Phone Tag - You're It!

So here is an example of how having the tiniest bit of competence and empathy can be a good thing:

Still trying to sort out the restitution kerfuffle.

Actually, it's not a kerfuffle. A kerfuffle sounds too much like a fun thing. Something soft and sweet and perhaps not unlike a guinea pig.

So, I'm trying to sort out the restitution debacle.

Since I'm tired of using the victim advocate, I pulled out the letter from the Moose Lake Prison, send by STBX's caseworker, that invited me to call her if I had any questions. (This is also the letter that got his middle name wrong.) I ended up leaving her a message.

Two days later, she called back. In the course of the conversation I learn that no, they have no order for restitution, blah...blah...blah. I've heard it all before. What was striking though is that during the course of the conversation, she referred to me on three different occasions with three different first names, none of them correct. She also referred to STBX's last name twice and both times got it wrong.

Hi there! I'm not Susan. I'm Not Mary. I'm not even Tricia. Also? His last name isn't Shannon or Shandling.

Well! At least I can be fully assured that you were the one that wrote the letter you signed!

So, my conversation with Ms. Smith, I mean Ms. Jones, I mean Ms. Headuptheass lead me to call the courthouse.

Hooray! I got to talk to the fine folks in the finance office! Now that is one place that I haven't had the opportunity to be transferred to yet.

Now, there is no way to begin to describe just how difficult it is to encapsulate our story in one or two sentences on a cold call to accountants and bookkeepers. It's hard enough to verbalize to probation officers and law clerks.

I stumbled my way through my story only to have the woman say that she only dealt with part of it and would have to transfer me so that the person that dealt with the other part of it could investigate.

And I got the next person. And I asked the second person "Did the first person tell you anything?"

Of course not.

OK. Here's my story. Again.

She checked a few things and then determined that I needed to talk to another person.

I asked the third person "Did the second person tell you anything?"

Of course not.

OK. Here's my story. Again.

Oh, but wait! The third person had a question! It was a question for the second person!

So what did she do? She just held the receiver away from her mouth and asked the woman.

Yes. The three women that I had just individually spilled my guts to were all in the same office and within conversational distance.

Now, perhaps I'm expecting too much. My only experience with this sort of thing is working in the medical field. I learned that you actually prefaced your transfer to another person with at least the gist of what was going on. The fact that these women were all in the same area and could have easily put me on hold to discuss things instead of passing me like a hot potato didn't escape my attention.

So allegedly, the order is now in the system. I get to call back in two days and talk to a supervisor who will be able to access the magic vault and tell me definitively that yes, the US Government does in fact have the Ark of the Covenant in a large warehouse outside Washington DC. Oh, and whether or not the order that was put into the system has "triggered" all the bells and whistles.

Then I'm supposed to call down to Moose Lake and talk to Ms. Smith - Jones - Headuptheass so that they can check the system on their end and see if they can actually find the order for restitution.

Right hand? Meet left hand. Maybe you should finally get to know each other.

I Don't Know What I'm speaking But It Obviously Isn't English

I had another "Am I beating the dead horse?" moments a few days ago. The victim advocate had left a message with the judge's clerk telling him that we needed an actual dollar amount to set up the restitution order in the system.

So, did I really need to get a copy of the transcript of the sentencing? Wasn't that going to accomplish nothing but to send me spiraling over STBX's statement in court? You know, the one where he never said he was sorry?

(Hey, it's all water under the bridge, right? Cuz he loooooooooves me! Please excuse me, my skin just crawled off and is weeping in a pile in the corner.)

Yeah, like I said, spiraling.

But I did get the transcript.

And right there in the judge's own words is a dollar amount. Granted, it's just shy of $2000 (I guess that's the going prices for three years of tormenting a child) , but nonetheless, IT IS A DOLLAR AMOUNT.

It is a dollar amount that the victim advocate told me didn't exist. He told me he was going to check on it and when I called him back a week or so later, he told me that the dollar amount didn't exist. Yes, I was in the court room that day but frankly? I WAS A LITTLE DISTRACTED!

Which leads me to the conclusion that the one person in this entire equation who is PAID TO HAVE MY BACK, didn't.

I have hopefully left him the last message that I will have to leave him in quite awhile. I did my absolute best not to reach through the telephone wires and rip out his eardrum.

A wise woman once said "The bridge you blow up today might be the bridge you need to cross tomorrow." (I can't lie, I am that wise woman...why should Confucius get all the glory?)

