A Harkness Family Christmas

Everyday, I check the court records on the internet. I check them to see if chuckles and knucklehead have turned in my divorce paperwork.

Yesterday it wasn't there.

Today, it was.

My divorce papers are now in the hands of St. Louis County.

I was told that it just depends on how busy the judge is as to how fast the papers will get signed. A fair estimate would be a month.

This means that I could be divorced before December 19th. Before the first anniversary of the beginning of this journey.

This means that the Harkness Family might officially and legally be "The Harkness Family" by Christmas.

There is no amount of manufactured crap that you could buy in a store to equal just how fantastic this holiday will be...

Do Not Shake My Family Tree

For a person that loves history, can pour over old photos for hours, and can watch Ken Burns until my eyes bleed, I'm not that much into genealogy.

Maybe it's because I've seen it misused.

I've been that poor sot, trapped by people who have brought out their years of genealogy research and plopped it in front of me at their kitchen table.

"Do you wanna know where Becky Sue gits her red hair? It's cuz her daddy's uncle's brother's cousins niece had red hair! We can trace that red headed gene back to 1847!"

I'm the one smiling benignly and wondering if Becky Sue's mother's red headed boyfriend has heard this theory.

It's not that I'm not fascinated by the minutia of the history of the common person...who am I kidding...in most cases I get to hear the story of the day to day living by amateur genealogist expecting my breathless enchantment. If one single, solitary person tracks my history back in two hundred years and traps someone at the food-o-later shelf on the space station Ming Mong orbiting the fair planet of Diddly Squat, telling my tale as if it were both adventurous and epic, I will track them down across the galaxy and give them the ectoplasmic slap of a lifetime.

Family stories are great, they are also like home movies; best kept among those people genetically encumbered to bear their history.

Which is why, when I have encountered three separate people in the past three days, asking for my genealogical history "and are you related to this Harkness or that Harkness?" I have been tempted to interrupt them by saying "I am related to a 51st Century Time Agent who will shag the coffee boy and sacrifice his own grandson in order to save the entire planet."

But I just smile benignly and say "Nope. I'm not from around here."

One day soon, the freak flag will fly.

Patience.

Allow Me To Introduce Myself...My Name Is Jane Doe

No, I'm not trying to pull a fast one.

No, I'm not trying to forge checks or use someone else's credit card.

I'm just trying to establish the new me.

As I've been working out the whole new name gig, I have been throwing my new last name in as a hyphenate while I still endure my old last name. Sort of like taking the last place pig at the county fair and putting half a tube of lipstick on it.

See, now it's ALLLLLLLL Pretty!

Except for the fact that hyphenated names annoy me.

And when I have to call someone, I invariably lose the strength in my voice once I get passed the first (legal) part. I end up sounding like some little kid that knows she's done wrong and is trying to be honest but also, trying to hide the fact that she's done wrong.

Then there are the people that know me as Christina and not Tina. Guess what I do when I answer the phone? The reflexes of decades kick in and I say "This is Tina". Funnily enough, there are a lot of people out there that can't seem to find the connection between the name Christina and Tina. If your name is Christina, you can't possible go by the name Tina, why, that would be CRAZY!

So I have people say "oh hello Tina, can I talk to Christina?" and then I have to pretend to laugh and act like I don't want to say "listen chuckles, you called the right number and the right extension and funnily enough, you got the right person."

I chose a name similar to my current name for the sake of my friends. I wanted it to be an easy choice to CALL ME WHAT YOU WANT. Christina will answer to Tina and last time I checked, Tina was ok with being Christina. It's the last name that I won't compromise on.

If I had realized that there would be these weird issues anyway, I would have gone with something far more interesting. Perhaps Penelope J. Vandersnatch?

Or as my daughter stated during this whole ridiculous name change head game by STBX: "Just call me mailbox".

Dear William, There Is A Lot To A Name

This has happened to me twice now.

I have been on the phone with an official agency that has access to "my business" and halfway through the transaction, after the person on the phone has looked up the answer to my question, they have suddenly changed their attitude 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

From friendly and helpful to ice princess bitchy.

The first time, I didn't get it.

Today, it finally dawned on me.

