65,000 Miles (approximately)

I'm guessing that it's been 6,000 miles since the last entry, but I've been on so many trips that I don't care to calculate it, so I'm estimating. I drove up to the DC area to move for my job. I went to Long Island for a wedding. I flew up to Maine for a weekend with my kids. I went down to Atlanta for a weekend with my wife. I flew up to Maine to retrieve my kids, brought them back to Maryland and spent a great week after Christmas with them, then returned them and came back home. In between my wife came to DC for the weekend so we could go house hunting. I probably missed a trip or two, but that's why I'm estimating.

Meanwhile...

I'm working 5 days a week at a job that is a brutal commuting distance from my parents' house (where I'm staying)--it takes 90 minutes each way unless I leave by 6:15am or return by 3:00pm--and I have to attend frequent nighttime and weekend meetings and events for the job.

My almost 8 year-old son has been diagnosed with Asperger's disorder and is having uncontrollable fits about not being able to stop wetting the bed.

My 4 year-old daughter won't ever talk on the phone to me, although I take some heart in that she won't talk to her mother on the phone when she's with me.

My ex-wife got married to the alcoholic bastard who drove drunk with my child in his car.

I have seen listings for two good jobs in Maine that would pay well and allow me to be near my kids, but I have not applied. On the one hand I was miserable up there and have no desire to go back. On the other hand I have told my kids a million times that the only reason I left was because I needed to find a job. I feel like a liar and a horrible person for not jumping on these jobs, but I just really don't want to go in reverse like that.

My father has been diagnosed with an aggressive terminal illness and probably won't live another year. It's nice to be with my parents, but it's heartbreaking watching him fade away before my eyes. It's also terrible that my mother, who just retired two years ago, is now stuck being the full-time caregiver for him, as he can't dress, shower, go on stairs or even eat without help anymore.

I am so tired and overwhelmed by life that I can't even motivate myself to do simple things like read a book, exercise, or make plans with friends. Most nights I just come home from work, eat too much food (my mom loves to overstuff me), collapse on the couch, and maybe talk to my wife on the phone, and then go to bed and do it all again.

* * *

I try to tell myself that much of this is temporary. My wife and stepdaugher are still on course to move here in May, and we've determined that we can afford a nice three-bedroom townhouse in a good school district that will drop my commute to 20 minutes. My kids will be there with us in our new home for 6 weeks next summer. My dad will probably be gone and my mother will get her life back, and will even be able to watch the kids for us. I'm getting my career back on track--my job is going well, and I am certain that it can lead me to better things. My kids are growing up and I won't feel as horrible about going slightly longer stretches without seeing them. Eventually they'll be able to fly on airplanes without me, which will make it far easier to get them to where I am.

But I still can't get my need to be with my kids out of my system. Every day they were here last week was a joy for me, albeit a joy tempered by being exhausted. It was particularly great when my wife and stepdaughter came up for three days, which was the first time since August that we had all been together. By day two the girls were wearing their matching princess dresses and calling each other "sis." I'm flying up to see my kids in Maine at the end of the month, and will go again for my son's birthday in March. I may even go in February for a long weekend.

The point is, as expensive and difficult as it may be to go there so much, I can't justify not going there. I've got the money now, as I am earning a good salary and saving a lot by living with my parents. I've got the time, as I am mostly bored when I'm here on weekends by myself. And the flights are much shorter and less expensive than they were from Atlanta. I've also gotten over the fear of "what are we going to do?" when I go up there. It's still exhausting being cooped up in a hotel room with them, but they've gotten used to the routine and we always find ways to fill up the time. The best part is that they don't, as they did when I first became The Frequent Father, ask to go back to Mommy's house after a few hours in a hotel. They seem to have gotten used to the idea that this is how things are, and they seem to be OK with it.

* * *

When I started writing this post 25 minutes ago I felt like crap. Now I feel much better. I know that I have to write more often. It's all about the release.

59,000 Miles, cont.