I simply told him that I had bought (yes my lovlies, to actually check up on people in the justice system and see if they are doing their jobs, you need to BUY the transcript) the transcript and the non-existent dollar amount actually existed. I told him what it was and then I made a simple observation. "I thought we were both speaking English but obviously we are separated by a common language. I fail to see what the problem is here."

I have always had the sneaking suspicion that I've been patted on the head, placated with whatever they thought I wanted to hear, and then blown the fuck off. I honestly thought that it was just my own screwed up sense of entitlement that made me feel that way. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt because, are you ready for this? Because they seemed so nice.

No, please, don't do your job properly, just be nice to me.

I know that I am high maintenance. I know that when my phone number shows up on their phone, cringing ensues. The funny thing is, this is one trait that I have actively cultivated over the past ten months. Anyone who knows the "public" me would never have thought that this was a problem. I have always pretty much opened my mouth and inserted my foot rather handily. But not when it comes to the relationships that really matter. Not when it comes to people who I wanted to like me.

And that, my lovelies, is how you become a doormat in your own home. You never open your mouth and you swallow all your own opinions and you tell yourself that if you ever absolutely put your foot down that you will be hated and left in the cold.

Guess what? Just between you, me, and the fence post? That is a CROCK OF SHIT!

I am learning. I am learning to disagree without being disagreeable. I am learning that the only person that really has my best interest in mind is me. I am learning that just because someone is paid to be my advocate, it doesn't mean that they have the ability to even find their own ass with both hands tied behind their back.

Maybe they are overwhelmed in their job. It isn't a stretch to think that. However, don't feed me a line of bullshit when it's my life and my child's life that you're screwing with. I have a far higher opinion of the person that says "I don't know but I'll find out" than the person that coos platitudes in my ear and just desperately wants me to SHUT UP AND LEAVE HIM ALONE!

Yeah...I've had a lot of experience with men with that opinion.

It's getting pretty old.

I Have Not Yet Begun To Bitch

Funny ole justice system, it amuses me on a daily basis.

At every single juncture over the past nine and a half months, whenever I have "assumed" anything or "figured it would be set up correctly" or trusted the system for ANYTHING, I have been proven horribly naive.

I want to trust. I want to believe. I keep clicking my damn heels together but I'm just not feeling the magic.

I admit to being annoyed when I got the letter from the MN Correctional Department that spelled out all my rights as the representative of a victim of crime. Oh, everything was spelled out beautifully, except for the fact that STBX's name was wrong. His OID number was correct and really, that's the magic piece of info when you're in the big house, but it just got in there like a splinter under my fingernail and annoyed me.

I kept mulling it over in my mind...if they can't get the damn offender's name correct, what else are they going to screw up? But then I said to myself "Self, shut the hell up! It's over and done with. Get on with your life. You have done all you can do. ENOUGH."

Then I said to myself, I said "Hey self, you need to be a little less trusting. Haven't you figured that out by now?"

It's easier if you picture this conversation with two little versions of me, one sitting on each shoulder. One of course, is all angelic and dressed in white and believes in fairy tales and lawyers with big hearts and a system that only gives victims flowers and chocolate chip cookies. The other one? You guessed it. Dressed in black, piercings and tatts everywhere, perhaps chain smoking Marlboros, perhaps just a very big hookah. YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH HER!

These two ladies were talking at me for a couple days before I picked up the phone and called my victim advocate with the county. I prefaced my call with an explanation of the letter and how it was wrong and how it really just put another hole in my balloon and I knew he was busy and I felt kinda stupid BUUUUUUUT, I had a question:

If the system can't get his name right in a letter to the victim/victim's family, how can I trust the system to work when it comes to his payment of restitution?

By the way, he was ordered to have 50% of his prison wages garnished for restitution. That is exactly how the judge stated it.

Well, our advocate hemmed and hawed and ended up sending me paperwork that would bring the matter to conciliation court.

Paperwork that asks the stellar questions: Where is this person working right now? List their employer and contact info...and be sure to have this declaration notorized and hand delivered.

Oh, and by the way, you have to file this in the county where the person is working.

In other words, I spent a couple days paging through a stack of papers that forced me to try to put a square peg in a round hole.

After pulling at my hair and pacing around the room and demanding of the dogs "How do I do this???" I called him back and asked "WTF???"

Well, I didn't quite say it like that. He is a very nice guy and we must pity him...he has to deal with me on an all to frequent basis.

I simply inquired as to whether this was really what I needed to do.

He retreated to gather more information.

And appeared again on my phone yesterday afternoon.

In order for a restitution order to automatically trigger, there has to be a stated dollar amount put into the system.

Our judge never gave us a stated dollar amount.

Do you see where this is going? Yup! Right up my own ass.