I called for some info and the person had to take my number and call me back. When she returned my call, suddenly she's calling me by STBX's name.

Yeah, note to all the women out there who think it's a good idea to give their boys a girl's name: DON'T.

There is obviously something akin to a scarlet letter on our files. I like to think of it as a big "GONG" noise that happens whenever we're pulled up. Sort of like the Taco Bell commercial.

"Gong! Make a run for the border! And you better make it fast you fuckin' pedo, cuz our posse is a comin' to get you!"

When this woman called me back, she was a beeeeyotch! I sat there, looking at the telephone receiver, wondering who had pissed in her pudding, and then she starts calling me "Tracy".

And that is when I lost it.

That is when I tore off her head and spit down the bloody stump.

That is when I nearly threw the phone across the room.

I don't want this name. My children don't want this name. We are being jerked around by a fucking pedophile who has, no doubt, already become someone else's wife in prison.

Now, everytime I hear our last name I hear this huge gong in the background.

It makes me hateful and angry.

And it makes me want a burrito supreme and some cinnamon twists. NOW!

Maybe I'll Even Carry A Scooby Doo Lunchbox On Campus!

It's amazing what a little forward momentum can do for mental health.

I had tried to tell myself, before the sentencing, that it was out of my control and all we could do was read our statements and accept whatever the verdict happened to be.

Yeah, that's what I TOLD myself. I don't know if I ever really accepted it or not.

But now, the whole divorce thing and name change is so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. If he thinks that his little grip on the last straw of our lives will throw us for a loop, he's sadly mistaken. It will not change where he is. It will not change the fact that the kids will change their names when they are 18 should they need to, it will not change the fact that, should he actually give a damn about his kids and their mental health, he wouldn't be doing this in the first place.

So we change our names in every respect but in the courts until the Gods of Law and Justice prevail. They are temporarily out back huffing gold paint. They will be returning soon, full of fumes and fury, and we will eventually prevail.

IN THE MEAN TIME, the stickiest of wickets has fallen as I went ahead and applied for college and will start taking online classes in January. The whole "holding up the divorce" thing was just frying my brain and I thought that being married still would screw everything up for financial aid.

Guess what? There was actually an option on the financial aid application for "Still married to an imprisoned pedophile who is being an utter dickhead but I will soon be leaving that loser in the dust".

Well, actually it just said "separated" but I kinda read my own life into that one word answer.

I spoke with the University that I hope to go to one day and they gave me great advice on taking classes elsewhere that are cheaper and online and totally transferable. After I take every single transferable class, I can then start looking into what classes I need to take on their campus. The guy was totally supportive of my nervousness at having been out of school for so long and told me that taking the transferable classes will let me get back into the swing of things at a cheaper rate and a bit of a gentler pace.

He then mentioned that I will need to take calculus and stats for the degree that I want.

I waited until I got off the phone to start laughing hysterically.

Thank God my son is Poindexter! He thought teaching me to program the DVD player was a pain in the ass, just wait till I ask him to be my math tutor!

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

How do they do all this on television so quickly AND have time for all those commercial breaks?

One of my friends that went to the sentencing made the comment Monday morning that "it wasn't anything like it is on t.v."

Yup. And believe it or not, those hospital shows are a little off base as well.

I spent last night ruminating, chewing my cud, and occasionally mooing.

STBX's big thing was talking about therapy and how much he's learned and how far he's come. I can guarantee that if you go to a therapist and say "I've got problems because my father was Tritan, King of the Mer-people and he never had time for me," you probably wouldn't get too far in therapy.

I'm imagining that his therapy is just like everything else in his life. Completely self centered. I feel this way...this was done to Me...I I I Me Me Me.

It's one thing to hear a therapist say "You should admit to this because taking it to trial would only hurt your daughter."

It's another thing to take into your heart that 99.9% of what you have done to your kids has been negative. You don't have to molest a kid to screw them up. You can ignore them. You can have nothing but hateful, sarcastic things to say to them. You can treat their very existence as a burden. You can sigh heavily and respond negatively whenever any expectation is placed upon you as a father. (Going to two school events in eleven years when the majority of the time you chose to stay home and play on the computer is not stellar parenting. FYI.)

