My Husband Sucks At Bowling

With October being Domestic Violence Awareness Month, much of my time has been taken up by nonprofit events and speaking engagements, so I apologize for not having a "real" post ready this week. But what I can do, is catch you up the articles that I have written elsewhere, and also fill you in a bit on what else has been keeping us busy!

You Are Never Going To Believe This

************************

Heeeelllllooooo everyone!

My gosh, WHERE IS THE TIME GOING?

I feel like these last few months have just run over me; some great, other parts not-so-great, and a few moments have just been insane.

Can we talk about “insane,” for a few minutes here? Because here is something that I cannot even wrap my head around, and I’d love it if you all could join me in shock, awe, and horror:

Set Previous Stage: Do you remember the last time I took my ex to court? It was the 3rd or 4th time we had gone due to his failure to pay child support, and as usual he whined and cried that he was poor, basically homeless, and had not a penny to his name. Then, in a shocking twist, it came out that he was married and had new kids. He begged and pleaded for one more chance to make things right, because his “kids” (not referring to the ones he abandoned) needed him, and the judge bought the whole damn charade.

Set Recent Stage: Last December, after being given another opportunity to stay out of jail and pay down his arrearages, my ex stopped contributing to the kids medical bills, daycare costs, etc, and fell behind on paying child support. I offered him an agreement to get caught up, just so we could stay out of court, he denied it, and I filed a court petition.

Set Current Stage: My ex hired an attorney. Yep! The man cannot afford to pay his child support, yet he can afford an attorney to explain why he shouldn't have to pay child support. Oh but wait! He actually CAN afford support, because after lying on his financial affadavits all these years, after hiring an attorney who has the responsibility to have his client surrender certain financial documents to the other party (us), SURPRISE SURPRISE out comes the truth; the ex and his wife make nearly 100k a year.

You read that right (although at first I didn’t think I had).

I'm Super Excited To Post This!!

As I said a few weeks ago, we FINALLY moved out of the hotel, and back into our home, after a flood displaced us for a while.

It still wasn't quite finished when we moved back in, but we were so ready to get out of the hotel that we didn't even care.

Sick Children, Crazy Ex's, Disowned Family Members, And A Really Creepy Bug!

A friend and I took our kids to the zoo.

The biggest attraction came during lunch when we found a crazy looking caterpillar.

To say that we were interested yet terrified would be the understatement of the century.

At one point my friend got him to cling onto a stick and when she swung him in my direction I must have broken an Olympic record the way I (from a seated position) leapt over our table and escaped to safety.

No freaking way was I about to let that thing touch me!! Even the kids were flipping out as is evidenced by my friend's screaming son.

And This Is What Has Kept Us Busy

So, do you want to know what has been keeping me (and Mr. Attorney Man) busy?

Fighting with my state.

The child support office has STILL been withholding my child support payments, since last August! AN ENTIRE YEAR!!!!!

I don't want to delve into the entire story again, so if you are new to this blog I would suggest clicking here and after you read that one, click here before going on. That should catch you up.

But anyway, yes, so the child support office has continued to withhold my money, which makes absolutely no sense because what they do is based off a court order; a court order that they themselves have entered into the system wrong, but my case worker sucks, and has refused to look at the court order.

I'm not even kidding.

I've called her, Mr. Attorney Man has called her, and all she does is insult us. She told me that "as a little white girl" I should just get a better job and that Mr. Attorney Man shouldn't even have a law license. She then informed us that "you are free to haul my ass into court and I'll tell that judge how to do his job," because she knows that she has governmental immunity.

Legally she is protected and we can't take her to court.

Eventually I went to my state representative, state senator, and house republic leader. I provided them with copies of the court orders and a timeline of what had been going on, and they were FLOORED. They couldn't believe what was going on and made it their personal mission to help me.

Unfortunately they didn't get very far.

How ridiculous.