The system will not trigger for any restitution until the judge puts down an amount.

Perhaps this is as simple as him filling out a form, perhaps we will need to make another appearance at the happiest place on earth! No kids, not Disney Land! It's the St. Louis County Courthouse!!

Now, with cleaner bathrooms and cotton candy for all!

So here is where I'm coming from...money is irrelevant here. I certainly don't go hunting down pedo's that make .50 cents an hour so my kid can pay her way through college. The fact of the matter is that the judge placed an order for restitution in such a way that restitution could never be made.

Unless someone, who felt like a fool just asking, picked up the damn phone.

Here's my next question when faced with scenarios like this: How many people actually make that calll? How many people decide it's just to painful to deal with and they just shrug it off?

And why should this burden be mine?

Oh, and one more thing?

Why in the hell can't they get his damn name right on the letters that they send me???

Victim Impact Statement

It's always interesting to look at what keywords or phrases bring people to this site. One search this week was "Actual Victim Impact Statements".

The sadly ironic thing is, I did that exact search before I started writing mine. What do you say? How can you encapsulate years of pain and betrayal into one piece of paper? All of the stuff I found online ended up being like the piece of paper I got from the judicial system, a series of questions that made me feel victimized all over again.

Because, as all people who have gone through this can attest to, we are ALL THE SAME. OUR STORIES ARE IDENTICAL AND THUS WE MUST FIT OUR EXPERIENCES INTO THE EXACT SAME SET OF QUESTIONS.

If you're here, doing a search for victim impact statements, all I can offer is the text of what I said in court.

And we are NOT all the same. We do NOT have the same experiences. And NEVER let ANYONE, including that niggling voice in the back of your own brain, tell you that you shouldn't write your own statement.

Don't feel like a failure if you can't read your own statement. You can have someone else do that for you.

The content of my impact statement is as follows:

I’m here as ______’s mother and for 17 years, the wife of Tracy Shaddox. I’m supposed to somehow verbalize the devastation that this man has brought down upon our family.

The only way I know to preface my statement is to say that I know what it’s like to be the survivor of sexual abuse because I am one.

Tracy has been very articulate during the omnibus hearing in letting us know that he has become enlightened during his therapy regarding his own victimization as a youth and how it led to what he is today.

But what does that say for _____? What does that say for me, the parent that now bears the sole responsibility for holding the safety net beneath her as she goes out into the world? She’ll be more likely to drink or take drugs to dull the emotional pain that her father has caused her. She’ll be more likely, and I can fully attest to this, enter into abusive or unhealthy relationships. She’ll be more likely to engage in self mutilation or attempt suicide. All because of the choice her father made when she was 9 years old.

And no matter how he frames his story, it all comes down to one thing: choice.

We can’t control what other people do to us but we can control how we react to it. Tracy knew I was a survivor of sexual abuse. All he would have had to do was open his mouth and tell me that he needed help. There is no stronger ally that a victim of sexual abuse has than another victim. But he didn’t ask for help. He perpetuated the cycle.

How will _____ understand what it is like to be in a normal relationship when her first sexual experience was with her father? How will she ever learn that there are good and decent men in this world when the most important man in her life did this to her? I live in fear that ____ will fall into the trap that I fell into. She won’t think she is worthy to be treated well. She’ll do the same thing that I did and suffer through years of a miserable marriage because she won’t think she deserves better.

But being _____’s safety net is only half of my battle. Every waking moment of my life since I found this out has been me, asking myself, how come I failed my daughter? The only job I ever cared about with every fiber of my being was my job as a mother. I told my kids when they were little that there were bad people in the world. I told them not to accept candy from strangers. I told them not to get into strange cars. But I never thought I would have to warn them about their own father.

Tracy isn’t the only one going through therapy. Both ____ and I have been seeing counselors. And I have fought so hard for so many days, sometimes minute to minute, fighting the urge to just give up because of the maternal guilt that I feel.

Back when _____ was a toddler, she woke up from her nap early and came into our bedroom where her father and I were having sex. I remember trying to grab my robe and escort her out of the room and Tracy tried to stop me by saying “Let’s just keep doing it in front of her. It’ll be funny.” And being the survivor of sexual abuse, I totally freaked out and got her out of the room and it haunted me for days. But instead of confronting him, I took the easy way out. I said nothing.

I also live with the fact that, as I do the math and figure out when he was abusing ____, he asked me once, during sex, to call him “daddy”. I can recall it like yesterday because it instantly made me want to throw up. I now live with the fact that he was fantasizing about having sex with our daughter when he was having sex with me.

