In Which The Boy Turns on Me

DISCLAIMER: I never meant for this blog to be a ‘mommyblog’ or a ‘step-mommyblog’ or a “Join us on our fight for custody” blog – but I gotta get this out somehow or it will eat away at my brain and my heart and will eventually kill me (I am NOT overdramatic – or emo). So, if you have the patience, read on. I’m not rereading it and I’m not even the slightest bit concerned about my grammar. Or language. Bear with me or don’t – I just can’t afford therapy.

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Friday morning I was hit with a bomb. On our way out the door, I said, “I sure hope you get your toys off the living room floor before you go to your mom’s this weekend – I’d hate to see them ‘disappear.’” In response I got, “I’m going to go live with my mom,” from the Ninja Boy.

“No you aren’t.” I calmly replied.

“Yes I am. She said I could. When I’m twelve I get to pick who I’m going to live with and she can take care of me now.”

I was still a little shocked that he responded. I tried to put it simply, “No, she CAN’T take care of you,” type stuff, but he kept pushing it. “She has a GOOD job [as a cashier at Menards]! She CAN take care of me and I WANT to live with her!”

“Well guess what!?” Please, readers, don’t hate me for this – I hate myself enough, “Your mom doesn’t even have a job anymore! She quit it so she could get money from the government!! She can’t take care of you with THAT!”

While it was true, it wasn’t a nice thing to say. The Man got a call from the Social Security office on Thursday telling him that Scari had filed a claim. They wanted his and the kids’ information to see if they were eligible for benefits.

“Is she disabled?” you might ask. Nope. No physical limitations whatsoever. She’s fucking crazy. She must have finally proved that she’s schizophrenic (she started trying two years ago as a means to get out of paying child support).

RANT ALERT: (feel free to skip this part) You know how much this pisses me off? I’m here working my ass off and WILL be until I’m old enough to retire. Every month, I pay out two hundred dollars toward Social Security – and it won’t even be around when I’m old enough to use it. My brother, who suffers from a degenerative retinal disease, lost his benefits because he “wasn’t blind enough.” But apparently, you can be fucking CRAZY enough!! Apparently, if you want to go fry out your brain on METH, you can just go right the fuck ahead because once it’s gone, the government will pay you to live in a Section 8 ghetto and buy your smokes. But, a BIG sorry goes out to the homeless children in the city – there just isn’t money to help you! Let’s not be selfish now, these people may have done it to themselves, BUT THEY ARE PEOPLE TOO! Who cares if they fucked themselves up? It’s up to US as a COMMUNITY to support them and love them and pay ALL THEIR FUCKING MEDICAL EXPENSES.

And my number one concern over all this: If she’s too loopy to hold a job, how is she capable of caring for children?

< / rant >

Okay, so after I spouted a little more evil out of my mouth, I dropped the kids off at daycare and called The Man bawling.

That night, she called and confirmed what Ninja Boy had told us. “When he’s twelve, he gets to PICK where he wants to be!” Yes, Moron, every child at the age of twelve gets to decide for themselves what kind of live they will have. Me? I moved into Disneyworld and ate Sno-Cones and funnel cakes all day!! Oh, wait, right – not in REALITY! Because in REALITY, a judge would NEVER say “So, you are TWELVE now, boy? Sure, your schizophrenic mom’s apartment in the ghetto is the PERFECT place for you to be! Wish GRANTED!”

I asked Sunshine that night if her mom ever said anything to her about living with her. “Yeah and I told her ‘No, I don’t want to.’” My sweet little baby – who always tries to make everyone feel loved. What pressure she must have felt being asked that. But I am SO proud of her for saying how she felt.

I know I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up about it. I know that it’s not a viable outcome. My problem is that we were finally GETTING ALONG. We were finally to a place where we were happy with our situation and then she had to push it. The pickup went fine that evening, except we forgot to send NB’s ADHD meds. So Saturday morning on our way out of town, we stopped to drop them off. NB came to the car and I said, “Where’s your mom?”