Because the child support office is protected by government laws, they weren't able to do anything either. We even re-wrote the court order with the child support states attorney and that didn't help.

Finally I went to the newspaper.

When some higher-ups found out about it, things started moving along. 

A conference call took place between Mr. Attorney Man, a big wig at the child support office in my state capital, a political leader, and myself. 

At first the child support big wig was less than pleased to be on the phone with us. In fact his conversation started with "I hear that you have been upset with the way your caseworker is handling the case, but we are well within our rights to be withholding Ms. Strong's money." But as the conversation went on and he realized that he was operating off an invalid court order, and that my caseworker had refused to enter my new order (and all of my issues were based upon the fact that they were erroneously working off of an invalid order), his tune changed quickly.

Everything was handed over to the state's legal department and a week later I received word that the new order was in the system, no more money would be withheld, I would be receiving a check for everything that was wrongly withheld from me, and that my caseworker had been placed on probation.

YAY!!!!

I got a refund check (which I turned around and handed right over to Mr. Attorney Man, boo hiss), but then a week later the stupid child support office defaulted the order in their system back to the wrong one, and they started withholding my money again.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

Three weeks later and I still haven't been able to get anyone to fix it.

I am SO ready to move on from this, not only because it's financially killing me and incredibly stressful, but because I have other things that I would rather be doing!!

In fact, here are a few of the other things that have been keeping me busy:

A few friends and I, including The Platonic Hubby, went to our town's free (I love free!) Patriotic Festival.

SO. FREAKING. BUSY!

It's funny how everyone waits for summer to get here so that they can kick back and relax, but then the minute it gets here we all take off running and throw relaxation to the side!

Here's just a snapshot of what the Strong family has been up to:

As I said before, someone graduated 1st grade.

Girl Child and her Teacher
Funny story, Mr. Attorney Man texted me as I was walking to the school to pick her up, and I replied back telling him not to text me again until I gave him the all clear. I wanted to take a video and incoming texts stop the recording!

Which of course meant we had to celebrate that they let us stay until the end of the year.

What better way to kick off summer than with a silly string fight?

Surgical Update And Other Total Randomness

Roughly three years ago I took The Boy Child to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing. He was quickly admitted and a course of treatment was started, but when he continued to decline instead of improve, it became apparent that the interventions that particular hospital was able to provide weren't going to be enough, and so they decided to transfer him to a larger hospital.

Getting strapped onto the ambulance gurney, purple hospital gown and all.

As I watched them load my son into the ambulance, I just kept thinking "I can't believe this is happening... again."

If you remember, my Girl Child was pretty sick as a baby and spent quite a bit of time in the intensive care unit. When The Boy Child was born, I had just gotten to a place with her where I felt optimistic about her future, and so as a precaution I had taken him in to see our geneticist. I wanted to rule out him having the same disorder that his sister and I have— or if he did have it, it was obviously important that I was aware of it.

When I took him to the appointment, he was so healthy that the geneticist decided not to run the outrageously expensive test, and by clinical diagnosis deemed him "not affected."

He was wrong.

Allow Me To Catch You Up...

Hey, so do you want to hear the updates to a couple of past posts?

Of course you do! No one likes to get halfway through a book and then find out the last chapter is missing, so here, allow me to catch you up.

The gerbil is no more.

Yep, remember the little critter that was loose in my house? Well I'm not exactly sure how he met his untimely demise, but I found him... hibernating... on my driveway. He hadn't gotten into any of my traps so I'm not sure what happened to him. He was actually really cute though so that did end up making me a little sad, but on the upside, yay, he wasn't in my house, and double yay, I didn't have to murder him!

I'll take my wins where I can get them.

Speaking of wins, do you remember when I asked you guys if I should accept a lunch date offer from an ex?

Do you want to know what I decided?

Take A Deep Breath

It’s been awhile since I generally updated you on my life, hasn’t it? Sometimes life just sort of snowballs on me and then suddenly I realize that I haven’t updated you on certain things in a while. So, I guess it’s about time that I catch you up on a few things!