Well, long distance is turning into medium long distance; I took the job in Northern Virginia and will be moving in less than two weeks. I was going to spent some time this afternoon packing, but I'm instead sitting here writing this entry--my priorities are obvious. So that's good news, right? I'm taking a great job with an impressive sounding title, a much higher salary than I've ever before earned, 25 miles from where I grew up and, yes, 600 miles closer to my children. But my wife isn't coming right away, as she has to sell her house and anyhow she wants her daughter to finish the school year in Georgia and spend the next six months saying goodbye to everyone she knows (she's moved here to go to college 19 years ago and has never left). It's going to be a tiring and expensive few months as I live and work in one city and have to travel back and forth to Maine and Georgia. I'm not looking forward to that.

Even once my new family does join me in Virginia, then what? I'll still be 500 miles away from my kids and I'll have a full-time, high-pressure job with little ability to take random long weekends or week-long trips like I got to do. I'll have the money to see them now, but what about the time? It's got to be one or the other it seems. And my wife? She'll be in a new, strange place far from everything she knows, and is already feeling guilty about taking her daughter away from their extended family (mother, 3 sisters, 7 nieces/nephews, untold numbers of friends).

There's another issue: her ex-husband and his family (mother, stepfather, 2 sisters, son who's a half-brother to my stepdaughter, 4 cousins). I've found myself being so angry over the past two years about my ex-wife replacing me. Even ignoring the particulars of the new man in her house (see about 12 other of my entries for more on him), the fact is that, to my kids, Daddy doesn't live with us and we only see him every couple of months. Now I'm going to be responsible for making a six-year old girl move 600 miles away from her father.

Now I have every reason to be OK with this--her father is just this side of a deadbeat. Even though he has visitation rights every other weekend, he generally only sees her about once every six weeks, and even on the weekends when he does see her, he spends about 4 hours with her and then drops her off at his mother's or sister's house. He's perpetually two months behind on child support, and owes my ex $15,000 in marital debt. He doesn't come to his daughter's soccer games and has only ever set foot in her school one time. He is now married to the woman with whom he had an affair during his marriage to my wife, and she happens to be an illegal alien. He's also willingly cut ties with his 13 year-old daughter from his first marriage because he couldn't afford to pay child support for her. The guy's not exactly father of the year.

In spite of all of this, I can't help but feeling terrible. Yes, he's a poor excuse for a parent, but he's still her dad. How can I sit here and feel so terribly wronged about semi-voluntarily moving away from my kids and then have a clear conscience about taking another man's daughter away from him?

I'm trying very hard to focus on the facts at hand: 1) I need a good career so I can financially support my son, daughter, and stepdaughter. 2) I have failed to find this career path in Maine or Atlanta. 3) I have found a great job that could hold the key to my future in a third place, one that's halfway between the other two. 4) My wife's ex-husband doesn't even really try to be a parent, in spite of living 15 minutes away right now. 5) My wife has chosen to be with me, and understands facts 1-4 very clearly. I know that taking this job is the right thing to do. No matter how hard it will be over the next few months, I have to believe that the long-term benefits will be worthwhile. It certainly will make for some interesting blogging.

59,000 Miles

I don't know if I'll ever write a book based on all of these ramblings, but if I do, I have decided on one of two titles. Over the weekend the famed race car driver Dan Wheldon was tragically killed in a 15-car pileup during a race. At the news conference announcing his death, Mr. Wheldon was said to have perished from "unsurvivable injuries." If/when I do write my tome, I will either call it "Survivable Injuries" or "Unsurvivable Injuries". The exact title will, of course, depend on what happens between now and then.

To bring everything up to date, I voyaged to Maine for a long weekend with my kids over Columbus Day which was tough, as it was the first time since leaving town for good that it had been just me, just them, and a hotel room. Every visit since January had either involved me traveling to Maine with my wife and stepdaughter or me picking them up and taking them to another, better place.