Even though it was my daughter's idea to change our name and it was my daughter that came up with our new name, I had to check in with my kids yesterday to make sure that I was not placing words in their mouth.

(For some nagging reason, I'm curious to know if he's doing this to fuck with me or to fuck with all of us. As if splitting those hairs really matters...)

I asked them how they felt about their father. I asked them if they could ever foresee a time (15 years down the road) that they would feel compelled to see him or to get back in touch with him. I asked if there was anything left there in their heart of hearts.

And both said no.

Their father never had the capacity to love them. I honestly don't think he even knows what the word means. From my perspective, his idea of love was "you will take care of me. you will be the mother I never had. I will be the child that can only take and take and take."

And he always took whatever he wanted. Consenting or not. Legal or not.

As he's moving through "therapy", no doubt getting "better" every second, my journey through therapy has shown me that our marriage was always a nightmare. As I've stated before, when you look at a listing of signs of physical, sexual and verbal abuse and see your entire marriage spelled out, it rather kicks you in your lady parts.

Coming to terms with what he did to the kids also means coming to terms with what he did to me. Remembering the day that I stood outside our house in desolate Carney, Oklahoma, holding my baby to me, and sobbing because all I wanted to do was to escape and I didn't have anywhere to escape to...seeing that in retrospect, knowing that the baby in my arms would grow up to be his next victim, it cuts me off at my knees.

This whole name change thing, it is aimed squarely at his whole idea of power. Anytime he didn't want to do something, he didn't. Anytime he did want to do something, he did. Now, there are times when these might be admirable traits, but when it involves destroying other human beings, probably not so good. His last piece of power is "ownership" of the kids.

The part of me that is still fucked up from the last 17 years of my life wants to believe that he is hanging on to the name thing out of some twisted idea that there will be a reconciliation some day and he just can't get it through his head that it isn't going to happen.

But then, my daughter's intelligence cuts through the crap in my head.

"He's doing it because he's a dick."

She always was smarter than her mother.

Fucking You From The Big House

So, the story goes like this...

STBX get's his lawyer to pull our hearing off the docket and then the lawyer sends settlement papers to my lawyer.

Agreeing to everything except, mysteriously, forgetting anything and everything about the name change.

When my lawyer called his lawyer today, he said that STBX would not agree to the name change.

"I can molest you and I can beat you down and I can make you feel stupid and irrelevant for every day of your life. And you'll keep my name and like it."

Can you imagine that his sister still thinks he's some poor lost soul? He's just such a sad little victim in all this...

Next stop? Full blown divorce court. It will not be up to STBX nor his fucking lawyer to decide what last name the children have.

I knew I should have shot him and dismembered his obese corpse while I had the chance! God Damn therapists and their non violent methods!

Choices

There are many choices available to me right now. That's how I've had to make it through today. I needed to remind myself of all the choices I have that can carry me through until June 26th and the sentencing.

I can sit in the corner, rocking autistically.

I can wear those boingy antenna things on my head and give a broad, scary smile to the world bearing a mouth full of skittles stuck in my teeth. Or Paxil. Or both.

I can dress up like Nurse Ratchet and report to the locked unit at Miller Dwan, demanding that it is most certainly my shift to work and they'd better let me in.

I can slip into the sweet, blissful daydream of a ton of unlubricated ass sex in STBX's future. By Bubba. And his friend Louie. And his friend Jim. And his friend Billy. And anyone else in the shower that day and every other day for as long as STBX's rectum holds out. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess Bubba and his friends made a bad choice for their extracurricular activities...hmmm sucks to be you.

I can take my current name and the last name of my children and simply refuse to acknowledge it.

We could be "The Family That Shall Be Named".

I can just hear the baseball agent now "I'll take incarceration and divorce for a family to be named later...sound like a trade?"

I'll take that trade anyday.

I could also start using my first name only but then I would feel compelled to dress like Cher. As liberal as my workplace is, a five foot tall feather fountain coming off my head might be frowned upon.