There are days that I can’t even stand to live in my own skin.

I stand here a failure. I failed to protect my daughter from the only man that I ever trusted.

I don’t care how much progress Tracy says he has made in therapy. I know him now as an adulterer and a pedophile. He has been a master manipulator and liar for our entire marriage.

What I care about is what he did to his daughter for three years of her young life. For three years, Tracy kept her in a prison of his own devising. This is a prison that she remains in to this day.

After her father stopped molesting _____, his attention wavered between totally ignoring her and, as I’ve recently learned, flying into fits of rage at her when they were home alone together. He would scream at her, physically shove her into the wall, and send her running up to her room, trying to get away from him. He would then stand on the other side of her bedroom door and try to bribe her, telling her that he would buy her things so long as she didn’t tell mom.

This has been _____’s life for seven year, living in an emotional prison because of the choices that her father made. Tracy is asking to serve his time locally. In other words, jail, not prison. He’s asking you for mercy.

I ask you now, what about mercy for _____? I can’t conceive of a world that would see a child put through what _____ has been through and then give her perpetrator “mercy”.

I also refute the argument that Tracy is pleading guilty because of his emotional revelations made in therapy. When I confronted him with what I had discovered, he confessed. That is why he pled guilty to you, because he already pled guilty to me. As much as I have learned how much I didn’t know about Tracy Curtis Shaddox, one thing remains true. Tracy knows me. As soon as he confessed, he knew this is exactly where we would end up. Now, he’s trying once again to manipulate the court and make the best out of a bad situation.

In that same respect, if Tracy has learned so much about what is good for his daughter’s mental health during his therapy, I ask why he showed up in court on June 8th in order to block our family from changing our last names from Shaddox. This was a specific request from _____, to separate herself as much as possible from her father. Her father obviously saw it as yet one more attempt to hurt the family that he has nearly utterly destroyed. Once again, he wanted to get his way at the expense of everyone else involved.

I may have failed my daughter when she was nine years old. I can’t fail her now.

Thank you.


*Whatever help you may have been looking for in writing a victim impact statement, I hope this was what you needed.

Good luck.

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.

Welcome To Your Gated Community

Since everything else has been crap today, at least I have this to soothe my soul.

Good night sweet prince. I'd sleep with one eye open for the next five years if I were you.

Adjudicate This!

Do you ever just get sick and damn tired of having your chain jerked?

I checked the court calendar this morning at 6:30 and our divorce hearing wasn't listed. When I called the court administrator this morning, she told me that it had been cancelled and the notation was "hope to settle".

Thing is, no one told me this.

Perhaps my lawyer didn't know? Can one side of a divorce action up and cancel a court date without telling the other side? Doesn't seem likely.

Which would mean that it sure would be nice if someone told me what the hell was going on.

STBX is still in town, does that mean he could sign divorce papers? I found out that I can track where he is located here before he goes into the prison system and here after he arrives. He will be heading to St. Cloud first and then who knows where. The sadly humorous thing is that all of his piss assed hateful requests during this divorce, meant only to hurt and delay the process, just might end up making a big fat headache for his lawyer. I can't imagine that it makes the divorce process any easier when you have to track your client down through the prison system.

Then again, delays also suck for me.

The criminal court process totally discounts the rights of the victim to know updated information regarding changes in court dates, et cetera but frankly, the fact that I had to find all this divorce crap out for myself and at 8 pm, I still haven't heard back from my lawyer when tomorrow was our court date, is ridiculous.

There is a seventh circle in hell, reserved strictly for lawyers.

Now, what the hell am I going to do with all this blue eye shadow???

Gettin' All Pretty For Court. Again.

Nightmares are a funny thing. As are dreams.

I normally can't recall my dreams which I attribute to the fact that my sleep is so poor, my brain never gets in the right place to remember.

Which is why I will probably end up in the booby hatch by the time I'm 50.

Is booby hatch politically correct? Hmmmm. Cracker factory?

After six months of insomnia, I woke up in mid-nightmare last night. The funny thing is, it wasn't so much a traditional nightmare as just an endless tape loop of me, reading my victim impact statement.

I had practiced my statement every morning during the week of the sentencing so I wouldn't break down when I read it. I also knew I couldn't look at anyone or else I wouldn't be able to read it out loud. In court, it ended up being me, staring down at the sheet of paper in front of me, pretending I was alone.

The really weird part was, I don't remember anything that I said.
I don't remember the tone of my voice.
I don't remember anything my daughter said either.

Of course, we KNEW what we said because it was written down, but the actual moment has been blocked out of my mind.