This is not to say I didn't have a great time. The weather was an Inconvenient Truth-ly 80+ degrees (October! Maine! 80 degrees! Call Al Gore!) and we had many memorable moments. Maybe someday I will pen the whole narrative of this weekend, but, in journaling about the trip during the plane ride back "home," it seemed like a more cathartic exercise to spill out random thoughts from the weekend gone by:

The last day of Indian Summer
Where I come from and how that place is gone
Feeling rootless, like I'm living in quicksand
Watching my children struggle and being unable to help them
My daughter's scary fascination with TV commercials
Playing superheroes at the school playground
Watching my son go up (and down) the Hi-Jacker ride at the Fryeburg Fair
Seeing my daughter get on the swing and go by herself
The street sign on the way to the fair that read "Pig Street"
Playing "bedbugs" in the hotel room
Swimming at the YMCA
Sitting on a bench at Deering Oaks Park watching the squirrels together
Riding the Tornado ride at the fair all together
Room 112 at the Extended Stay America
Can being 500 miles away be better than 1,100 miles away?
Who would talk to me for an hour anymore?
Teaching my son about football
My daughter blowing raspberries at me then singing "I'm a Little Scarecrow"
My son leaping from one bed to the other in the hotel room
My kids talking about their "step-family" as if were their own
Needing to feel useful and pining for a better job

Reading this list a week later I feel it does a better job of summing up my feelings than would any contrived narrative. My feelings were (and are) scattered, and the time I spend with my kids is best summarized in this manner. There is no arc to the story. There is no recurring theme. There is just a series of highs and lows. Elation in one moment melts into fear and despair. My fragile heart soars 80 feet up to the top of the Hi-Jacker, then shatters upon impact.

I'll see my kids again in a month or so, again alone in a hotel somewhere near Portland, although I can almost guarantee that it won't be 80 degrees any sunny this time (and if it is, I'm really going to give Mr. Gore a call!) Until then I'm left to stew in my own juices about the life I'm living. I'm sitting here at work, having all the time in the world to write this entry as, after more than three months, I still have virtually nothing to do all day long. Meanwhile, I've been offered a job in the Washington DC area, and have only a few days to decide about it. The job could be great, but I've been keeping myself up nights worrying about whether or not that's really close enough to my kids and being if neither here (Maine) or there (Atlanta) is going to allow my marriage to work. But I don't feel like I have any other options, as there are no better opportunities on the horizon anywhere else.

By the time I write my next post I will have decided whether or not to take the job, in the process probably causing more stress than I can handle. My body has, technically, survived the injuries suffered due to my first marriage and its disastrous end, but I'm having a hard time seeing how my spirit will carry on. No matter where I live (Atlanta, DC, Boston, Maine), I will feel like I'm giving up too much and that my life will always fall short of what I wanted it to be. In that regard I suppose I haven't survived my injuries at all. I'm not living the same life that I was living before the crash, but instead feel like a ghost who is inhabiting the same body but somehow unable to feel the same way. But that's the definitation of survival, isn't it? I've been bloodied and battered, but my body still lives and breathes. I guess I've got my title.

56,800 Miles

What was it I was saying last time about sound and fury, signifying nothing? Well take that, put it in a six-page court order, and make it a double.

Well, the judge agrees with me...my ex-wife is guilty of (and I quote), "naivete, at best, and self-decption at worst," and "there is no doubt that [she] has not complied with the terms of the Judgment and, without tighter strictures, will continue to do so." Sounds good for me, right? Well, let's keep reading to see how the court intends to put "tighter strictures" on my ex:
"[The mother] shall allow no unsupervised contact between the children and [the boyfriend]...[The boyfriend] shall not consume alcohol, or be under the influence of alcohol, in the residence or in the presence of either or both of the children." Throw in a small victory of me now getting the kids for six consecutive, uninterrupted weeks in the summer, and that's the ballgame.

I suppose there is some lemonade to be made here. I do now have an official opinion from the State of Maine stating that my ex-wife is somewhere between naive and delusional and that her boyfriend is quite obviously not cured of his drinking problem. I do get the kids for six weeks straight starting next summer. I do, on the surface, have some restrictions on the lowlife who kidnapped my daughter and drove her home drunk. But what I don't have is any way to enforce those restrictions.