I was at Whole Foods today buying a bottle of organic oxygen and as I went to sign my name on my check I literally stopped and considered just signing an "X" after my first name. Trust me, Moonbeam Sunflower and her ferocious man-eating dreads would be all over my story like hippies on hemp seeds.

But I sighed deeply and signed it. I obeyed "the man" and his freakin' strictures to my damn life and signed the label of bondage to that bad boy. (Jesus! I can't spend five minutes in that place without wanting to overthrow the IMF! I think they spritz Eu Du Revolution into the air every five minutes. I LOVE IT!!!!)

I did, however, sigh heavily as I signed my name and passed the check over.

"Long day?" She asked.

"Yup," I concurred. "You just can't imagine."

Way To Early In The Morning

Back to my old blogging ways. It's 2:42 in the morning and I am standing back on square one. Spiraling, spiraling. No doubt, STBX is cuddled up and smiling to himself, ever so proud of the multiple ways he's fucked over the three people he's made so miserable for years.

Yesterday afternoon was me, pacing around the house, taking a hot bath, going for a very wet run, and then taking a second hot bath. I asked my daughter if it made me crazy for taking two baths in one day and she said it only made me crazy if I continually washed my hands and kept muttering "the stains just won't come off..."

Who knows, that may just happen today.

And just seeing his "fuck you bitch" look yesterday has finally made me realize, after all these months, that he isn't just stupid and fucked up, he is truly enjoying the ability to hurt us as much as possible. Anything that makes him look like a victim falls right into his belief of his life story.

I remember stopping at certain times of our marriage and giving him the "Whhaaa?" look when he would go off on his belief that he was the wing nut of the universe and that "the government" was out to get him because he did something so bold as to place a half cooked comment on some news blog somewhere. Maybe that was just a ruse for comments that he left on kiddie porn blogs somewhere. Who knows.

Of course, his virulent political beliefs were always "my way or the highway", his way of coping with ANYTHING he didn't want to do was to simply sit there and refuse as any two year old would do (amazingly enough, after living with his father for a few months in Oklahoma, the similarities were uncanny), and the 'rules' that he would lay down for the kids were always for them but never for him. "Do as I say, not as I do" was always his child rearing philosophy.

So I am doing everything I shouldn't be doing right now. Losing sleep over this piece of shit, giving him a single ounce of my mental energy, and lovingly remembering how I, at times, would stand behind him as he sat on the computer and look at the spot on the back of his head where the hair was thinning.

That, I used to fantasize, was right where my cast iron skillet would go when I smashed it into his skull.

But I didn't go through with it because, once you've spilled the brains and skull all over the carpet, guess who's going to have to clean all that shit up...

29 And Holding

Remember when I said, after the omnibus hearing, that I felt so confident that the name change would be a breeze? Because, after all, what judge would deny a child the right to change her name when all she wanted to do was get rid of the last name of the man who molested her for years?

And how would he have the cajones to show up in court and contest our name change?

Guess what.

Yeah, you got it.

He showed up in court. And contested it.

And the judge threw it out because we could "handle it" during the divorce proceedings.

All he had to do was to accept the fact that his kids hate him, that his STBX wife wanted to make a new start with a new name and a new future.

But apparently, all that time in therapy in which he has become so "enlightened" has led him to believe in all his old ways. He will sit down on the floor and kick and scream and hold his breath until he gets his own way. And he will fuck with me at the expense of his kids ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.

His whole schtick in criminal court was to say that he was confessing because it was "best for his daughter".

Ohhh, but wait a minute...coming to court and saying "I have the right to molest you on a daily basis for three years, make your life a living, screaming hell of temper tantrums and physical abuse, AND you have to keep my name", that's all in her best mental health interest.

It was all laid bare that "his own best interest for his daughter" means nothing. He may have fucked us over today but in 18 days, he might find out that he only succeeded in shooting himself in the foot yet again.

I must admit, I did indeed lose it today. It all had to do with him and his lawyer walking out of the courtroom and his lawyer joking around with him and giving him a congenial slap on the back as he walked to the elevator. Isn't it FUN to screw over people that you have done nothing but shit on??? Hooray! Let's fuck'em some more!

