What happens when you take a three year old from his mother for a week, deny him the pictures of his mother that she sent with him on the trip and deny phone calls to his mother when he is missing her? Trauma, of course.

It wasn’t immediately noticeable what changes occured to my son because of this trip. He did seem to follow me around the house a bit more closely when I was cleaning or whatnot, but that was to be expected. It wasn’t until about five days after he returned, and his first day back at the church he and I go to, that the change was obvious.

For the past five months I have been attending this church with my sister and when I get there, LG runs right into the kids’ playroom without any prompting from me. In fact, it had always been a challenge to get him to stand still for a moment so I could take his coat off and kiss him before I went into the adult service. He had toys, he had the helpers he adored, and he had his special friend, a little girl he calls “Lee-Lee Dirlfren.” Lee-Lee is her nickname and what everyone calls her, Dirlfren, well, say it out loud and you’ll figure it out. It’s adorable.

Anyhow, this first night back at church after his return, I took him into the playroom as usual and he started to play, as usual. I was talking to another parent and didn’t leave immediately, but after about five minutes it was time to go to the service.

It only took two minutes before LG realized something was wrong and came running into the sanctuary where I was, and he was SCREAMING in terror. Immediately I thought maybe he had hurt himself as this was definitely a something is broken or bleeding everywhere cry. It was heartbreaking. He was crying so hard he was barely breathing – you moms know that type of cry.

After I checked him out and found nothing physically wrong, I went, with a little clinging monkey around my neck, to the playroom to find out what happened. The helper said he just looked up and around, said in a sad voice, “Mommy?”, then ran out screaming. He sat on my lap just hugging me for the next hour and a half until the service was over.

The next week? The exact same thing. Also that week, I had an appointment at the university to take my Compass test for placement and took LG to my aunt’s for her to watch him for a couple of hours. The same thing happened, but this time, I had to go, even though it broke my heart to do it.

Moral of this story? If things are bad in your relationship, no matter how much you want to get back at the other person for slights, real or imagined, think first of how vengeance or selfishness will affect your child(ren).  The experts aren’t lying when they say in a divorce, it’s the children that hurt the most — and it doesn’t have to be that way.

What heresy is this?!

This post is from 2005 and is freaking hilarious.

I’m in a decent relationship right now. It’s been two months and there have been no really big arguments. She scratches my head nonstop, gives me awesome massages, and even brings me food when I’m too worn out from work to go anywhere.

Since moving out on my own, she gave me even better advice on how to do my laundry than my grandmother did.

Flashback:

“Okay Justin, here’s what grandma does..”

She then bends over to separate the clothes, accidentally farts but doesn’t notice it.

“First, you do what my school did when I was a little one. You separate the whites from the colored.”

Thanks racist grandma.

I don’t get to see my girflriend too much because I work so many hours a week that it’s almost impossible. That, mixed with her schedule, doesn’t make for much time to see her. When I do find time to see her, I fly from work to her house going 90 in a 55 MPH zone.

That being said, Monday I was speeding to her house from work. I was on a local highway and about 5 minutes from her house when the blue lights blinded my eyes from my rear-view mirror. Damn, I’ve just been pulled over.

The officer walked up to my car, asked how I was doing, then the usual “license and registration, please”. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I carry a gun for my profession and still had it strapped to my side, so I showed him my work ID and gun permit BEFORE whipping out the gun and saying:

“Here’s my gun! I’m allowed to carry one!”

Phew, won’t do that one again.

After looking over the permit, he eyeballed my crotch.

“I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car, sir. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Either he’s a gay cop, or he has a problem with the gun.

I was asked to put my hands on the roof of the car. He pulled my 357 out of its holder.

“I’m going to hold onto this while I run your license, if you don’t mind. You can step back into the car.”

I got in and shut my door.

“So, Mr. Justin, why were you driving so fast?”

At this moment, my bullshit dispenser started cranking. I could afford another ticket, but would rather not deal with an increased insurance rate. I started spitting a line of total BS.