So the bum can't be alone with them, drink in the house, or be under the influence in their presence. That's good and well if I'm the guy from Rear Window sitting in a wheelchair all summer long and staring at him through my binoculars. But I live 1,100 miles away. Even if I lived 10 miles away, as I did a year ago, I still don't see how I would be able to indisputably prove that he had done any of these things. In fact, I already know that these things have happened in the week since the decision was rendered. My son told me on the phone that he and the bum went for a bike ride around the neighborhood, including down a busy, hilly street with mangled sidewalks. But I can't use the word of a 7 year old in a court of law, so it never "officially" happened.

Furthermore, let's say that I do miraculously obtain hard proof of the order being violated--the order contains no "then what." I was hoping that it would at least tell my ex that one screw up would result in the bum going or even her losing the kids. It seems that my only remedy would be to take her back to court again, and replay the whole tragi-comic-farce once more (and at great expense, of course). I am filing a motion to appeal the decision, but I'm not holding my breath.

So, in the end, I feel like she was convicted of her crimes, but given a very light sentence. Meanwhile the person at the heart of the matter, the drunk boyfriend, gets to stay put, living in the house that I bought with my money and pay for with my child support checks. He is allegedly going to school to become a medical assistant, but I can't possibly imagine any responsible medical office wanting to hire this clown, who looks like death, walks with an alcoholic's shuffle, chain smokes, and generally always seems to be drunk. And the person ultimately responsible--my ex-wife--gets to go on with her life as if she did nothing wrong, but she still is raging with anger at me for, as she put it, "ripping the kids away from me for the summer." Never mind that she gets them all year long, and I'm in the midst of going six weeks without seeing them right now (I'm going up over Columbus Day weekend).

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at my desk 1,100 miles away typing this. I'm at work, but my job is such that I basically get paid to do absolutely nothing. I'll save the details for a future post (or not), but the gist of it is that I was hired by a public agency to help get an ineffective lifer of a bureaucrat off the dime, but she is refusing to share any work with me and our mutual boss is too much of a wuss to do anything about it. Thus, I have been sitting here for three months now with literally nothing to do but surf the internet and feel like a complete ass for being so far from my kids for no other reason than to collect a paycheck.

If I were at least doing something good for the world, or at least something that occupied my mind all day, I'd feel a lot better. As it is, all this job is giving me is money and a serious case of depression. I've again begun to seek out something better closer to where my kids live, and this time my wife swears that she's coming along no matter what. The adventure continues...

55,700 Miles

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."

--Shakespeare, Macbeth

I'm not often one to quote The Bard, but my day in court yesterday reminded me of nothing but Macbeth's conclusions about life upon his hearing of the queen's death. My central conclusion from yesterday is that courtroom is nothing more than two theatrical performances going on simultaneously (all the world's a stage?) To the judge and the attorneys, the proceedings are mostly scripted comedy-drama, with elements of farce. They recite their well rehearsed legalese and misleading questions, and trade occasional in-jokes with one another. Meanwhile, the Plaintiff and Defendant get to muddle their way through improvised tragedy, with their fates at the mercy of the well dressed and highly paid jesters acting beside them. And to top it off, yesterday's performance certainly had the most anticlimactic ending I've ever seen.

For three hours, the motion that I made to protect my children from the ravages of the dangerous drunk that their mother permits to live with them devolved into a series of truths that could not be told, lies that were left uncontested, and, at the end, an announcement that the decision would be sent by mail at a later date, followed by a bang of the judge's gavel.

