Wow. Another thread! I checked the date and my last thread started in October last year. I guess I'm not spamming the forums all that badly, so let's fire up another one.
Well, when I step back and think about changes in the last 10 months it's all pretty positive. My divorce is final and my finances are settled. I have 20 months left of front loaded maintenance support after which I will be able to start rebuilding for my financial future. My job is still stressful but it's livable again compared to a horrible situation last year. The kids are doing great overall. And I am doing great overall as well. This is the short version. Turn back now if you have a plane to catch Little more detail on the above below:
Work: I just realized I hadn't posted this yet. I got a quasi promotion at work. I am a territory sales rep and a territory opened up that was a bit of a step up from one I had previously covered. I talked to my boss and explained why I thought it would be best for everyone if I took it on, and he agreed. At worst I'll make the same income with a little less stress, but realistically I think it has the potential to be a significant raise. Broomstick! (My friend used to text me 'boomstick' as a celebration but it always auto-corrected to broomstick, so now we just go with that)
Housing: Haha! I secured a rental! Only a year longer than I expected. But it doesn't matter anymore. It's done. I get the keys tomorrow. It has bedrooms for all of my kids and my mom, and also room for my 9 foot pool table. It's not on the bus route but my mom is still living with me and can help with that. The rent is very reasonable. No pets allowed, but I wasn't quite ready for that anyway. So while I'm not looking forward to the move physically, by 8/12 I'll be shooting pool and listening to "No Quarter" by Led Zepplin until the wee hours of the morning.
Games: I still love pool. Won a little weekly tournament yesterday. But am also playing a lot of poker. I've been working hard on my poker game. I don't believe I'll be able to play professionally while I have three kids at home, but I fully expect that when my kids are grown I can downsize substantially and probably live on poker and pool income. No kids this weekend so I just wake up, study a bit, play some chess, then play some poker, then some pool, then some more poker, then study some more. That is the world I enjoy, and God willing someday I'll just go off into my own little universe and shut the door behind me.
Family: Kids are doing well. I took the kids on a 5 day trip last weekend up to Northern Minnesota. My dad and his long term girlfriend came along. We went on a trip last year, this is starting to be an annual trip which is good because he's a snowbird that only is in MN 4-5 months a year. This trip is 95% of their time with my dad, and he won't be around forever. Anyway, we did some hikes, got out on a lake, roasted a few marshmallows, and played some games in there as well. Fun trip for sure.
S13 is having trouble with XW and XW's serious boyfriend. I don't know the whole story, but I know that my son has thrown angry fits over there for years now. He breaks stuff, kicks at her, threatens to kill himself, stuff like this. Happens a couple of times a year. Oddly my son has never had any issues at my place. I don't know if he's mad at XW for the divorce and hates the new guy for this reason as well, or if it's just because he has a bad relationship with his mom in general. I can't attribute it to him being 13 because we get along really well. Well, the other day he punched his mom in the stomach and ran away and wasn't seen for several hours. This is XW's version. His version includes the new boyfriend screaming nasty things at him like "please do kill yourself" and how "if you were my kid I'd..." with various threats.
I will pause just briefly and say how awful I think divorce is, how destructive, how unnecessary, how hurtful, and how difficult it is to be a parent and see this needless cross your child is having to bear and being powerless to prevent them from the pain that was inflicted on them. I won't say another word otherwise I will end up with a book on our hands and I don't have a publisher lined up or a snazzy title picked out so let's not go there.
Back to S13. OK, so I'm going to have to take a hard stance on something. The physical outbursts have to stop. Today. Listen, I'm ALLLLLLLLL about finding out what he's dealing with, giving him support, giving him guidance, giving him tools to cope, and so on and so on...but the minute he starts punching a female (sorry to be sexist here, but there is a big difference in my world between him getting into a scuffle with a bully at school versus getting angry and punching his mother in the stomach) he has cross a big, thick line that he cannot cross again. So here's my plan:
Tomorrow I am going to take him 1:1. I am going to get his version of the story. I am going to empathize for a moment. Then I'm going to explain that what has to happen is out of love, the same way that when we were hiking I would get very loud in warning if one of my kids was near a cliff edge, not because I like yelling at them, but because I love them. Well, tomorrow will be a day he needs to remember forever so he doesn't go off his own cliff. Because here's the thing: You DO NOT get to hit people.
I'm going to explain how when you have a dog (we've had a few), dogs are good. There are no bad dogs. There are dogs that haven't been trained, dogs that are being neglected, dogs that were abused...but there are no bad dogs. If a dog isn't behaving, we need to figure out why, and try to fix what we're doing wrong for the animal. That is, until, the dog attacks a baby in the house. The minute the dog becomes a threat to a human child, guess what happens? The dog gets taken to the pound and put to sleep. The dog is no longer under 'family protection', because now it is the threat and that threat must be eliminated. I'm going to make it very clear that I love him and I want to help him, but the minute he makes the decision to curl his fingers into a fist and strike someone else, he is putting himself in a very bad situation. I am going to take him to a mirror and explain that he isn't 6 anymore, that he looks more like me than a 6 year old, and that he is capable of causing real damage and needs to realize that.
There's a bit more of my lecture regarding accountability (not blaming his mom for his actions), but then the punishment starts. I am not going to ground him or take away a toy, punching his mom is not a 'grounding' offense, it is much more serious. Instead I have written up a homework assignment for him and I am going to give him a pen and paper, a bottle of water, and put him in an empty room, and he needs to write out answers to my questions. Some of those questions include things like "Describe ten ways in which your life might be changed forever if you had knocked your mother down and she ended up paralyzed from the waste down and in a wheelchair for life". There are a number of questions, I'd expect that this will take him 2-4 hours to write out. And at the end we'll review and discuss the answers together.
My goal is to give him a night that he'll NEVER forget. And believe me...while I won't be screaming, yelling, escalated, or threatening...I have an intensity which I can easily summon up that will be by itself enough to make our conversation memorable for him.
Once we get through that, then we can come back to what he is dealing with, and talk about getting him more tools. But he needs to know the hitting stops yesterday.
Someday he may end up living with me full time. I personally think that would be best for him now, but it's too early to bring that up, especially when XW is still angry I have 50% time. She thinks he likes me better because I'm the play dad and she's the one that has to do the real parenting, etc. I'd send her a copy of the essay questions my son writes out tomorrow to show how laughable that is except that I don't care.
Well, that's about it for the update. Just another person living life. If there's one thing I'm grateful for about this whole divorce ordeal it is to be appreciative for every little thing, because nothing is ours for long and it doesn't get any better. Excluding of course pool lessons with DB friends.
Me:38 XW:38 T:11 years M:8 years Kids: S14, D11, D7 BD/Move out day: 6/17/14, D final Dec 15
Little more detail on the above below: