Category Archives: Franny

Dear Parenthouse Fantasy Forum

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One

Last night I watched Tim Burton’s Batman with Franny and Strudel. Franny drank a ton of water and could not wait any longer–she had to run to the bathroom.

“What happened?” she said when she came back. The Joker had just abducted Vicky Vale and Batman had just crashed his car on the steps of the ridiculous cathedral thing the movie ends in.

“Oh,” I said. Was this really happening to me? I had only read about these kinds of setups. “The Batmobile lost its wheel and the Joker got away.”

No one even blinked!

Two

This morning I was picking up so I could dust my messy house and sweep the edges where Neato doesn’t go, when I noticed Strudel shoving Horace slightly. She does this sometimes when he sits on or near her, like she is trying to shoo him subtly. I know she likes the dog, and I never see her being outright mean to him, but I don’t understand this one. I think it’s one of the many mysteries of Strudeldom.

“Quit shoving the dog,” I said, as I folded blankets that were abandoned on the couch.

“Why?”

“Why? Because I will fire you if you don’t,” I pulled out of my butt.

“What’s that like?” she asked, very interested.

“Well, I will point at you like this,” I pointed at her in my most Trumpian fashion, “and I will say ‘YOU’RE FIRED’ and you will have to find a new home that has an opening for a seven-year-old who is NAUGHTY.”

“Do I have to go live in an alley?” she asked.

“No, you go live in a home for unemployed children. They have a couple downtown. You get weekly unemployment candy while you search for a new home.”

“UnemPLOYment candy? That sounds pretty good.”

“You’d think so, but it’s only 60% of your normal weekly candy, and you have to prove you’re searching for new parents to keep getting it. In the meantime I will be interviewing a few children candidates to fill your vacancy.”

“Are the children in the home nice?”

“Well, generally speaking, unemployed children are pretty angry.”

“Nice doggie!” she said, and petted Horace gently.

THREE

Fangsiving! Was weird this year! Not like weird bad. I just realized the only pictures I took were of the chickens in the backyard but everything came out really well, I think. I did a dry brine on the turkey instead of my typical brine bath and then kind of freaked out at the last minute and did the usual breast-covering with a cheesecloth soaked in butter and wine. AND THEN, since I am so clever I had a sandwich at like 1 a.m. and left all the turkey out on the counter, inelegantly solving the hair-pullery which is O what shall we do with the leftover turkey. Answer: spoil it.

I was having a lot of thoughts about how much I love Thanksgiving and yet it is this pageant of…not femininity, since a lot of men cook too, but this really elaborate display of domesticity. Then I got kind of depressed, both at these thoughts and about the idea that my brain can even try to ruin my favorite holiday for me.

I always think of my mother as I do when I think about both holidays and things that are PROBLEMATIC. She made it very clear that she did not like to cook, in general. Hamburger Accomplice was heavily employed at our house–anything to bang dinner out in 15. I could knit a flag about how terrible her cooking was and canned mushrooms and blah blah blah, but it’s pretty unsurprising from someone who is an avowed cookery-hater. When I was little we spent Thanksgiving at a grandparent’s house, and when I got older and she left my stepdad she started to make it herself. The turkey was fine, memorable only for being dry. The sides were phoned in and the stuffing was Stove Top. (This is the part where I say “But it’s okay, because it was done with love.” HA HA just kidding y’all.) The desserts were usually good because though she hated cooking she liked baking so that usually had a better result.

And yet she still went through hours of extra cooking for Thanksgiving, because even the most “button pops up when done,” prepackaged Thanksgiving takes extra time. She did it because That Is What You Do. (I have some things to say about myself and Christmas that relate to this notion as well, but I will save it for another day.) I asked myself, would I miss Thanksgiving if it was gone? Yes, certainly. Do I like the way my meals turn out? Generally speaking, I do. One year I felt my efforts were unappreciated and I boycotted the cooking and I regretted that and no one learned anything really, except new configurations in being a jerk, which is part of life too. Unsurprisingly this is from the three years that I was medium-mental from being overmedicated.