Until this morning at 2 a.m when I woke up in full panic mode because I kept reading my statement and I could never get to the end of it.

After I woke up I ended up going over what he said. Yeah, see that dead horse? BEAT IT! BEAT IT HARD!

A useless, ridiculous activity that just got me all pissed off all over again.

I think if there wasn't a chance that I would have to see him again on Tuesday for the divorce hearing, I wouldn't be going there. At least, I hope I wouldn't.

I am, however, planning my wardrobe for Tuesday's appearance. While I really vacillated on what to wear for the criminal proceedings and, up until now, the divorce proceedings, I am sooooo done with all of this crap. I'm thinking that I will actually bring a change of clothes to put on at work before I go over to the courthouse.

How about a big comfy sleep shirt, cut off jeans, and house slippers? Along with a half burned cigarette hanging out of my mouth, my hair arranged in a freshly fucked all-on-end style, and perhaps a half empty can of Coors in my hand? And lots of blue eye shadow. Perhaps applied with a pneumatic air hose.

I'd like to give everyone the honest to god message of "Really??? Really??? Do we actually have ANYTHING to discuss here???"

Since Jackass and Chuckles (STBX and his lawyer) contested the name change by saying that it should be dealt with in the divorce, you can bet your sweet hootenanny that it will either be written into the final paperwork or I will be flicking boogers over my lawyers head in their general direction.

Oh, and I need to go to the courthouse today for more errands as well.

I swear, I want St. Louis County to give me a frequent flyer card, complete with some sort of "Get three parking tickets, your fourth one is free" deal.

Well, I suppose I'd better get looking for that pneumatic air hose. And can someone lend me a can of Coors? I promise, I'll return it.

Note To The Justice System: Today, You Did Good

This is what an elevator full of fabulous people look like















and more people
















So many people showed up for my daughter and I that they had to move it to a bigger courtroom.

Sweeter still? STBX was already in the smaller courtroom and in order to get to the bigger courtroom, he had to walk right through our posse.

It was the first time that I registered sincere discomfort in him.

Loved it!

Then, once we were in the larger courtroom, with all of us wearing our badges made by PAVSA with a picture of a screaming cheetah that said "Silence is not an option", my daughter and I read our impact statements.

We were told ahead of time that we were to address the court, not STBX. We both stuck to our script and made it through without falling to pieces.

Then his lawyer stood up and asked for a special dispensation which would mean he would go to jail and not prison.

Because all his lawyer wanted to focus on was the here and now. HERE AND NOW. NOT WHAT THE PAST WAS.

Well, duh.

If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. And if nothing is on your side, pound on the table.

Then STBX stood up and told about how he has been devastated for the past year, crying on his delivery routes, knowing that he needed help, blah blah blah. That he was afraid to disclose to me because I often said BAD THINGS ABOUT PEDOPHILES. (Hmmmm, saying that you were abused and needed help doesn't mean that you need to disclose to me the fact that you had an urge to touch little children. I stated in my impact statement that he should have asked for help BEFORE becoming a molester, not after wards.) He also tried to refute the fact that he confessed to me before turning himself in to a pedophile help line. He said it all came down at the same time that he had a girlfriend and it was hard because our marriage was on the rocks.

Note to STBX: You were the captain that parked that boat on the rocks...tell it to the coast guard.

Mid-way through his address, he turned to Marina and started to talk to her about how he thought that, when he confessed, that the two of them would be able to go through family therapy together and straighten it all out.

Everyone in our group visibly choked at that one. "Hi honey, I know I showed you hard core porn and asked you to repeatedly reenact it upon me starting when you were nine years old but don't you think we can just sit down together and work it out? Cuz daddy loves you! That's what daddies do when they love their little girls!"

I put my arm around my daughter's shoulder but she was as rigid as stone. I made sure to look off into the distance and not meet his eye. I very nearly stood up to block his view of her.

Then the judge told him he needed to turn around and address the court. He then wrapped it up with how much he loved his kids. Know what he didn't say?

"I'm sorry"

As two official members of the legal system told me later, all he did with what he said was to hang himself. He has been living in his own world for so long that there is absolutely no grounding in reality. Today made that evident for all to see.

Then it was the judges chance to speak.

He started out by recognizing STBX's attempts at therapy and said that was a good thing.

We all felt our stomachs turn.

He then said that it was an invalid argument to state that STBX was devastated for a year but waited until his affair was found out to fall apart and confess to a call in line.

There was no special dispensation.

The sentence is 90 months in prison which adds up to be 5 years time served along with ten years of parole in which, should he ever darken our doorstep during that decade, he will return to prison.

