Maybell 40

[Maybell]

Things are cooking along nicely with My Guy, no problems there.

I've had some serious problems arise with the kids' school. It comes from the fact that I had to sell the big "marital" house and move into my own house when we divorced. Our schools are bounded by neighborhood, and I accidentally bought a house just very slightly (by like a block) It was OK because the out of district policy was sufficient to keep the kids basically where they were (as I originally intended) all the way through high school.

Now they've changed the policy. My daughter is panicked about it and my sons are heavily concerned. Well, the boys will be OK. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with about S9, but S11's definitely changing this year.

I put "marital" in quotes when describing that house because he was heavy in the affair before we even closed on it and I lived longer in it without him than with him. It wasn't truly a marital home. I'm feeling spurts of anger at Mr. Fantastic for the timing of his &^^##%ing affair. He started cheating while I was still in California before we even moved out to the East Coast. He, with me, promised the kids it would be our last move. And he KNEW HE WAS CHEATING. Who does that? Who perpetrates a fraud on his children like that, buys a house in the MOST expensive part of town, buys a house with the MOST expensive upkeep he could find (there were two others I was interested in that cost $100k left, with little maintenance; maybe I could have kept the house if he'd been more reasonable) and then doesn't even engage with the problems that arise from the fallout of his actions? If my kids ever find out about this they will be very angry with him.

I am certain the kids have mentioned the school situation to him, because they are highly anxious about it. But he hasn't said anything to me about it at all. I think again he blames me for that. He has complained before that "I don't engage" and that is true. I don't want anything to do with him and he has never actually contributed to the solution of a single problem. He's caused a few.

Of course if I were to throw any of this at him he'd just blame me for buying out of district but there were only two houses available at the time when I needed to buy and I chose the one that made more financial sense, thinking it was in district. Turns out I'm in a notch, one block out of district. So I'm frustrated by that too.

I know that in the long run these things will be blips (at least for the boys. Possibly not for D13). I believe that everybody will be fine. But they are very anxious and I have been trying to shield them from too many of the consequences of the divorce where I could and generally, I've been successful. I can't shield them from not having their parents married to each other but I don't have to be too angry about it. I can support their relationship with their dad. I even defended Mr. Fantastic's girlfriend to D13 when she was acting out because she thought the FGF was the reason we split up. But I can't shield them from this and it pains me every time I have to cope with fallout from his jerky, irresponsible decisions.

That being said, I'm lucky I'm no longer bound to such a person. He led my family for years!! And to think my plan A was for him to continue to lead us. So thankful for plan B. It could all have been so, so much worse.