I do have a sidebar, and that is to say that I had a last-minute guest who came over an hour after they said they were coming and unfortunately, after we were done eating. Honestly, I thought they flaked and weren’t coming at all. Lately I am having experiences with hosting that are reminding me why I kind of stopped for two years in the last rental. Hand-written invitations that go ignored, etc. I’m FAR from perfect (I still owe my friend lunch for canceling a pie party after feeling overextended) but caring about etiquette used to just make me irritable but now makes me feel like an idiot, like I have missed some memo. When most people are rude and it’s okay it starts to feel like it’s my problem and maybe they are not rude? I’m still thinking. And feeling lucky that my closest friends are polite, OR have learned my etiquette foibles and are sweet to me.

If You See Me Walkin By, And the Tears are in my Eyes, VANDALAY! BABY VANDALAY!; Or, Apartment Heresy

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Last night I dreamt (here we go again, I know) that Horace yakked all over my chest while I was trying to sleep (barkake) and the cats were peeing everywhere. I reckon this is better than the home invasion dreams I was having. I saw Sorry, Wrong Number last week and SPOILER ALERT at the end the main character is killed when someone breaks in. To kill her. Whoops. I did enjoy the chemist in it who really reminded me of the Gale Boetticher character from Breaking Bad.

What is up? Pup is up, Brown is down. Franny turned 12, since it is October and all.

She finally got a friend to sleep over, which has been a real challenge in the past. There was giggling from her room until midnight. I think this neighborhood is going to be a lot more fun for since her friends mostly live close to their school. We ended up outside the school district in the last place, since our neighborhood school was closed for remodeling and the girls were sent to the next one, which we now live near. Strudel is taking the brunt of the overload of kids who were shipped to their current school, since she was the last kindergarten class before the other school reopened. There are 35 kids in her second grade class, and I think there are 4 second grades. The classes below her are a more reasonable size, I hear.

I’m enjoying the house, especially now that the heat is on (um literal heat, not crime type). I know that the inspector looked at the furnace, and pronounced it new and in good working condition, but I was nervous because of years of moving into rentals and rolling the dice on them. How cold and leaky would the house be, exactly? It turns out it is as snug as a bug in a rug, as they say. I am SO WARM. I always think about SeaFed’s grandmother, who was Seattle’s own Dowager Countess. She was responsible for such Mal Mots as “You would look so pretty if only you’d lose ten pounds” and “You’d look so pretty if only you’d take that metal crap out of your face” and many, many variations on the theme of “THE JAPS!” which she could not be corrected out of, gently or otherwise. However, there was one thing that she said to me once that was not racist, sexist, or insulting, an observation that she made when SeaFed was out of the room and she noticed he was kind of dragging his feet on getting his shit together and doing things like working. “It’s okay to be poor now,” she said. I was 24 and had a two-year-old Franny and was in school. “But not in your 30s. You’ll just be too tired.” I am glad to be in a comfortable house that I like now. I am tired. But more relaxed now that the automatic gun turrets are installed.

I’ve been fooling around with the house a lot as the painting is kind of winding down. I decided the dining room wasn’t blinged out enough and needed a stenciled medallion.

If it wasn’t hard enough painting on a ceiling, the paint started blobbing around under the stencil and I could tell it looked bad. I know enough to know when to quit, so I did!

Of course I tried to wipe it to minimize the damage, but it was already drying. My first fuck up! Kind of nice to have that Band-Aid ripped off I suppose. My last phone came out of the box scratched, much to the clerk’s horror. He tried to take it from me, but I wouldn’t let him. Pre-scratched means you don’t have to have that unique gadget sad when your new shiny gets its first fender-bender.

I decided to “fix” it with a real medallion. Sure, I could have just painted it white, but I decided to just try a different tack(y).