“Well sir, my job doesn’t allow me to see my fiance very much. Since this is the first time in forever that I’m going to see her, I’m rushing to her house to pop the question. I apologize for speeding, I’m just so excited to see the look on her face when I ask her to marry me.”

“Do you have a ring?”

“No sir, can’t afford one.”

“Ah, poor kid.”

“I know. Could you do me a favor and write me a ticket? I’d like to look back on this night and laugh about the time I was pulled over and given a ticket the night I was rushing to propose to my wife.”

The reason I asked him this is to make my story seem to check out. I’m calling his bluff, if you will.

“Haha, you kids. I’ll tell you what– I’ll do you one better. I’ll escort you over there through traffic if you’re in that much of a rush. Wouldn’t that be more of a story?”

Damnit. The guy’s caught up in making a Kodak moment when all I want to do is get him off my back and eat tacos with my girlfriend… NOT propose. I’ve only known the girl for two months– not exactly ready for the big commitment yet.

“Yes sir, I do believe it would.”

After giving him her street name and address, he knew exactly where to go. Shit. I got in my car and followed him as his siren rang out. Traffic pulled to the side, peopled yielded at red lights, and cars stopped– all so I could have tacos with my girlfriend.

After getting to her house, the officer stepped out of his car and knocked on her door. She opened it and stared at him, then me in a look of confusion.

“Hi, I pulled this gentleman over a few minutes ago because he was in a rush to get over here so fast. Justin? Would you like to take it from here?”

I looked at Courtney, then the officer, who wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I tried to take her inside, but the officer stood right there in the doorway to witness the event. The things I’d do to get out of a ticket.

“Courtney… I know I’ve only known you a short time. But, in that short time <insert romantic bullshit>… Will you marry me?”

She wouldn’t say yes. She’s younger than I am and always talked about how she wanted to date a guy forever until making a commitment.

”YES JUSTIN! I WILL MARRY YOU!”

The officer smiled and clapped as Courtney clamped her arms around my body. The neighbors, who had been wondering why a cop car with its lights on was outside her house cheered.

Courtney’s parents called me and told me that they were proud that their daughter found such a nice guy.

Me? Well I got out of a ticket.

Fuck you. I’m engaged.

(source)

Once upon a time, I was an EMT.  For those of you not in the know, an EMT is an Emergency Medical Technician. EMTs, along with EMT-P’s or Paramedics, are on the front lines of emergency medical care. It’s an EMT or EMT-P that answers that “I’ve fallen and can’t get up call.”  It’s the EMT or EMT-P that you see pulling unfortunate victims out of a pile of tangled metal on the freeway. And it’s a life I wish I had never left.

When I was young, I never said “I want to be an EMT when I grow up.” I did say I wanted to be a veterinarian, or a fire fighter. As I got older, I realized that I could never be a vet. My business would go broke trying to save the animals past saving, or the beloved pets of those unable to pay, or my house would grow full to the rafters with the abandoned or abused pets that came into my care. You don’t give a crack addict crack — you don’t give an animal addict animals. Simple as that.

The idea then to be a fire fighter grew for a while in my mind, until I decided that while running into a smoky building might be an adrenaline rush, it wasn’t truly something I really wanted to do.

For a long time I floated from job to job, finding enjoyment in almost all of them, but never any true happiness. That was when I met Ric. Coming out of an abusive relationship, I had no desire to get back into another relationship quite so soon, but when a woman in a uniform approached me one day at the store I was a customer service rep in  and said, “That guy over there wants to know if you’re married, and he’s had a crush on you for a year,” I about fell over in shock.

A year?! After three years of being hit and talked down to and generally made to feel like I was worthless, some guy actually thought I was nice enough and attractive enough to have been infatuated with me for a year?! To say I was flattered, and stunned, was an understatement.

Still, Mr. Crush, a handsome guy who was very tall, had a very deep voice, and a strong jaw that made you want to just nibble on it for hours, didn’t come to talk to me that night. I was confused, but still floating on a cloud when I left work.