That's when I broke away from our group and ran to the elevator and screamed at him that he was nothing but a mother fucking piece of shit. In retrospect, I should have screamed "baby fucking pedophile", I'm sure that would have garnered more interest. However, all I heard were the approaching footsteps of one of my friends, chasing me down and trying to latch onto the back of my sweater before I committed assault.

I turned around before I could get close enough to strangle him, before the security guard even had a clue, and walked away.

He just stood there with a delighted little smirk on his face.

He had succeeded in fucking with me. He had succeeded in making himself, once again, to look like the victim.

I knew I should have said "baby-fucker"

Well, because The Decemberists have a song for everything, here is a song dedicated to what a wonderful dad he was today.







When we got home, my daughter had finally had enough. She created this invitation to the sentencing on June 26th. She would personally like to invite everyone to show up and be there to see what happens. What her father has failed to fathom is that sometimes it is just best to tip toe past the hive of bees instead of finding the biggest fucking stick around.

This is why my daughter ROCKS.

Happy Birthday To Us

How do babies feel in the hours before they are born? Like their home is under the wrecking ball and they hadn't even received a forclosure notice?

Like there is something horrible happening but hopefully, it will all work out in the end?

Well, we are two hours away from standing up in court and becoming new people. Our own people. Our own family.

And because I am a geek and because the two favorite things in my life aside from my kids are Doctor Who and The Decemberists, I found this song for them on this most auspicious of days.

They are my life. They are my limbs.

Here's to better times ahead.

TGIF

My daughter and I read each others victim impact statements last night.

I've said it time and time again, my daughter is amazing.

The statements offer the filler between our parallel lives when we were both just trying to survive life with this awful person.

Today will be spent at a training on gender justice at work. All about power, abuse of power, domination, and submission.

It's gonna be a long day.

On the upside, only three more days with this last name...

Monday Morning Angst

Does it sound ridiculous to feel wiped out by seeing your name on the court calendar again?

It's just a calendar. It's for a good thing. It's for the name change next Monday.

But there is still something exhausting about the whole process.

Especially when it lists your kids.

And of course, their "father".

I find myself getting physically upset when I see ads for father's day sales. I get annoyed when stories come on the radio about the importance of fatherhood. I guess this is the next stage in the process of grieving, getting past the horrible stuff and getting down to the nuts and bolts of shitty fatherhood. As much as I'd like to ignore father's day, I think I need to think of something creative to do. Something that would let the kids know that I understand their angst about what a crappy father they had but that from now on, we'll just try to move forward.

Heavens knows, I really can't handle another hallmark holiday that kicks me in the teeth every year like mother's day.

Perhaps I need to create my own holiday? How about a celebration of responsible, loving and non-offending parenthood? I could call it "Thanks for not being a horrifying jackass parent-Day". Or "Thanks for not hanging out with a pedophile and swinging your young daughter in front of him like jail-bait-Day" or perhaps "Thanks for not defending your pedophile brother. Just because he never asked YOUR child for oral sex, it's nice to know you realize he is not a stellar parent-Day"

Well, I might need a little work on the name.

Where The Hell Is The Maid?

Twelve Days left in the Harkness Countdown.

I'm trying to figure out if we should have our get together for all of our amazing friends after our name change or wait a couple weeks and do it after the sentencing.

I'm leaning toward after the sentencing. Just because our friends will be there for the sentencing too and I really want a "wrapping up this chapter in the life" gathering.

And as much as I would love to just meet somewhere and have a restaurant do all the work, there is something appealing about having a BBQ and homemade ice cream and basking in the sun with a cold brew. I'm still wavering on it because...damn! That's a lot of work and I am so very tired just thinking about it.

Worst of all, I'd have to actually clean my house. I think the "real world" kicked in yesterday after five + months of living in a fog. I looked around and realized that the dust buffaloes grazing on my stairwell will either need to be shot or moved to their own nature preserve. And whatever that is growing on my bathroom sink just might lead to the next miracle antibiotic.

Perhaps I just need to watch a few episodes of "How Clean Is Your House" and then I'll feel better.

Sure beats watching "Divorce Court".

Progress...Ho!

Two weeks from today, the Shaddox family will cease to be. The name Shaddox will no longer be an anchor around our neck.