I got a white polystyrene one and painted it. I started with a base of black spraypaint, and followed up with Rustoleum “hammered” Rosemary, which is kind of a metallic green/grey. Rustoleum is theoretically for things like patio furniture, but I cannot tell you how many of the junk shop rescue objects in my house are covered in it. After that I gave it a tiny spritz of some Rustoleum Copper I had laying around from spraying the giant vampire head on my porch (umm, I need a pic of that up I suppose) and then, my favorite thing, Rub N Buff. I am worshiping at the altar of this woman who is the Rub N Buff Queen. So I pulled out the highlights in it using Gold Leaf.

I also realized that something was missing from the dining room.

Come to me, Banditoooo. I cleaned him up a little–my velvets are way dusty. I also oiled the frame with some almond oil, which I use on the dining table and the free standing butcher block counters as well. I’m getting to the point where I’m finally hanging stuff. This house is designed with such an economy of space that I don’t actually have enough walls. I’m going Victorian art gallery clusterfuck on my only large, non-wood paneled wall as soon as I am able to lay out my paintings and Tetris them together before hanging. I measured a space on my floor to arrange my mirror wall and that worked a treat.

The paneled wall is coming along. I think it can hold at least four more heads.

IN OTHER NEWS (OLDS)

This is what 35 looks like. If you’re me anyway. Tired, yet optimistic. This is the age of being asked if you’re feeling tired. OF COURSE I AM. FUCK. WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE, HANDJOB BON-BON PARTY BUS?

Look! It’s a real camera! No Instagrams were harmed during the making of this blog. This is rich, coming from a blogger, I know, but I am feeling like I should be taking more pictures of myself lately. I will tell you I am interested to see what my face is going to do in the next ten years. I see pictures of myself when I first started blogging at 23 and I say WHO IS THAT BABY?

NAMASTE, FUCKERS.

It Burns When I Monday

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I came home yesterday to a pile of receipts and some other odds and ends on the table. There is nothing like the feeling of something not making sense and trying to figure it out. Sometimes I imagine I have the spinning hourglass over my head. I turned around to face the living room and all of my electronics were gone. Well, that tears it: robbed. It’s never good timing, is it? It feels kind of extra bad right now because the house was the good thing happening, and it still is, I have to remember that. As I tried to go to sleep last night I had this feeling of wanting to go home, like I was on some kind of nightmare extended trip, but I am home. Bad things can happen in your home and you have to kind of move forward and pave over them with better things.

The good news is that the thieves were kind of morons–I guess if they weren’t they would have, like, real jobs? I assume it was kids, because most of what they took was Franny’s, including all of her pajamas, strangely. They weren’t even like super fancy jammies, either. So today for her birthday, I took her pajama shopping and got her a couple of other odds and ends since some of her other clothes were nicked. The electronics they took either needed set up software or they could be bricked remotely. Passwords were easy to change and took only a few minutes. I haven’t even finished hanging up all my pictures yet.

The receipts were on the table because my purse itself, which contained nothing valuable, had been emptied and stolen. My camera happened to be on me at work, which is nice. I haven’t been robbed since I was a kid–and then it was my parents, of course. All of my stuff is kind of old and outdated and/or easily rendered useless. I have crappy weird antiques, mostly, and a lot of books and kitchen stuff. Overall I think we were a bad score–I don’t even have a TV. But it sucks because I liked my $80 refurb laptop from dinosaur times. If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t have bothered even unplugging it.

The thing that people say when you are robbed is that it’s such a violation. I don’t really feel that. My house felt the same, only messier, and emptier. I feel like the real damage is that now the girls are nervous, and I worry about that. The officer who took the report was very reassuring about people not being hit twice close together–of course not, all of the things of apparent value are gone.