A few days later I saw him and the girl again, along with a couple of other folks, all in the same uniform. I didn’t know why they wore the uniforms or what they did, but I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. Finishing up my shift, I clocked out and left the store. Walking across a very dark parking lot, I got the distinct feeling I was being followed. Instead of turning around, I just made a beeline for my car. That was when I first heard his voice. “Hi there.”

Finally turning around, I found he was as attractive up close as he was from a distance, and his voice was just to die for. We talked for a few minutes and that’s when I found out he was an EMT. I had always been under the impression that firefighters were the ones in the ambulances, but was quickly educated on how that is not always true and the department he worked for had separate firefighter and EMT teams, though people could get certified to volunteer for both.

Our talk was cut short when his pager went off and a very loud voice informed him and his crew of a call they had to rush off to. With a promise to see me again soon, he was gone. As I watched the ambulance pull from the parking lot, I was certain of two things:

1. I was in a definite state of lust.
2. I was in love with the uniforms, lights, and sirens of the ambulance.

Our relationship started off wonderfully and as I asked more questions about being an EMT and was able to visit with and ride along once with the crew, Rick finally convinced me to take the training course. I had made quite a few EMT, firefighter, and police friends while dating him, and the heads of this volunteer department were excited that I was willing, and even eager, to give it a shot.  In addition, the department would pay for it and sponsor me.

In my first class, I knew emergency medicine was for me.

I graduated from the class with flying colors and started on my volunteer career as an EMT. It was the first time in my life I had ever truly felt fulfilled in anything I had ever done. I was a natural at it: compassionate, yet not so caught up in my patients that I took it home with me; adept at improvising; a quick study at learning new techniques, and truly driven in my job to be the best.

I knew then this was the life I wanted, a career in emergency medicine.  This was seventeen years ago, when I was nineteen. Wanting so badly to make a living in the medical field, I left my customer service job and went to work as a nurse aide at a nursing home. The job wasn’t overly terrible, as a majority of the residents were sweet as pie, but it wasn’t emergency work–it was changing sheets, giving baths, serving dinners, bringing water and generally being an underpaid, overworked go-fer.

Every day I looked through the newspapers for something I could do with my EMT certification. Finally I spotted an ad for a medical transport company. This was a great job and I really enjoyed it, but it was more straightforward transport of patients from their homes or nursing facilities to hospitals and doctors’ offices for medical appointments. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though, since most of our transports were regulars and we got to know them on a more personal level.

After being with the company for a little over a year, a position opened up on their 7pm to 7am shift. The shift consisted of two EMTs, two paramedics, and the dispatcher. I jumped at the chance to take this position! Not only would it serve me well, as I was (and still am) a dyed-in-the-wool night owl, but the overnight shift dealt mainly with emergencies for the nursing homes we contracted with. This meant real, honest emergency care.

I got a lot of experience in that job. Many many times of performing CPR, assisting the paramedics, losing patients, saving them, lots of broken bones, plenty of respiratory issues, and the list goes on. I truly felt I had found my calling, but inside of me, something felt like it was missing.

After a few months on the night shift, I got a new partner, Brian. Brian was probably the most gorgeous blond-haired, blue-eyed guy a girl could have ever laid eyes on. He only had eyes for one of the girls on the swing shift, though, and I was dating someone at the time, so he and I just became friends, great friends. I still miss him to this day.

Well Brian was unlike my previous partner, he liked to stay awake on slow nights and actually go out and do stuff–like hang around the ER of the Trauma III hospital in the city we worked in. Can you say heaven?  Okay, maybe that’s a really bad analogy for an ER, but still, I felt like I was home.

Oh sure, I had been in ERs many many times between my transports and emergencies with the ambulance company, and time with the volunteer squad, but we were always in, giving the report and patient to the staff, cleaning our equipment, then out again. It wasn’t until my partnership with Brian that I really got to spend time in an ER and see how things were done. It wasn’t until then that I knew that my life had one of two directions to go for true fulfillment for me–either as a paramedic, or as an ER nurse.

