  He contrived that story somewhere along the transition from woman number one, L, and the now wife N.  He was meeting at the park and ride, before he inherited a woman with four children.  Maybe L was contributing to the rent while she lived with him, but N has only recently gotten a job.  How is that my problem?

The new wife has her kids every other week, so he and his bride have a child-free home every other week.  They make plans to do things on their child free days.  How nice for them.

He seldom even calls the boys.  This doesn’t surprise me.  He hardly ever made contact with his daughter, all the years we were together.

The boys don’t talk about him. They don’t ask about him.  They don’t ask to call him.  They don’t tell me they want to go see him.  This breaks my heart for them.  And for him.  My heart would be broken into a hundred thousand pieces if they didn’t think of ME.

I can’t fathom him.   I just can’t.  He could choose to play nice.  Yet he thinks I am the one playing games.

I guess I don’t feel like vomiting any more.  But tears stream down my face.

tears of a clown

not so comfortably numb

I woke up with a sore throat and a screaming headache, and did a sinus flush to try to clear out the gunkies.  I was so distraught that this sore throat continues to make my life miserable, and spent some time re-assessing whether I should drag my sorry self back to the doctor, but the headache has improved a bit and I’m not hacking up as much or coughing as much, and the throat pain is at bay for now, so I think I’m starting to get better.  My neck aches now, though.

Oxycodone makes me itch.  It’s a seven year old prescription, so I’m surprised it does anything at all.  One pill left.

So Gadget is out there, somewhere, saying I Do to a twenty seven year old today.

I remember the day I said I Do.  I had a screaming migraine.  I was 38 and three days past the most traumatic and horrific miscarriage of my life.  And I was thinking “I do NOT” in my head the whole time.  But I went ahead and said it anyway.  Coward.  So what was I thinking?  That I don’t want to have bastard children.  Social pressure.  Imagined social pressure.  And so it goes.  I’ve paid the piper, again and again for that moment of cowardice.

But I have my boys!  My world!

the bird

I’ve been sick all week.  Trying hard not to let it take hold.  I even took all of us to urgent care on Tuesday, to get checked out.  We got the all clear, but got one prescription for LB for the pink eye that was making the rounds, just in case.  So who gets pink eye?  Me.  Followed by BB.  LB has a runny nose and a cough.  BB is a bit stuffed up.  And I’m a complete mess.  I took a sick day on Friday, which is just as well because BB got kicked out of daycare the minute they noticed his rosy eyes.  It’s funny how such a ruckus is made over pink eye.  Whatever version we have doesn’t even hurt.  It’s nothing compared with the sore throat that has persisted all week.  I’ve been drinking lemony tea, gargling with cayenne pepper and vinegar, sucking on menthol throat drops, popping the ibuprofen like it’s going out of style, and even working my way through the remnants of my ancient prescription painkillers.  Thank GOD the boys don’t have the sore throat.  I wouldn’t know how to help them and it would break my heart to know they had to just suffer through it.

So this is the big wedding weekend for Gadget.  His daughter and stepson are here from Kentucky, having arrived on Tuesday.  His twin and significant other arrived yesterday from New York.  I’m not sure who else is here, but rumor has it that it’s a big wedding, with 200-300 guests.  Gadget mentioned something months ago about the boys having a role in the ceremony.  I started trying to make some plans a few weeks ago, so that the kids could see that side of their family.  It turned out that Friday was a no-school day, so I told Gadget that I could actually bring the kids over on Thursday after work.  That way they could spend some time with their siblings.  They’ve never even met LB.  “We’ll see….” is what I got from Gadget.  I tried to solidify plans as the week progressed.  He finally said “No, don’t bring the kids over until around 4pm on Saturday.”  Why not Thursday, I asked.  Gadget said he wouldn’t even be home until 9:30pm Thursday, and his kids wouldn’t babysit.  WTH.  I wasn’t asking them to BABYSIT.  And at 16 and 21, are they not responsible enough to spend a few hours with my boys, their BROTHERS, unaccompanied?  WTH?  So it comes out that there is some function on Saturday for the over 12 crowd and there is nobody to watch the little kids.  He pretty much declares that I should bring them over at 4 on Saturday and pick them up Sunday.  I told him I’m not a taxi service.  My window of helpfulness was Thursday evening.  If he couldn’t work with that, then figure it out his own.  I thought I was very clear.