In other amazing news in these amazing end times, my trial has been postponed again. I sort of feel like I can’t really talk to people about this anymore. It’s like going into your twelfth year of having some obscure disease. “How’s it going, still dying?” Yes. Anyway, it’s pushed out to November, the week of FANGSGIVING. The temporary parenting plan says that we have her for that week but her stepmother told her they have her that week, so I imagine that will be another fight. I really don’t understand the confusion over a line of text that says: Thanksgiving, mother, even years. TWELVE IS STILL EVEN, RIGHT? I told SeaFed recently that he should perhaps consider sitting down with another adult and reviewing the parenting plan, like his wife, but wow do I take that back now.

My lawyer suggested I try to settle with him just for funsies, so I emailed him and told him I would pay his half of the GAL fee if he signed now, and we could avoid missed work for trial. Because I am a jolly cockface I pointed out that this would also save me the trouble of filing a lien to get the money later. This, of course, has been entered as a THREAT against him in his trial brief. His trial brief is not quite the comedic document that his divorce proceedings were (which for some reason included the FACT that only 6% of his diet is snacks) or for that matter his impassioned defense against the evil known as child support (which included a moving passage urging the commissioner to change child support guidelines right then and there in court for his case, as well as some fascinating math that ended in a calculation that his fair share was $81 a month and that the King County Office of the Prosecuting Attorney was in my pocket, hello hello mind the lint and crumbs boys), but it still has its moments.

He turned in his trial brief late and as monstrous hard copy. Once my attorney submitted hers, which was terse, easy to follow, and contained actual case law citations, he turned in another document, claiming that he had accidentally left part of his trial brief off. This document, naturally, looked a lot more like hers. My lawyer has asked the commissioner to award a portion of attorney’s fees due to intransigence and general jerkymandering, so naturally he has asked for attorney’s fees as well (N.B.: He still has no attorney). He has also asked for me to be supervised by a CASE MANAGER because I am bad, bad, super bad, and naughty. The basis for this is that I gave him a few days’ notice the weekend I moved that I would not be able to drive Franny all the way to his city that day, and he would have to make arrangements to pick her up at school. Also I should be held in CONTEMPT OF COURT because of this. Okay, his trial brief is not really fuck yeah, caplocks, but it kind of has that flavor. Or maybe some Random capitalization for Emphasis.

Unfortunately my deviation from the letter of the temporary parenting plan one time in eleven months has made him decide it’s now a good idea to begin text/email harassment three days before any drop off is supposed to happen. The good news is that this harassment prompted my lawyer to push back and point out that he was violating the parenting plan himself by not remitting her passport to me. He went away but has ignored her request.

So, as I said: endtimes. I am going to write about this, and then it will be done, and I will dénouement around a little, and then I will be happy to put this to bed.

My last word today is that this is the only time in about 8 years that I have wanted to have a TV. Dr. Horrible is airing live tonight on the CW. I will have to catch it later.

Shit Just Got Real

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“MOM don’t look in my pants, there are secrets in there,” Franny said. I was about to stick a carton of orange juice down her pants while she was doing the dishes, because electrolytes.

“Really!” I said. “What kind?”

“I have a BUTT TATTOO of my face on my butt.”

“Oh, from when you were in prison?” I asked.

“Yes, this top crime guy offered to do it illegally while I was there. It is awesome to have a face on your butt. ASS FACE!”

Franny will be twelve in six days.

What I Was Doing When No One Was Looking

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1. Stress

HELLOOOO RACE FANS! I am moving in one (1) week! HNNNGH! My house is all crates and ACK again just like it was two years ago. In my spare time I have been painting and playing phone tag with contractors. If you’re extraordinarily bored I just threw up (HARF) a bunch of house pics on le Flickair. Yes, the set is called “Asshole Dream House.” Yes, I am properly ashamed of myself.

2. Court boring also stress

As a bonus, I am going back to court on October 1. I met with the GAL for the first time on Thursday. Why so late, you ask, when we’ve had the better part of a year to get ourselves investigated and shit? Because first I had Seafed insisting that mediation had succeeded (it didn’t, we never scheduled the second appointment or finished), and then he told the GAL to go away because we didn’t need her. And then he said he did not have money for it, not now, not two years from now, not ever.