The Boy Child has been out of his intensive therapy program since June and he is doing wonderfully. He is right on target developmentally with all the other kids his age. Never in my life did I think I would be so happy to have a three year old boy tearing my house apart, but there is nothing that I love more than the normalcy of a destructive toddler. He has some residual sensory processing issues that we are dealing with, but I am nothing but optimistic about his future.

He is currently in preschool and already has a girlfriend. Yikes that boy, I’m going to need to keep my eye on him! Because we live in farmland he has become enthralled with tractors. Being harvest season, we spend much of our time outside watching them harvest the fields. Before you have kids you hear phrases such as "falling in love with it through a child's eyes," but until I had kids of my own I never really grasped how deep that concept runs. I now find myself squealing with joy when I hear the tractor engines roaring, knowing that my Boy Child is going to be thrilled, and I am going to be thrilled watching him be so happy.

***************************

The Girl Child is the one that I am the most astounded with though. I’ve only briefly talked about her medical issues on this blog, but she had a REALLY rough start in life. She has a genetic disorder that truly threatened to derail her future and just like my Boy Child, I really never thought she would get to the point in which she is at now. Before she was even two weeks old she was readmitted back into the hospital and for a while, I really wasn't sure what the outcome would be.

Four months old and even her father was getting nervous.

It's About Time For Some Updates!!

It's been a while since I have updated you on previous postings, so I figured it was probably time to do that!

As I said in my previous post The “Exorcism Is Near,” the nutcase neighbors are moving!! One select finger has been waving them good-bye every time I drive by their house. That probably makes me a terrible person, but hey, they are moving so at least I'll be a happier terrible person! They aren't moving fast enough for my taste but at least they are getting out of town. I can’t believe they even lived here this long seeing as how their house is significantly smaller than mine and they have two large dogs plus their daughter.

Speaking of housing sizes, have you guys ever noticed anything strange in the pictures that I post of my house? If you remember in my post “On My Way to Homelessness” I talked about how my ex used to essentially chuck the credit card at me after an assault and tell me to "do something to the house." It was a double edged sword back then. I always felt a little sick actually taking him up on that offer, but to be honest my life was in such chaos that a part of me felt that if I could make my surroundings perfect and beautiful, maybe my life would be too.

FAIL.

Either way, I now understand the flaw in that reasoning and when my ex split and left me with nothing, I sold all my belongings because we needed money. I'm not kidding, I sold pretty much everything that wasn't literally attached to the house. Except for the furniture that we utilize on a daily basis, I sold it all. I would have sold the TV right off the wall if I could have found a buyer. So how does all this look now? Well I have a great house with not a whole lot in it. People often come over and they are like “Um…where is all your stuff. Like your ‘stuff.’ Like.....all that stuff people always have. Why don’t you have any stuff? You only have furniture. Where is your stuff?”

No small appliances here! I literally have dishes, one pot, one pan, and a baking pan. No joke.

Updates!!

So I figured it was probably about time to update you all on some of the previous posts.

And before I start, on a totally unrelated side note, I just wanted to let all of you know that I am typing this post while wearing adult footie pajama's, eating popcorn, and drinking wine, under a giant blanket on my couch. And you know what? This scenario is every bit as awesome as I anticipated it being.

Anyways, carry on.

Let's start with "That Time I Found Out I Might Be Going To Hell." Remember dweeb face? Actually turned out to be a really great guy. We casually dated for a while, but he was ready to get serious much faster than I was, so I let him go. Great guy, some girl will be lucky to have him!

Remember my Total Whack Job mother-in-law from "Remember That Time You Finally Told Your Ex Mother-In-Law Everything You Have Ever Wanted To Say To Her? I Do Because It Was Today." Well, I have not heard from her since I hung up the phone on her, and I have to say, not only does it feel very liberating, IT TOTALLY ROCKS.