Fast forward to today.  Saturday.  3:54pm.  He texts me.

Him: Are you bringing the kids?

Me: I’m sick.

Him: That’s ok two can play your silly game. I knew you would pull some crap like this, but whatever.

Me: What game.  I’m sick.  U can come get them if you want.

Him: Whatever

Me: I’ve been waiting for you to communicate about how u want to handle the boys and haven’t heard a word.  What do u expect?

Him: At least I didn’t make up something. To be at least civil and not make up a lie not to do something. I wanted to bring the kids here to spend time but everything didn’t  work out that way but I have talked to you and you wanted nothing to do with anything so there you go.  You got all mad. You’re just pissed.

Me: U told me when u wanted them here.  I told u what worked for me-Thurs. I told u to figure out a plan.  Did u? And I DON’T LIE.

Him: If I have to pick them up then  they won’t be back until u pick them up on Wed.  When I say I don’t have fuel I’m not making it up.

WTH.  He didn’t even TRY to figure out an alternate plan.  He thinks it’s appropriate that I drop everything, drive an hour each way, and drop the boys off at the time he edicted.  His family members live North of me.  He lives South of me.  He could coordinate with someone to pick up the boys on their way.  He’s asked my dear friend’s husband to photograph the wedding.  He could ask them to bring the boys.  He had several options he could have explored, yet he did nothing.

So, here I am, sicker than hell, can barely swallow or breathe, and I just break into sobs.  Right in front of BB.  So then I have to tell BB that I’m crying because his dad thinks I’m lying about being sick.  Not to mention, my beautiful angel of a boy has been excited and looking forward to seeing his relatives.  And I had to tell him, no, you can’t go see them Thursday.  Or Friday.  And it doesn’t look like he’s coming to get you now.

Still sobbing, I check the clock and call my friend.  Luckily, they’ve not left yet, so they come over and get the boys.  Solution.

The man is incompetent.  And an ass.  Check out the reflection.  It’s ludicrous that I would make up a story and lie.  That he could even conceive such a notion speaks volumes as to how deeply he knows the essence of ME.

Un-flipping-believable.  I am *this* close to incorporating the f-bomb into my vocabulary.  I was recently able to produce the gesture depicted above, albeit still with a smile, and not directed at the ex.  That one was directed at my geeky friend, who I shall call Sailor.  I think he’s trying to toughen me up.  He shares his drama and I attempt to give him a rational female perspective.  I share my drama, and he offers his crude male perspective.  Basically, he says I should stand up for myself and take Gadget to the cleaners by going after max child support and daycare contributions.

Thus far, no man I encounter seems to understand my idea of the high road.  I don’t get it.  They almost unanimously share tales of child support woes.  Maybe it just kills them to see that they, being the nice guys they are, get shafted, yet Gadget, being the apparent ass that he is, gets to skate.  Gadget, as we all know, thinks he is being shafted.

I’m tired of trying to explain it to anybody.  I don’t want to hurt him.  I don’t want to make his life miserable.  I’m not vindictive.  I just want him to step up and be a man.  Good Lord.  Just. Be. A. Man.

And I hope and pray with all the hope and earnestness that I have in my heart that I can live long enough to raise my children, because if they had to be raised by him, they would have a tough road, without good and honorable examples and guidance.  I don’t want them to think it’s okay to lie.  Or to be selfish.  Or self-serving.  Or materialistic.  Or lazy.

So I guess I better step up my game, as far as taking better care of myself goes.  I have young lives to help shape.