My lawyer, who is so awesome I am unfit to touch the hem of her garment, was all, “SOOOO like do you feel like paying for all of the retainer then?” And I was like “UM LIKE TOTALLY NO this guy just got back from a vacation that he flew his wife and four children to, and then there was some bonus vacation on an island. Priorities man etc.” And she was all, “Yo this is like deadlocked then dog.” And I was like “FINE.” That is pretty much verbatim. And then I paid it. DOUBLE HNGGGGH. Yes, my lawyer is Lady Jesse Pinkman.

So last night as a result I had a dream that I was up betimes as usual and bammo, Franny had let all these people into my house and they were kind of noodling around or napping places. I said, “FRANNY WTF!!?” And she said, “Oh, they were at a party next door and needed a place to sleep.” Hmm, Franny letting strange people into my house…this is sounding all very metaphorical. Except to be fair I am letting them in.

Am writing the GAL down and will unleash that later. ~cryptic~

3. Workity

Child Labor Rules. That is all.

4. Other

Here is a seventh grader and a second grader on the first day (the 5th).

Here is a Strudel in a tree outside the new kitchen. I regret very little, but I do have a twinge that I cannot throw fuds out the kitchen window at my chickens anymore. I will have to get a slop bucket like a civilized wench.

Also, my face…it turns out it was just dirty. HA HA. The tea tree oil is TOTALLY eliminating the pain I was having. Once a day, cut in half with some sweet almond oil (massage type, just plain). I use about a tablespoon and swab it on with a cotton and then let it sit for about ten. Bonus: the cotton goes in my toilet bowl after where it seems to be keeping it cleaner. I got a brain wave and decided to start using Jason brand tea tree oil shampoo and HOLY CATS my head does not itch anymore. Great comments from Team Asshole here as well about the magic properties of tea tree oil. THANKS. DIE BUGS! Or Bug poop! Or WHO CARES, my face doesn’t hurt. Non-bonus: now that the inflammation is quelled, you can see all my cool exploded capillaries. CRONE-ESQUE.

Coming soon: post-court new assbanner. Can you incorporate fall and courtgasm? Let’s find out.

The dark covers me and I cannot run now

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Let’s get this out of the way immediately: this morning I woke up to GRISLY CHICKEN DEATH. Zsa Zsa, JWOWW, and So-and-So the Easter Egger got the axe. I locked them up at dusk last night and it was quiet outside and they were burbling in their house and everything seemed well. There was a lot of noise at 5 a.m. but I didn’t think much of it. Sometimes they get noisy when the sun comes up. I came out at 6:30 to let them out (I surrender, I am a morning person now, yes I hate myself appropriately) and the first thing I saw was feathers under the coop. Too many feathers. There were three broken and gutted little bodies around the backyard. One of the raccoons had eaten the eggs out of Zsa Zsa’s body, which just made me furious, really.

I walked to the corner of the yard and old lady Veronica was hiding behind the shed, standing upright and eying me warily. A feather was stuck to her head and at first I was afraid that her eye had been poked or something, but she was just sticky. I let her be since I figured she’d get it off herself, and also because after what she witnessed she is probably now Chicken Dexter Morgan and I didn’t want to get too close.

Watching her stand there made me feel really sad. I surveyed the little piles where the raccoons had left the girls laying around the yard half eaten and all I could think of was how scared they must have been in the dark and how terrible I was to have shut the door too early and locked them out. It’s like a horror movie when the door closes too soon and you watch your friend get torn apart by zombies/tentacles/LaRouchies through the porthole. I cried–I couldn’t help it.