I don't have the strength to go into bloody detail, but here are the main points of the trial:
- I testified, mostly on the strength of my own knowledge and of several self-incriminating emails sent to me by my ex-wife, about the long and perilous pattern of alcohol abuse, drunk driving, and cover-ups in her home.
- I was barred from discussing hard evidence of her in the form of police reports, because police reports are considered hearsay unless the officer who wrote the report appears in court to testify.
- Her attorney repeatedly objected to most things that I said and tried to get me off on irrelevant tangents such as whether or not the drunken boyfriend's license was officially suspended on October 9 or October 19 (as if it matters--she still let him drive the kids after his second drunk driving arrest in six months). This was all done to waste time and run out the clock, as he knew that only three hours were alloted for the trial.
- My ex got on the stand and skated on the edge of crying for the better part of an hour as she painted herself as an ideal mother, her boyfriend as a wonderful human being who is trying to conquer his tragic disease of alcoholism, and me as one part sterotypical bumbling father who is overwhelmed at the thought of spending time with his children and one part jealous, jilted ex-lover who is trying to get back at her.
- She spun one tall tale after another: saying with a straight face that she never dreamed that their "maintenance plan" of giving him 64-80 ounces of beer a day could ever be considered alcohol abuse; insisting that last week's domestic dispute, which was described in the police report as her boyfriend yelling and throwing things at her, was really her yelling and screaming to him about how mad she was at ME; and, especially, that her boyfriend had not imbibed a drop of alcohol since going to jail last October, in spite of common sense and ample evidence.
- She refused to accept a condition that another incident of her boyfriend drinking or even getting nabbed for drunk driving would automatically result in him being tossed out of her house, arguing that alcoholics never truly beat their disease, and he could be forgiven for an isolated slip-up.

And then the lawyers chewed up the last 10 minutes of our time discussing who would be paying the other lawyer in the room, the Guardian Ad Litem, and then we were dismissed. The case is now left twisting in the wind for at least several more weeks while the judge takes her sweet time writing up a decision. So all the sound and fury signifies nothing, at least not yet.

Meanwhile, things are in typical SNAFU mode. I am hanging around Maine for two more days (possibly longer if I get held up by Hurricane Irene), and was hoping to spend most of it with my kids. I had previously arranged to get them during the day on Saturday, and then emailed my ex four days ago to see about having them Friday night as well. When she didn't respond, I had no choice but to call her at home two hours after the trial ended. She of course barked at me that I can't just drop a last-minute request on her. I told her that I had informed her days earlier, but she snarled that I know she doesn't check her email much, so, no, I couldn't have the kids Friday night. It's just one more example of how she has no concern at all about what's good for the kids, as they haven't seen me in three weeks.

So that's the way it is. More to come.

54,600 Miles, ready for takeoff

It had to happen sooner or later...a blog entry from the airport. I thus haven't accrued any additional miles, and won't until my plane departs in 90 minutes. Tomorrow is the big day--the court hearing. Nearly nine months after filing my "expedited" motion to modify our divorce judgment, D-Day is finally here. As expected (see previous entry) the Guardian Ad Litem (GAL, for short) concluded that my ex is wacky and delusional, but shouldn't lose the kids because: 1) they are extremely attached to her, and 2) I don't live in the same community where they allegedly have a support network.

Now I will admit that my kids are attached to their mother, but they are also attached to me. She did manage to bamboozle the GAL by convincing him that, because she's still nursing our 4-year old daughter, that our little girl simply can't be away from mommy. Of course she just got done spending 15 full days away from mommy and only cried for her one time after hearing her voice on the phone. I am fully convinced that, at this point, the nursing is 110% about the mother, not the child.

As for the second issue, I don't see why my residence matters. Their mother puts the kids in harm's way every day of their lives by letting an unreformed drunk live with them while their other parent (me) has a safe, secure home. The GAL asserted that the kids have a strong support network in their hometown, specifially citing their grandmother. Never mind, of course, that their grandmother was barred from their lives for more than 6 months last year for suggesting that the drunk should go, and that they see her at most once a month, though she lives two miles away. To me, the point is this: one parent puts them in danger and the other does not. Shouldn't they live with the one who keeps them safe?

Well, anyhow, there may be some hope. Call me obsessive, but for the past 1.5 years I have checked up on the drunk boyfriend by scanning the local police log that gets posted online every two weeks. Time after time there was nothing, and I began to think that maybe he actually is serious about staying out of trouble. And then yesterday I took one last-ditch peek at the current report and, Eureka, there it was--a domestic disturbance last Thursday night, the very day that the GAL report arrives. I still don't know all of the details but it seems that my ex and her boyfriend got in a violent screaming match at 6:30 pm (while the kids were home) and a neighbor called the cops. Though they were dismissed with warnings, there is now hard proof of very current bad things going on in her home. I've gotten my hopes up 100 times before, but doesn't this event at this late date portend something positive for me? Shouldn't it?