In the interest of documentation, I’m just going to make a stupid post about repeat behavior.  So, it’s Gadget’s weekend again, coming up.  I started the coordination process on Monday.  Yes he wants to see the kids, no he won’t or can’t come get them.  Sure, I can drop them off at his house.

One of my friends speculates that he does this purposefully to try to force me to use some of the pittance of child support that he pays me, so that he gets something for it.  I wouldn’t be surprised.  He lives about an hour from me.  What does that end up costing in gas, to and from?  I think about 5 gallons, so 10 gallons after the pickup.  That’s about $30 every two weeks.  Not to mention the 4 hours total drive time, there and back and once again.

Mostly, I think he just wants to make my life difficult.  Not let me make any plans.

It’s so ridiculous.  I’m still going to ride the high road.  Yes, it looks like I’m letting him walk all over me, and yes, it gets wearisome.  But I’m not interested in blowing up in front of my kids, and I am interested in them having a positive relationship with their dad.  I’m not interested in playing any games or trying to make him hurt.  I’m not interested in reducing myself to his level.

So.

Same-o, same-o.

Every day I thank God that I am not married to him.  If I ever marry again, or even have any kind of a relationship, I don’t want a black hole that sucks the life force out of me, not making enough or any effort to replenish or nourish or build me or us up.

I don’t even want to begin thinking about the message he sends his kids when he marries another woman who has four young kids, and he spends all his time with them.  Of course those children need and deserve much love and attention, but does he not see that his kids might feel as though he doesn’t love them enough or as much, or worse, that it’s their fault, or that they’re not as good as the other kids?  God forbid, and I so want to shield them from that perception.

I wish he would grow up and start paying attention to the bigger picture.

pissed, pissed, pissed, pissedy pissed

Probably I over-react, but over the course of a few days, Gadget won’t answer his phone.  I messaged his wife-to-be and she hasn’t replied.  I called his work number and he didn’t pick up.  He hasn’t called me back.  Finally, I texted him.  Does he want to pick up the kids after work on Friday?  Can’t. Saturday morning?  No money for gas or anything else.

WTH

WTH?

What kind of a person doesn’t FIND A WAY to see his kids?  I can’t take full legal control of them and just remove ourselves from his life.  I want them to see him and have fun with him and love him and respect him.  So WTH?  So he has a limited income and a wife-to-be and four extra kids all under one roof.  You just modify your lifestyle to make things work.  Eat in.  Play in.  You find a way to make it work.  Shop at thrift stores.  Whatever it takes.

And yes, the stupid server is still crashing several times a day, as they work on migrating everything to new hardware.  I don’t know why that task should take so blessed long, unless they have a complete set of incompetents flailing about.  Ridiculous.  They are crediting a full year of free service once the dust settles, but for heaven’s sake.  How’s a woman supposed to vent?

the good

My boys are home.  Safe and sound in their room.  Nighty night, boys.  I love you.

the usual crap

I wait around for Gadget to call and let me know what time he’ll be ready with the kids.  No call, so I decided to go to Target and pick up the school supplies on BB’s kindergarten list.  My BB is going to kindergarten!  I can hardly fathom it!  I figured I’d be a few miles down the road in the general direction I need to be.  So Gadget calls around 8 pm and asks where I am, why am I not at the park and ride.  When I get there, he has the nerve to get on my case for not packing enough clothes for the boys, and for not packing baby wipes for LB.  Last time he complained that I didn’t provide enough diapers.  Am I way off here, or isn’t it remotely the least bit feasible and reasonable that their dad should be at least a tiny bit compelled to keep a few diapers and baby wipes and a spare change of clothes on hand for his own kids?  And he dares to criticize me for this?  The man who balks and rages that I’ve gone to the state to ensure that he pays one hundred and fifty stinking dollars a month to support his two sons?  Have I mentioned (I’m sure I have) that that contribution constitutes a whopping 2.5 days of daycare a month.  It makes me utterly sick to my stomach that he dare make jabs about the expense of anything, while concurrently insinuating that I’m lacking as a parent.