The thing about chicken deaths is that I don’t really bond with them the way I do with my cats and now the dog, but they are trusting and defenseless and just kind of generally good animals, I believe. I know chickens peck each other and sometimes they eat eggs and they are stupid, but after ten years I feel that most problems can be prevented with proper conditions and control. You can steer them like a waterway and they do good work for you. And I had let them down.

Once the bodies were cleaned up I opened their door to check on the remaining hens. No one came forward, and normally they burst out like they have been shot from an extremely short range cannon.

“Girls?” I stuck my head in. There was an egg open on the coop floor and Silver Belle’s beak was wet. That was weird. They rarely break their own eggs. I walked around back and the back egg hatch was open. Strudel had done her egg duty yesterday and had left it open.

I was still crying when I came into the house and I sat on the couch. Frannie came upstairs and it’s extremely rare but I feel bad when the first thing the girls see in the morning is me bawling like a big soppy muffin. I told Frannie what went down and she hugged me while I sniffled and felt terrible. After a couple of minutes on the couch, we heard Strudel’s door open and Frannie went down to fill her in on the news.

When Strudel came upstairs she looked stunned. Strudel always has strong notions about justice and responsibility, and spent a few months asking me hard questions about things like police justice and morality. I have NO IDEA what she is going to turn into when she grows up. For a long time the people who were most responsible for breaking and taking things in my house were Not Me and Must’ve Have Been My Sister, but lately she has been coming forward more and talking about how she could handle things better the next time. What a fucking relief.

“I’m sad about the chickens,” she said.

“Yeah. Thanks. Me too,” I said. I waited for her wheels to turn to where I knew they would go next.

“Did someone leave the door open?” she asked, gently.

“Yes,” I said. “The egg door was left open on the back of the house.”

I watched her face flicker through several changes before the needle got stuck on, “Oh shit, this is my fault.”

“Sorry, Mom,” she said, almost inaudibly.

“Thanks for saying that.”

I got a note on a sugar packet.

Today is the last day of first and sixth grades. She was a very quiet cricket on Wednesday.

Horace vs. Mere and Goethe

He is SO LUCKY they humor him.

Tart, melon, and guac.

Cherry Cheese Tart for Father's Day

Oh god please may I have some please

Noooo you may not.

They Think They’re People

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Franny sat slumped at the table with an English muffin and a mug when I came out to get my first glass of water.

“Is that tea?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, stirring it as it steamed.”I really needed something to wake up this morning. I am sooo tired.” Franny has never been a morning person.

“What kind of tea are you drinking?”

“Mint.”

This is how we do it

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Typical biweekly Friday night email from me…

From: SJ
To: SeaFed
6/1/12 7:46 p.m.
Subject: Franny is on the 8:05 [eom]

From: SeaFed
To: SJ
6/1/12 9:30 p.m.
Re: Franny is on the 8:05 [eom]

I don’t use a smart phone. You’ll have to text or call me regarding drop off.

From: SJ
To: SeaFed
6/2/12 8:00 a.m.
Re: Re: Franny is on the 8:05 [eom]

Can you send me your number? I switched carriers. Thanks. Sorry, I must have been mistaken about you using a smartphone in the middle of the day for non-business purposes.

*****

This is when we were emailing about Franny being sick recently. I knew I wasn’t crazy (about this). These are from the same thread.

Now I’m just imagining him grabbing people’s smartphones throughout the day at random.

Hey how’s your life now that prohibition’s been lifted? Oh wait, we’ve always had liquor. But you would not think so due to the frantic hurricane-levels of preparation and looting at my QFC last night. I got wine and 99 cent shampoo, because no matter what I get, Strudel pours three-fourths of it down the drain on her first go.

“If it isn’t Captain Clip-On.”

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ONE THE GIVING OF THE FANGS

Recently I asked Strudel what her favorite part of Christmas is. I almost Pocahonta’d my pants when she said “FEAST.” Franny did the same, asked me what I was making before she went off to her dad’s for her first leg of the Xmas Cycle. (I get her back on the 26th.) I was thinking of not cooking at all since it’s been such a disaster lately.