I got to watch as he was put into handcuffs and led away.

This is what a fabulous group of supporters did when all the hugging was done.
















These are two very tired ladies, ready to have some down time.

I have never been more proud of my daughter than I was today. She is strong, capable, beautiful, and amazing.




















If he is allowed to show up to the divorce hearing on Tuesday, I hope it's wearing one of those lovely orange jumpsuits. Come hell or high water, I want a picture of that!

Don't Let That Carapace Crack

Tomorrow will be here very soon.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am the mistress of the profound statement.

Remember that scene in Lord of The Rings, The Two Towers when Theodan muses, before the battle, "How did it all come to this?"

Yeah, that's kind of where I'm at right now. Except without the kick ass sword or horse.

Note to self: Get a kick ass sword and horse before court tomorrow.

There is a certain feeling of relief in the knowledge that it will be over in 28 hours.

But there's that slow motion thing going on in my head, the one where the camera focuses on the doctor's lips right as he's saying "We've found that the lump in your breast is..."

Cancer?

Benign?

What will it be? And how many rivers of bullshit will we have to ford before getting to the other side?

On a far happier note, I'd like to let everyone know that due to amazing generosity from friends and strangers alike, my son will be able to attend summer camp. He'll be going to Space Camp at a university and he will be surrounded by members of his own species, herds of nerds. Loveable, wonderful, beautiful nerds.

Thank you.

As they say when hurtling through space on a trip around the moon, right before radio blackout with NASA Control:

See you on the flip side.

Nattering Gobbledegook

It's been coming up a lot lately with both of my kids.

"What do I say when people ask me about my dad."

"What do I say when people ask me where my dad is."

There are no easy answers. Human beings are a decidedly curious lot. Saying "My parents are divorced and I don't see my dad," will lead to questions about the divorce and one question will lead to another down a very uncomfortable winding staircase that leads to a very black basement.

No kid should have to dredge up this shit just because someone else is curious, whether innocently or not.

So of course, I'm trying to brainstorm some responses for them. That's why I'm a stellar parent...

1. My dad is currently being housed under the kind and affectionate auspices of St. Louis County/The State of Minnesota (we'll know which one on Friday morning).

2. Ever see Invasion of the Body Snatchers? I'm a pod person. I come from an alien seed and a well turned compost pile.

3. I'm in the witness protection program. I really can't discuss this.

4. I was the ninth Gosselin child. I was emancipated at the age of 4 and written out of the show when I complained about being paraded around like an animal at the zoo.

5. My father died ten years before I was born. Yes. He was a Time Lord. (Sorry, a little healthy fantasy there...)


Suggestions are welcome. It will be an evolving list for them for, oh perhaps, the rest of their lives?

Another proof of my stellar parenting abilities is the fact that I allowed my son to drop out of a "leadership camp" after one day. I'm not sure if this is the same people that run the Northland Foundation's Kid's Plus group, but he had a similar experience to my daughter when she went there.

She called it the Young Republican's Club.

Whatever their political bent is, my kids are far too cynical and out of the mainstream to put up with a guy in a headset, talking waaaay to loud, with piped in 80's music and a poorly put together visual presentation. There were many hours of "ice breakers" and a posse of Melba toast privileged white kids, all being guided by adults who continuously made stereotypical comments about teenagers ("Yeah, I know you all hate your parents..." was one of the comments that put my son over the edge).

The purpose of the week long camp is to create leadership and team building. I guess they were all big on the fact that before the week was over, the kids would go to the Salvation Army and volunteer. You know, like Jane Goodall...they would actually be able to observe poor people...in their natural habitat!

My son, on his own volition, decided to get a volunteering job at a local soup kitchen this summer. He wanted to learn culinary skills and build his resume. He's fifteen.

Yeah, and he recognizes spoiled white kids when he sees them.

All I can say in my defense was, I wanted him to take advantage of a hopefully good opportunity. That's what I'll be telling him when he has flashbacks to yesterday at the age of forty.

The funniest thing was when he and a friend were filling out an "ice breaker" game and the phrase they had to finish was "My mom/dad is..."

I guess the rest of the kids said things like "supportive" and "loving". My son's friend said "a lesbian" and my son was tempted to say "in prison".

There are some crowds that you should feel proud when you don't fit in.

Clear and Concise

From my daughter's Facebook page. An apt summation of our Father's Day feelings at present.

Opposite Day

A friend of mine was discussing Father's Day plans when, mid-sentence, she turned to me and said "Ooops. They don't make Hallmark Cards for your situation, do they?"