Or maybe I read too much into things.  The man knows how to push my buttons.

The suppressing of those emotions, so that my kids don’t hear it in my voice or see it in my face, nearly made me wretch during the ride home.

on a side note

The new kids were in the car, waiting, so I got to meet the four of them.  They are beautiful.  The baby is so squeezable, I just wanted to hold her and cuddle her.  What can I say.  I love kids.  There are three girls and one boy, all under 7.  Their dad shaved their heads because they had lice.  The girls were devastated, as they would be, but they are very beautiful, even with almost no hair.  Beautiful.  One girl asked me “Why did you break up?”  It’s so heart wrenching, how they try to work things out, these little ones.  My BB said he wished we didn’t break up and he wants to live with Daddy, but he wants to live with me and Nicole and all the kids.  Oy.  Explain how that’s not the way things work to a five year old.

LB has a scab with a bruise on his forehead that wasn’t there yesterday when I dropped him off.  Gadget insists it was.  I spiked his hair before he left.  I know it wasn’t there.  Today he’s got scrapes all over his elbow and hand.  Of course he falls.  He’s a toddler.  But please, keep an eye on him, and tell me what happened so I know how he got hurt.

I’m glad Gadget met Nicole and has a family life to live.  I hope they all work out.  I hope they raise those children well.  I just wish he’d be more of a man and a father where his own children are concerned.

thanks, I feel better now

Whatever would I do if I couldn’t throw my thoughts out on my blog?  I’d either implode or explode.  Either way, it wouldn’t be pretty.

I can’t be broken.  I just wanted to say it, for the record.  I can post a picture of my boobs on the internet, in the interest of self healing and self awareness.  And my deliciously squishy belly, in the interest of self acceptance.  But I can’t be broken.  I know this, because I know from where all my intentions spring, and I mean well to all and for all, regardless of how it may play out.  I know this, as well, because in the face of direct onslaught, I still receive blessings of all forms from all sides.  The sun is shining and all is well.  There may be unpleasantness that I have to walk through, but the sun is still shining on me.  So I will continue holding my head high, and I will keep smiling.

Meanwhile, I may have to lawyer up.  But I can do that, if I have to.

And I won’t let one man’s colossal lack of testicular fortitude keep me from believing in the goodness of people in general and men in particular.

I’m not sure how well I can shield the children from their father’s lack of redeeming qualities.  I want for them to grow up with respect for him, but he leaves very little room for such things to be possible.

I have about ten drafts hanging out around here.  Some go back a few years, even.  This one I started last November, but it mostly still applies.  It seems that my emotional state tends to be somewhat of a broken record, anyway.  So here goes.

I wish I had somebody to talk to right now, but since I’m a blubbering fool, I wouldn’t be able to speak coherently anyway. I do have someone to talk to, several, in fact, and I’m truly grateful — yet I don’t always feel like I’m truly understood.  It would be nice to be understood.

~*~*~*~

It can be a serious character flaw, to want to please one and all.  It would behoove me to grow a backbone.  It could come in handy both in my professional life and my personal life.  Instead of standing tall, puffing out my chest, and deflecting the onslaught with wisdom and grace, I take it, and take it, and keep on taking it.  But later, I have to pay the piper.  It all goes inside and churns away at me so that I find myself short of breath.

I wish I could be like Superman.  The way he soars up, up, and away, closer to the sun, folds his arms across his chest, closes his eyes, and rests and recharges.  Then he’s all strong and rejuvenated, and ready to blaze into action.  Me, I hear the cacophony of demands, wails, criticisms, insinuations, whines, expectations, opinions and complaints, but rather than filter through it and find the nuggets of goodness, I feel as though I’ve got kryptonite shrapnel embedded all through me, and I’m incapacitated so that all I can do is curl into fetal position while I’m kicked around, hoping for it to end, searching my mind and my will for some fragment of strength to hold onto and pull myself up, up, out and away from this mess.