I don’t think I even wrote about Thanksgiving and how it went–I wrote about it right before things went all LEGAL DOCUMENT and OMG A CAMEO STARRING MY MOTHER etc.

I was thinking about bunking on cooking because I was the first one with the stomach bug that was going around, and I was still kind of weak on Thanksgiving. The girls INSISTED I cook, and I already had the ingredients, plus I invited my sister, so I figured I should go for it. Sadly, I had to cancel on her last minute because P. was vomiting ON Thanksgiving Day, and I did not want to bring her into to a den of germs.

So we rallied and started cooking while P. was laid up moaning.

The girls helped, which was awesome.

Just as we were sitting down to dinner, Franny left and started barfing. Later on Strudel pretended to be barfing. “Yes mother, I made it to the toilet, vomited neatly, then flushed,” which had much the same effect in that I ended up coddling her and made a little bed for her on my floor. About a week later Strudel caught the bug for real.

2011 can bite a nutsack really. I am stabbing this year in its back on the way out.

I decided to just do a breast this year, which is still a sizable chunk of turkey. Of course I brined it and it came out very well. I took a picture and was going to post it, but it was a little…hmmm.

Uhhhhhhh

Ah yes, that’s what legless turkey makes me think of.

There was also some sweeee potato casserole, something I have come to very late in life. Dunno why.

And I made a pumpkin cream pie, which was mostly eaten by the person who was well enough to eat it, me.

I redid Thanksgiving a few days later using leftover stuffing and turkey and fresh cranberries and potatoes and there was much rejoicing.

Back to Christmas, which I started with waaay up there. Now through all my ambulations you can maybe understand why I am hesitant to cook a “FEAST” for Christmas. But if I do, it will be duck.

TWO A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DEADBEAT DAD

A few days ago Strudel asked me about Christmas Steve. I had been telling the girls that I thought they were well-behaved enough this year that he might not even show up.

“I think YOU are Christmas Steve,” Strudel said.

“Mmmm,” I said noncommittally from the cheese log where I was perched.

“I think YOU do all the things.”

“Do you really think I would eat part of your gingerbread house and give your sister a trophy that says #1 SUCKY on it in Sharpie?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I see.”

“Are you Christmas Steve?”

“Yes, I am,” I said. She cried a little then, but now she thinks it is very funny.

“It was YOU ALL ALONG,” she says.

THREE RANDOMATA

Franny asked for guinea pigs for her birthday, and has been asking for them for months. I felt bad because as her birthday approached in October, her dad was serving me with paperwork to get back to 50/50. I did not want to be a dick about it, but I also did not want to be solely caring for her pets half of the time. I have lovely cats and chickens and other things that deserve my attention. My attitude is, guinea pigs are not my thing, but I will help and supervise to make sure they are getting proper care and nutrition.

So, after things had been settled court-wise, we took the plunge for Christmas.

This is Cloud and Misty. I am relieved a hundred times over that she did not name them Hammy and Porky as she originally threatened to. Misty, interestingly enough, is the name of one of my lawyers. Franny heard it and loved it. And now we have Legal Pigs. They are darling. I really wish I would have kept them as a child instead of hamsters, but they would not have done well with my mother’s laissez-faire attitude toward pets.

Speaking of fuzzballs.

Gertie hogs my cheez log. The girls have been with me for about a year now and they are doing really well. The kittens turned a year old in September but they still have a little of that adolescent thing hanging on. One thing that I did not really expect is how separate they all are. There will be no more than two cats on my bed at any given time. Gertie is like Nietzsche in that she will follow us around and see what we are up to. Matilda will sleep on my shoulder at night. Mere is still kind of her flaky temperamental self, but does well as long as I don’t pet her below the shoulders. She’s got that cat-sensitivity thing.

Someone stole the ladder, so we decorated the pear tree this year. Tres Charlie Brown, no?