So will truth and justice prevail? One can only hope so. There will certainly be no shortage of material for the next entry!

Tune in next time for the conclusion to this cliffhanger.

54,600 Miles

The summer has gone by and The Frequent Father was on the move. 1,100 miles to Maine to get my son, 500 miles to Maryland for two weeks with him, 500 miles back to Maine, 1,100 more back to Georgia. Later, 1,100 miles to Maine to corral both kids, 1,100 miles to Georgia for two weeks with them, and one more 2,200 mile round trip to return them and return myself...so that's 7,600 miles in all. Fortunately, there were plenty of good times to go around. Unfortunately, the drama continues to unfold.

Let's start with the fortunate.

For two whole weeks in late June and early July I had my beloved boy with me every day, with nothing to do except hang out with him and enjoy summer. I picked him up from school on his last day of first grade and took him to my parents' house so we could all spend some time together. I took him swimming every day but two, and by the end of the trip he had transformed from being afraid of the water to being able to swim a whole 25 meter lap by himself. We went running at the high school track each day. I had shown him a video of Usain Bolt running the 100 meter dash in 9.58 seconds, so now my boy wants to train to be the world's fastest man. He is very fast for a 7-year old, and can actually run 100 meters in less than 18 seconds, so he's halfway to his goal!

We also did lots of DC tourist stuff--I took him to the Smithsonian, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and even Mount Vernon. He loves presidential trivia, so Mount Vernon was a great experience for him. The only bad part about the trip is that I had to return him on July 3, so I didn't get to spend Independence Day with him. I spent that day traveling back to Atlanta and preparing to start my new job on July 5. The job has been underwhelming so far, but the paycheck is a wonderful elixir, as is not having to stress out about my work situation for a while. The job is only a contract position, though, so I am still seeking a better opportunity.

The real fun came in Round 2, when I went to work on Friday, flew up to Maine after work, arrived at midnight, hit my favorite late night restaurant in Portland, slept in the rental car, picked up both kids at 5am, and caught the 7am flight to Atlanta. The next two weeks were jam packed. On weekdays when I was at work, my son went to "superhero camp" at the YMCA, and my daughter and stepdaughter stayed home and had "princess camp" while my wife worked in the next room. On weekend days we went swimming, had playdates with their many step-relatives, threw a birthday party for my daughter (she's 4 now) and even took a trip to Six Flags. The three kids (my 2 + stepdaughter) all did mostly well--we stayed 11 hours! It was an exhausting but phenomenal experience to operate like a family for an extended period of time.

But all was not perfect. My son continues to have a number of behavioral issues that I simply can't figure out how to overcome. I feel helpless, as his mother has refused to do anything to correct these problems, suggested that he only has them when he's with me, and concluded that I must not be a good parent if I can't manage my own child. After much wrangling she finally did agree to take him to a counselor, so he hopefully will get some direction. I hate to be cynical but I suspect that she only agreed to this because of the threat of the court case.

Ah, yes, the court case. In nine days I finally get my day in court. The guardian is set to deliver his long delayed report tomorrow, and I'm on pins and needles. On the one hand I am dying to see what he actually says about my ex's inexplicable behavior, to see just how outlandish it seems to an independent expert. On the other hand I fear the report, as I'm 98% certain that he will ultimately conclude that she's wacky and delusional, but that she hasn't done enough to merit losing custody.

Either way, the whole nasty business will be done soon, and I'll figure out how to proceed. In the meantime I have been a ball of stress and uncertainty. One day I swear I'll never set foot in Maine again (I told my wife that I'd rather have my manhood hacked off with a meat cleaver than move back there), and the next I'll seriously ponder applying for a job there. One hour I am frolicking in the swimming pool with my stepdaughter, and the next I am sitting on the couch with my heart aching after my son tells me that he's sad that I couldn't come to his karate belt test. I know that the hearing next week won't put the situation 100% right, but at least it will be done, the new rules will be written, and I can make the necessary decisions about my life and career based on them. I am not holding out hope that my days as the Frequent Father are coming to an end, but I'm not giving up either.