Is it very helpful to be told I should be stronger?  Not much.

I commented to some of my work friends that I should develop a shell to shut these things out, but they almost all said that if I did, it should be selective to only those necessary.   In a way, that’s a heartening thing to hear.  It perhaps supports that there is value and merit in the kindness and softness that exposes my vulnerabilities.

~*~*~*~

What’s in a name?  I’m wanting to change my name.  I didn’t have it changed in the divorce, because I didn’t have any hard feelings toward Gadget at the time, apart from the simple fact that the marriage absolutely had to end.  Mainly, the kids have the same name, so I thought it would be less confusing as we go through life to have the same name.

However.  As time goes by,  and shades of character unveil, I find myself wanting to remove all traces, insomuch as is possible.

I could take back my maiden name, but I hesitate to do that.  I think that I associate it with an identity of who I used to be, rather than who I am.  That was someone from a previous life.  Someone who wasn’t as sure of herself as I’d wished her to be.

It raises the question, ‘Who am I?’  Which prompts the response, ‘24601’.  What if I changed my name to Valjean?

Sueeeus Maximus Valjean.

I kind of like it.  People will think I’m whacked.  Which, maybe I am.  My dead brother would totally get it, though.  He’d dig it.

~*~*~*~

BB has told me several times lately that he wants me to become a vampire so that I “don’t never die”.  It troubles me somewhat that my mortal demise is so prevalent in his thoughts.

~*~*~*~

I do need to be stronger.  I get that.  I just don’t want to be told.  It’s another one of those character flaws.  I’m pretty sure that if I could get rested, I might just be stronger.  It’s so elusive, though, is rest.  Meanwhile, the children call.  I hear the youngest crying.

Broken families.  They are everywhere.  What is it about people, some people, that they play push-me-pull-you with the children and use them for leverage?  Can they not look past their own pride or agendas and see the selfishness?  Do they think the children are oblivious to these things?  Such fools.  It makes me so angry.

Gadget’s not taking the kids next weekend, since he supposedly has work commitments.  I tend to think he’s intentionally trying to put a wrench in any plans that Skills and I might have.  I don’t know this, so maybe it’s not a fair assumption.  Considering the source, along with previous behaviors, though, it’s not an invalid assumption.

Skills’ ex (ex-wife, and mother of his daughter, as opposed to scorned STD-drama ex-girlfriend), has asked that he take his daughter next weekend, because she had such a good time last weekend, and it would be great for her to spend more time with her dad.  That’s great!  Really, it IS.  He’s a bit put off by the timing, because he wanted to do something special for me.  Birthday weekend and all.  You know, a holy day.  [His words, and I think it’s sweet.]

I say we make the most of it, and do something fun with all of our children.  It will be sweet.  It will be great.  (Just let me have some cake, okay?)

A birthday spent with people I love.  What could be better than that?

The travail comes from not knowing if the ex has got something up her sleeve, not knowing if she’s going to yank the rug out from under his feet and not let him see his girl for who knows how long.  She’s done it before, so he’s concerned she’ll do it again.  It puts him in a difficult place. Because it’s manipulation.  Just like Gadget.   They’re both trying to manipulate us in their own respective ways.

I say, make the most of it.  We don’t know what the others will do, what agendas they may have, what tricks they might pull.  We should just maximize the time that we do have, make the most of it, throw our arms about our kids, squeeze them tight, say I love you, and have some fun.  Live fully the moments that we have.

Besides that, when these people see that their games and manipulations don’t affect us, that we go on living joyfully and embracing whatever comes our way, they are the ones confounded in the end.

Take that.

(And God bless the children and help us, who are trying to be good parents, have the wisdom, patience, and presence of mind to give them all that they need, and to shield them from the conflict.)