Because I have amazing friends, I have had a couple offers of free furniture to redo our house with. They know that the construction and renovations that I have had done on our house have one purpose. To exorcise demons. To make this our space, not his.

They also realize that the furniture we have is also infused with him. With memories and ugliness and pain.

For the first time in nearly three months, we were able to sit down at our dining room table and have a meal. Things aren't completely done and there is still a lot of detritus floating around, but today we sat down and had homemade bread, homemade cake, roast chicken and roasted potatoes, prepared by the amazing culinary team of mother/son. We sat at our "new" to us dining room table. Someday, I'll refinish the top but in the nearer future, I'll just make a table cloth.

There are no words to describe how happy I was to sit down with my kids (and friend!) and eat a delicious meal. I don't normally get all teary eyed over dinner but it seemed so...normal.



















Today was also spent putting the veggie garden together















And nappin' with my home dog.




















All in all, a good day.

Practice Makes Perfect

The jerk of a urologist called yesterday to inform me that he spoke to the pharmacy and I WAS WRONG. It wasn't $500 a month, it's only $274 SO SUCK IT!

Well, that's about $270 too much big boy so I s'pect ya'll better look at your college text books one more time and figure out something different.

You know, when people delight in finding out you're wrong and present you with a steaming turd and act like it's applesauce, it makes you think they might have some sociological issues.

Or it might make you think of your STBX.

This shitbag will run you over with the proverbial steamroller and then back up and roll over you again. Perhaps he will be giggling when he does it.

I've been working lately on confrontations. I'm trying to learn to express my feelings without curling up in a ball of angry silence or flying off the handle at inappropriate people (my two favorite reactions to living with an asshole for 17 years). It takes a lot of practice with everyday situations that I would normally just let go and feel like shit afterwards.

When I called the courthouse to check on where I was supposed to hand in the piece of paper from STBX's lawyer that said he received the name change paperwork, the woman literally would not let me finish a single sentence. She would jump in and assume what the question would be and each and every time, she assumed wrong. Perhaps I would have confronted her in the past but I probably would have just said "screw it", hang up the phone, and take a chance at finding the right person once I got there. It would have pissed me off and I would have been grumbling about it for an hour, driving everyone around me NUTS.

Not this time! I let this annoyance that passes for a civil servant (an uncivil servant?) talk her way into silence and then I said "Now that you're done telling me the wrong answer to a question I never asked, will you allow me to finish my sentence so I can get the proper information from you?"

She gawped a bit at me and then let me ask my question. She answered it. It took twenty seconds total once she shut the fuck up and stopped putting words into my mouth.

Next stop? The post office!

All The Little Pieces

The next criminal court appearance will be May 22nd at 10:30.

Within six weeks we get to make an appearance at the St. Louis County Courthouse three times. All I really need to know is this:

Do we get frequent flyer miles?

Unfortunately, the date that I'm actually looking forward to the most happens last. Our name change.

A local pastor has offered to do a name ceremony for us which I think would be lovely but I'm not too sure about the overtly Jesus aspect of it. My thought would be to have a name changing ceremony at our house along with a Native American smudging ceremony to get out all the bad juju that he left in our lives.

I wonder how it feels to be considered the evil spirit that your family is trying to exercise? To have so totally fucked up three other human beings on the face of the earth and to have caused such emotional pain which goes to the very morrow of the bones, the soft curl at the center of the soul.

To have your kids stop you when you accidently refer to something before your world exploded. Something that referred to him. Something that seemed an innocuous comment. Something that caused your child to look at you and softly say "Mom, just...don't." Three words that are pregnant with pain and meaning.

There are days when these little phrases, scattered throughout the day, can cut your heart out. They end up as pieces; ugly, painful, and waiting like land mines. Don't go there again, you're told, it might be worse.

The pain might be dormant for years but someday, you will walk here again. You will forget for just one moment and you will step your foot down and your world will go up in a blinding flash of light.

I am going to be wandering through the next six weeks of my life, picking up the pieces. His pieces. The pieces of flesh and memory that he took and used and threw away.

How can I gather all the pieces? How can I repair this damage? How can I stop this horrible cycle of anger, sadness, and heartbreak?