We made it through mid-morning before one of the kids sighed heavily from the other room. "Damnit."

"What's up?" I asked, expecting Pepsi in the keyboard or a pile of poo on the floor (from the dog, mind you. The kids haven't done that for AGES.)

"It's Father's Day."

Yup.

My daughter and I had a good discussion when she got home for the weekend from camp. We talked about all the possibilities of what would happen on Friday. We settled on the most upsetting being the 99.99% chance that he will stand up and turn on the water works and say he's soooooo sorry for what he's done and that he really does love his kids.

We both wondered if we would get thrown out of court for bringing airline sickness bags for everyone and as soon as he started his speech, all make horrible wreching sounds into them.

If he really cared about his kids, he'd just keep his damn mouth shut. What he cares about is having as little damage done to his own ass as possible.

We also discussed the peeling back of the onion that is my evolving understanding of all of the awful things he was and did. Why was I so surprised that he showed up at the name change hearing? Why did I believe that there was a shred of caring left in his body for anyone but himself?

Because he is the master manipulator. Because he will tell anyone anything in order to get his way or cover his ass. I was thrown by an email from his sister that I received when I asked if she was going to show up for him in court. She started spewing out all the bullshit that will no doubt be in his speech on Friday. He's so sorry. He wants the best for his kids. Blah blah blah.

I answered back that if he really wanted the best for his kids, he wouldn't have shown up to contest the name change. Aside from that, he wouldn't have molested our daughter for years. He wouldn't have been physically abusive. He wouldn't have ignored his kids 95% of the time, he wouldn't have been hateful or cruel the remaining 5% of the time.

I was then informed by her that we had two very different opinions about him. (Yeah, mine was formed by the fact that he is a pedophile and did horrible things. Yours was formed by the fact that you haven't lived with him for decades.)

And then it dawned on me. She was just like the mother that made excuses for her kid at the therapists office. All this time I was going under the supposition that the sister was actually the normal one in the family. That his victim complex which played out daily in our lives for 17 years, didn't have anyone supporting it. He existed as the victim in his own head and when the shit got too thick, I called it for what it was.

Which made me a bitch.

But all the puzzle pieces fell into place yesterday. She has seen him about five or six times in 17 years. She fully believes everything he tells her about his sorrow and remorse. I lived with him for 17 years and I can tell you, if there is a single solitary bone in his body that cares about anyone but himself, I would be shocked.

When my son was very young, maybe two or three, he went through a whining stage and always made himself out to be the one wronged. I made sure to consciously stop it every time it happened, get down on his level, and talk about it. There were times when I would contemplate having two whiners in one household and I would think of taking a solo one way flight to Jamaica. At least I had had the ability to change one of them. My son, thankfully, is now the polar opposite of his father.

Which I suppose can be our new standard for Father's Day in this house. Remember what kind of a father your father was? Just do the opposite and you'll be fine.

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

There's nothing like having rabid squirrels eating your lower spine.

They were quite active from the moment that I got up this morning and when it came time to open the garage door this morning, I paused, did a leaning face plant against the door, and wondered what I would do if I couldn't bend over and open the door. Can I call into work? Can I say that my car is trapped?

Was that ever covered in my employee orientation?

Alas, I was able to open the door and thus, will not be able to test the system. Maybe next time.

Yesterday afternoon consisted of me, talking to my therapist about the sentencing. She agreed with my brilliant deduction that losing my shit at the courthouse on the day of the name change was not the best strategy. She also told me to get ready for any and every awful possibility that may occur on the day of the sentencing.

Perhaps his girlfriend will show up.

Perhaps she'll even bring her daughter!

Perhaps his family from Colorado will show up.

Perhaps a militant F.O.P (Friends of Pedophiles) group will show up at the courthouse and fill all the seats with people who think it is just fine and dandy to touch small children. (I made up the F.O.P thing but I GUARANTEE something like that exists SOMEWHERE. It is not a web search I am willing to do.)

Perhaps he will stand up in court and cry those crocodile tears and whine about being sorry and say that HE is the victim and that it's all just sooooo sad but he wants to do the right thing.

Perhaps there will be a "get out of jail free" card sitting on the table when he sits down in court.

Perhaps climate change will take a drastic turn for the worst and the ice sheets will melt in the next eight days and Duluth will be inundated with water and we will all go down together.

There's always that random meteor strike.

Unfortunately, random meteor strikes are just so, random. I'm thinking that the most plausible irritant will be the boo-hoo speech.