“She doesn’t want to come down.” He said. Whatever, I gave him the baggie with the two pills and said, “Take these right up to her.” And he went back to the playground. We sat in the car for a minute wondering what was going on before we pulled up alongside the playground. Scari was standing on her second floor balcony screaming “NOOOOOWWW!!!! BRING THEM TO ME NNNNOOOOOOOWWWW!!!” Trying to get NB to bring the pills up to her. We heard him yell, “I’ll be back later!” The Man got out of the car and went after him. Never in his life would that boy EVER blow off something I told him with such disrespect. And yet, his own mom who he wants to live with SOOO bad – doesn’t get a shred of respect from him.

Though we felt uneasy about it, we left for Wisconsin.

Sunday at five, I checked my phone and had a message from Scari saying the kids wanted to spend another night. I called her back and said, “No, we are already on our way there.”

When we got there, only NB, Scari and her boyfriend were outside. Scari brought his bag to the car and started bitching at The Man about how we are such assholes for not letting them spend the night and we should do what the kids want and it’s still the weekend and we’re fucking idiots. I very dryly said, “It’s Sunday at six, the weekend is over.” She got in my face and told me to “Shut the fuck up” because it was none of my business. It was between her and her ex-husband about HER kids.

I am an extremely reasonable and calm person until someone pushes my buttons. And that bitch had.

“So where have you been the past five years while I was working to raise them, bitch? Out getting fucking HIGH and screwing the neighborhood!”

To which her super-smart boyfriend replied, “Can’t someone make mistakes?”

No, you stupid fucker. You don’t get to desert your kids for FUCKING YEARS and call it a ‘mistake.’ There are no do-overs when it comes to raising kids.

So, anyway, NB refused to get it in the car. They refused to let him. She held him back screaming, “He doesn’t want to go, he fucking hates the bitch!” and telling him he could stay if he wanted. I finally called the police when they wouldn’t get Sunshine.

After I called, they were suddenly willing to cooperate and Sunshine came running to me. She was visibly upset – as anyone would imagine. I tried to comfort her and tell her that everyone was just very upset and saying mean things and it wasn’t their fault at all. But it should have never happened in the first place. They put NB in the car, trying to reassure him that they were taking us to court so that he could live with them.

We waited for the police and The Man talked to the officer telling him what happened and that we just needed a report made. NB was screaming in the backseat that he didn’t want to go home that he hated us and we hated him and we should just let him go.

I stopped him and said “I don’t care what you believe about anything else, but you’d better believe that we love you – we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t!”

Halfway home, he’d gone back to my regular Ninja Boy. Not the screaming, hate-spewing monster he’d been just a half-hour earlier.

That night, he asked me why his parents weren’t together anymore and I told him he’d better ask his dad. Up until now, the answer had always been, “they just didn’t get along.” But that wasn’t going to cut it anymore. We have no idea what she tells them when they are there. And for the first time, we felt our silence would end up hurting us rather than making us look like “the better person.” So TM explained, “Your mom found someone else she wanted to be with and left. When she finally came back, I let her take care of you. But then she started using drugs and wasn’t taking care of you guys. You had no electricity, you had no food and you had nobody to watch you. So you came to live with me and your mom went on with her life.” “Don’t you remember when your mom wasn’t around?” he asked them, “I almost lost my job because she wouldn’t help me watch you and I almost lost you when she finally did.”

And, even though I’d debated over it since we got back in the car, I asked NB, “Why do you hate me?”

“I NEVER said that!”

“Well, that really hurt my feelings when your mom said that. I love you and I do everything I can to give you a good life. It really hurt to hear someone say that you hate me.”

He snuggled up in my lap and pulled my arms tightly around him. And that was the end of it – until tomorrow, when she uses her “weekly visitation” night. I’m scared. I am. I’m not even afraid that she will get custody. I’m just scared about what this is going to do to our happy family. I’m scared what it’s going to do to the kids. I’m scared what it’s going to do to me. It’s going to be a long road – I’m just not sure I’m ready for it.


For anyone who made it through that – you deserve a medal! And for anyone who just scanned to the bottom, I totally understand and my regularly scheduled posts will resume tomorrow.