Unfortunately, time and circumstance have a way of drawing some people away from their dreams, and that’s what happened to me.

– Stay tuned for part II –

My three year old son, LG, returned today from a holiday trip to visit his father’s family in The South. I’m in The Midwest. Eight hours by car, an hour and a half by plane, an eternity away for my heart.

According to R-ex‘s own attorney’s divorce documents served so kindly to me, since R-ex and I are still living in the same household, we are to abide by the same manner of living that we had been before the divorce filing. Before the divorce filing, we had our son with us, in our home, for Christmas mornings. Before the divorce filing, and even after, my son had never spent more than a single night away from either parent. Suddenly R-ex decides it’s his right to take our son for 8 days and seven nights to The South.

Now had he spoken to me about it, as I do with him before I make any new changes to LG‘s routine, I would have said that I would have been happy for him to visit his extended family, family he did not know, but only for two or three days and definitely not on Christmas Day, OUR day. A full week away from the mother who has been with him day after day for three and a half years has to be traumatic for a child his age and I wanted him to have fun, not be traumatized.

Also, R-ex‘s family weren’t even celebrating Christmas until the day after, since that was the soonest all of the family could be together.

But he didn’t talk to me. He just bought the plane tickets and informed me a week before he was to go that he was going, taking LG, and there was nothing I could do about it. So there. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It was far too late to file a motion stopping him from doing that.

For five days, I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Anything to get my mind off of how much I missed my son. I had told R-ex that since LG‘s evening routine always included some snuggle time with me and telling me goodnight, that I would like him to call me every evening right before he was to go to bed so I could tell him good night.

Out of seven nights, guess how many times he called me right before LG‘s bed time? Once. Yes. Once. He also did not return with the two pictures I sent of myself for my son to have if he missed me. Yet he returned with the MP3 player that had been with these two laminated pictures. The two laminated pictures that had metal grommets in their corners by which they were attached to a metal ring, along with the MP3 player, that I had to use heavy duty pliers on to get closed.

Guess who is talking to their attorney tomorrow about changing my shared parenting plan to a sole custody one?

I want my son to know and love his father and his father’s family. But any man that selfishly puts his wants over the needs and mental well-being of a child, and also without a single thought or consideration for how the mother feels about it, is NOT a man I can trust with shared custody of our son.

Plus, with all of his family in The South, no friends in The Midwest, where we currently are at, and a job that is easily replaceable in The South where his family lives, it is a very realistic that R-ex will be moving sometime in the near future back to The South, or maybe The East Coast where his online tart lives. So getting sole custody now saves me a battle for it in the future when he moves out-of-state.

I think I have a pretty good case. I also have God on my side. I’m feeling confident, but I do have to admit that the heart-wrenching pain I felt when LG was gone for only eight days is something I am not looking forward to reliving — and I’ll be reliving it daily if I don’t win this custody battle.

I fought hard to even have my son. Three surgeries, two egg retrievals, two IVF cycles of feeling like a post-menopausal pin cushion, a complicated pregnancy with a surgery during the pregnancy to keep my son from delivering six months early, a very difficult labor where LG‘s heart rate kept plummeting and the epidurals… seven doses… were NOT working.

R-ex just had to get frisky with a plastic cup. Excuse me if I feel a tad bit bitter that he’s even bothering to fight me on this.

I truly think he is only doing this to try and hurt me. Seriously. You can rail against me all you want and say “That’s his son too and he loves him.” You can say it all day long. The thing is, I live with this man. I know how he shows his love and let me tell you, NO ONE that knows the real R-ex and sees him with his son is very impressed by his parenting skills. In fact, they are downright disgusted.