The thing is, it's all just legal theater. Forgive me for being either ignorant or retarded (both are equally possible) but before all this shit hit the fan, I never had a second thought about the justice/injustice system. It was like the sky and the sun and the clouds. It was just there and occasionally I looked around when something occurred in the news but frankly, I just didn't get it. I didn't understand that honesty, goodness, right and wrong, everything is dependant upon how much money you have and how good at bullshitting your lawyer is. Oh, and whether or not the judge is suffering from a case of raging hemorrhoids on the morning of your court date.

And yes, I am being extremely flippant and yes, that isn't fair to all of the amazing people that work in the system everyday and actually do a great job and treat people with respect and want to do the right thing. They do exist. I have met them. I have, in fact, met at least five of them.

But I'm tired and I want the next eight days to be over with.

And I would be sad if the ice sheets melt.

Polar bears rock.

This Trail Isn't Marked

Getting mad is a part of getting better.

It's right in there in the steps of grief...in the steps of healing from trauma...in the steps for healing from sexual abuse.

Getting angry.

It can be a terrifying road to travel because when you are walking it, you don't know where it will lead. There are side roads to take you to mind numbing alternatives...drugs, cutting, abusive relationships, suicide.

These are all sorts of pitfalls and potholes along the way.

And once you walk down that path, it's impossible to see the end and after a few short steps, you can no longer see where you came from. If you hold your hand out straight in front of your face, it disappears in the darkness that envelopes you.

No matter how many people want to walk with you, they can't. Anger is a personal journey. People can walk beside you. People can hold out their hands and try to catch you if you fall, but no one can crawl inside your skin and walk your journey for you.

When my daughter asked for people to support her at the hearing on June 26th, this was a huge step for her. When the two of us, along with her PAVSA advocate, had to meet with yet another legal person in the system to spill our guts yet again (one hour after STBX denied her the right to change her name), she got as heated as I've ever seen her.

But not for herself. For me.

To sit there, knowing what she has gone through and knowing how horrible her father treated her for so many years and listening to her tell this person that her father treated me like crap was soul wrenching.

Later, her advocate commented that her anger was positive. It was a sign that she was headed in the right direction. She was channeling it through positive things. She was doing the right thing.

I then asked the question that had haunted me since our meeting. "How can she get so worked up over what her father did to me? What her father did to me was nothing. What her father did to her was horrifying."

And that's when all these last few months came down on my head.

"How have you managed to get through these last few months?" She asked me. "What has been the force that has pulled you through when you didn't think you could survive another five minutes?"

"My kids," I told her. "If we didn't have kids and if he had been a pedophile toward some other child, I probably would have put a bullet in his head and then did the same to myself. As a matter of fact, that thought haunted me even though I did have kids. But it was the anger that I had at him for what he did to my daughter that kept me going. My need to protect her now even though I couldn't/didn't protect her then."

"And why," she then asked me. "Do you think that her journey is any different?"

I just stood there, probably with my mouth hanging open and flies coming in and out. The parent-child bond is also a child-parent bond. I survived for her. She made it through for me.

Neither one of us looked in the mirror and said "I need to do this for myself."

"Myself" is a harder concept. "Myself" means that you recognize that what occured to you was wrong. "Myself" can lead down a road of "oh poor me" and that whole victimization bullshit that STBX wallows in on a daily basis.

But just for a moment, it can be the startling realization that it's easier to stand up for the ones you love than it is to stand up for yourself.

It's the realization that this road is a million miles long and we have only taken the first three steps.

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.

Let's See Disney Make THIS Into A Movie

Little girls have dreams.

Whether they are prancing around in their princess costumes or hanging upside down from the apple tree in the backyard, they have dreams about their future.

I ALWAYS dreamed that I would never be married to a convicted felon.

From the time that I was putting on dress up clothes and arranging my stuffed animals into family groups, I would sometimes pause, cock my head to one side, place my index finger in the dimple of my right cheek and say:

"Of all the things I can have in this world, I hope I never am married to a man deemed "scum-worthy" by the prevailing legal system."

Whether he is taken into custody on June 26th or not, that will be the date that he is sentenced. He will be a convicted felon. That much is not up for debate.

I wanted to have our divorce crap completed by father's day. I wanted that symbolic holiday to be mine, not his.

But I suppose telling his lawyer that I won't life a damn finger to give him back his possessions, that if he wants to retrieve anything he has to obey the rules for the order for protection, that perhaps it has slowed things down.

So, perhaps I won't be divorced by father's day. Nevertheless, it would be great to be divorced by June 25th. The little girl in me would like to at least be able to say "Of all the disappointments I've encountered in my life, at least I was never married to a felon."

Best of all? I WON'T be baking a cake with a file in it.