What is happening in legal doings? I will tell you. Last time we spoke, I had just emerged from a courtroom, where I felt like I had been put on that life-draining rack Wesley ended up on in The Princess Bride. Since our next orders were to mediate, I thought things would be kind of calm since then. NOPE.

SeaFed’s lawyer sent an email saying that he had been “forced to withdraw” from SeaFed’s case. There is some speculation that it is less money-related, and more personality-related. I did not blog about this, but as we were standing in the hallway post court hammering out details of the parenting plan, his lawyer said to mine, “Your client is being VERY cooperative in this.” SeaFed would not move on anything.

At first I read this as a condescending head-pat, but now I wonder. Of course I said nothing and kind of forgot about it, since there were bigger fish to fry, and we were busy frying them.

I also discovered that SeaFed had been spraying my lawyer with emails, which she was ignoring, since he has counsel who should be contacting us for anything crucial. Then the withdrawing-attorney thing came out. Then last Wednesday SeaFed started hammering my lawyer and cc’ing me. He was threatening legal action over some confusing language in the temporary plan. He is absolutely a cornered animal right now.

I know I shouldn’t be at this point, but I was pretty shocked how nasty his tone was and how pointless and inappropriate his questions were. My lawyer advised me that this is a common tack to run up the other party’s bill. I implored her to shut him down and begin ignoring him. I think he is going to be a nightmare on a pro se basis as this continues.

And there was one other thing I did not tell you, because I did not realize it until a day after court when I got all my paperwork and read it. SeaFed was suing me for attorney’s fees in the motion to modify the parenting plan. As if I was just opening that frivolously!!

So, I have a couple of theories…behold the crinkling of my tin foil hat. SeaFed retained his lawyer to fight child support, and his lawyer suggested the best way to smash child support was to make a motion go back to 50/50 time. At the same time, of course, I was moving to modify the parenting plan, so I assume his lawyer hung on for that. Perhaps SeaFed did not see that as my next logical step. Attorney withdrew because of lack of funds, because SeaFed gambled everything on me losing the motion to modify. Or, he withdrew because of jackassery. It will remain a mystery.

This is the worst cat-and-mouse game ever. I am invisible and the cat has bells glued all over it.

The next move is to mediate. Our deadline is by the end of January, and the mediator is not even available until after the end of this month. She has requested that we mediate separately, and she is a guardian ad litem with training in child psychology so she wants to speak with Franny separately as well. This seems hopeful.

I have a bad feeling SeaFed will dig his heels in and not move on anything here, which will push us to trial next year. What’s he got to lose if he is going pro se? Or perhaps they will mortgage his house or he will beg his father for money.

The next thing also is I have a trial date on January 13 that I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT in all this–child support hearing. I was sent the paperwork alerting me that the trial is approaching and the prosecuting attorney’s office wanted me to sign all the motions and child support worksheets. If we both sign, it’s just settled.

Since he has not submitted one jot of requested financial information, I assume he is not going to sign the paperwork either. They have all his financial information from their research. I submitted up-to-date paystubs and bank statements and signed it all and sent it back. I reckon what will happen is that I will be made to show up on January 13th and it will go through automatically, really. The prosecuting attorney’s office had already decided there was justification to modify the child support order from $0, and now they have appended the recent court actions granting the right to change the parenting plan. I am hoping this will be the most in and out, non-teary court experience I have had.

The potential amount I am being awarded monthly is $340. I want to tell you I think all of this is over $340 a month. I cannot help but wonder what his wife thinks in all this. How would you feel if your spouse/partner had a child who someone else took care of most of the time and took care of 90% of the financial stuff, and not due to an agreed arrangement?

Anyway, that amount should cover her food, really, which will be a great boon. No complaints. It gets bumped again next year when she turns 12, and that should be it until she’s 19. We should “break even” on court costs and legal fees about two years into child support, but the knowledge that there will be official paperwork in place keeping everything straight is priceless.