Let me give you a taste:

• When LG sticks his tongue out, even in play, his father smacks his face.
• When LG wants to play with R-ex, he is either sent away so R-ex can have more special alone-time with his computer, or he is plopped in front of the television for it to do the babysitting.
• R-ex wants to take LG from being home with his mother all day, to literally putting him in daycare for 10 to 12 hours a day and then an additional 1-3 hours an evening with a church acquaintance.  Let someone else raise your child much?
• R-ex bought himself a $150 flat-screen LCD computer monitor when his old one wasn’t all that old and was working perfectly. He bought himself numerous video games. He bought himself a space heater when the old one worked fine. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to buy his own son the D-Rex he wanted for Christmas, or even the BOOTS our son needs for the wintery climate we have here.
• He has never made a single doctor’s appointment for our child and I had to make him come with us to the ones I made.
• He has told me numerous times since our son was born that “sometimes I wish we’d not had him.”

Shall I go on?

So for those of you poo-pooing me because of my IVF/pain comment, just chew on those facts for a little while.

Anyhow, he’s home and I am so glad of it. I finally have a reason to smile again after a week of misery.

A new year, a new blog, and if all goes well, a new life. The whole story might come later, if at all. To give you the basics, though, I am a 35 year old woman going through a divorce filed by my spouse. I am trying desperately to not only keep custody of my hard-fought, hard-won son (IVF, anyone?) but am also trying to, after so many years of playing the doting housewife for first an adulterous spouse and then a relationship-challenged* spouse, finally start MY life.  It won’t be easy, it won’t always be fun, but it will certainly be worth it.

This blog is my journey into the new year and beyond. My divorce tribulations, my trials of going from stay-at-home mom and work-from-employee to becoming a stay-at-home mom and work-from-home employee and nursing student, then hopefully all the way to my new life as an ER nurse.

If you’re looking for drama and perhaps some laughs along the way, you may have come to the right spot.

So now for my very first update: I applied for college today. Next step is FAFSA. Then waiting… waiting for school to start in the fall. Waiting until this time next year when I can apply to the nursing program. Waiting, waiting, waiting. If all works out, though, a lot of opportunities will open up for me — not the least of which is a career in nursing.

The college I am applying to has a campus in Europe, This means that if my son’s father (let’s call him R-ex, the ex is for ‘ex’ and the r is for, well, something not very nice) moves back to his family’s home state and I get physical custody of our son, the little guy (let’s call him LG) will be visiting dad during summers. And that means SUMMER SEMESTERS IN EUROPE!  Woot!  And when I ask Magic 8 Ball if R-ex will be moving, it says with glee: Absolutely!

Lots of waiting for this flipping divorce too. I have to turn in a home inventory list to my attorney by next Wednesday, then wait for the mediation session scheduled for 1/29. I have a feeling it won’t go well — R-ex is showing strong indications that he has absolutely no intention of working with me in the best interests of our child. So much for the mandatory parenting class teaching him that mediation is win-win for the parties and the child and litigation is win-lose with the child caught in the middle.

I guess I shouldn’t jump the gun. Maybe he’ll surprise me and actually work with me in mediation so we can have an outcome we are both happy with that offers minimal negative impact to our son’s life.

But I’m not holding my breath.

—————–

* AKA brainwashed by friends and family, unable to make any decisions for himself, completely unwilling to take his wife’s advice, and generally as mature as a twelve year old who is only happy if he’s given his favorite toy. No, this is not an exaggeration. I wish his next significant other all the best of luck. She’ll need it, unless, of course, she’s a slavering nymphomaniac with enough patience and money to support his Internet, video game and anime addiction and a good enough actress to play the vacuous and darling little virginal Christian girl for his parents. Oh, and she can never disagree with them on anything. If she can do all that, she’s perfect for him.

No, I’m not bitter we’re getting a divorce. This stuff happens. This is my second one and I know life isn’t all unicorns and daisies. I could care less if he went off to DIAF, but he is the father of my child and I personally am very disappointed that my son is going to have that for a role-model. Hopefully the divorce will grow him up a bit. You never know.