How can I hold my children in my arms and tell them that it will be OK when I'm still trying to convince myself?

The Harkness Countdown

The hearing for our name change will be Monday, June 8th at 9 am at my new second home, the St. Louis County Courthouse.

I'll be stopping by STBX's lawyer today to drop off the papers that need to be served. I have three amigos that I am bringing with me (I only need two but I'm taking no chances on hearing day. Flat tires and bouts of Ebola Virus will not get in my way of having the required amount of people there.)

My witnesses are friends of close to ten years. TEN YEARS! That's a combined experience of thirty years! That is a whole lot of puttin' up with our nutball family.

Two of my witnesses, I'm sure, will be calm and introspective. If STBX shows up to object, I sincerely feel that they will not resort to violence or verbal attacks.

My third witness? Beeeyotch! IT IS ON!!! (And she will know I'm talking about her when she reads this. Love ya K.!) She is the friend that you want to have by your side when words fail you because words NEVER fail her.

I'm sure when her husband reads this he will confirm my assessment as well.

So. Seven weeks. At least I have SOMETHING to look forward to.

Hold Onto Your Hats!

I got the opportunity to talk to STBX's divorce attorney this morning. I'm doing our name change on my own, not through my divorce attorney, so I need to get the court date info to STBX. As a sperm donor and pathetic excuse for a father, he is allowed to show up and object if he should so choose.

I'm choosing to go alone on this to save lawyer fees. Law type people have asked me why I don't just wait to get my name changed for free during the divorce, even though that will not change the kid's names.

And I shall respond with my well practiced legalese "WELL DUH!"

It costs the same to change the kid's names as it does to change my name AND the kid's names. Hey law-type people, IT'S ALL THE SAME FEE!!!!

It has nothing to do with money. THAT is why lawyers don't understand.

It has to do with psychology. Lawyers just understand how to lie and bend the truth and fuck you so hard up the ass that your screwed seven ways to Sunday. Or else they are terribly helpful and will do anything for you, provided you are willing to donate a kidney, your left arm, and your first born child.

Either way, you're screwed. Get used to it.

So, as soon as I get my court date, I have to send the paperwork to STBX's lawyer and he will get it to STBX. Then, I will bring my kids to court along with my witnesses who can confirm our identity and vouch for the fact that we were only on a summer vacation when we went to that terrorist training camp in Afghanistan two years ago (yeah, that's a joke by the way...).

It's going to be interesting to see if he objects. In all of the horrible douchbaggery that he has perpetrated upon this family, I think objecting to our name change would put me right over the edge. It would simply be a cold-hearted mind fuck, a way of screwing us just to screw us.

Which means, I wouldn't doubt that he shows up.

I have to believe that his history with our family and the ages of our kids (they are old enough to make an informed decision and explain it to the court) would certainly sway the judge over to our corner.

But if he wants to be an ass, I guess he'll have to be prepared to be called a pedophile in open court and listen to what his kids really think of him.

Choices. Ain't life just full of'em?

Scattershot

You know you're living in a bubble when you don't realize that Easter is coming up until you're standing in the supermarket and you see that the Easter candy is half off.

Yeah, not so observant.

I had to run back to the courthouse yesterday and get a copy of the title to our house to the fine folks who will be scheduling the court date for our name change. I think the clerk at the title counter assumed I was making a political statement when I paid the $3.00 fee for a copy of the title in mostly pennies.

Sorry, not an asshole...just kinda broke...

Last night was quite entertaining as I got to introduce my new guy friend to my other friends. I love the Jim Gaffigan routine when he talks about mixing your groups of friends. "You always feel like you have to prepare them ahead of time. You find yourself saying 'See, these guys don't think I drink and don't be thrown by my British accent.'"

I think today will be spent with the kids at the Y. Tomorrow? Perhaps a hike to celebrate the fact that Jesus arose from the dead and filled our baskets with fake grass and chocolate eggs.

Or something like that.

Random thought for the day: If you get a heart or liver transplant and your body rejects it, you get really sick and perhaps die. What happens if you get a face transplant and your body rejects it? Does your face stop working?