Oh, I still want you. Don’t know if I need you, dear readers, but I want you. But what is there to say? K. continues to be who he is. He was, for example, 47 minutes late last Wednesday because (I surmise) he stayed at Jezebel’s and didn’t have the correct clothes for his parents to take him out to a Fancy Dinner at Superexpensive Trendy New Restaurant of His Choosing, so he had to drive all the way back to his buddy’s in the ‘burbs. This took precedence over a)h... Read Full Story

The stasis was before I got home and: 1)Thing One apparently got rowdy in the bath, so K. angrily said, “I’m leaving” and left the two children alone there. Thing One promptly slipped and fell. In the bath. I ran to help him. Thing Two slipped and fell while I was picking up Thing One. 2)Thing One continued to hit, and hit K. on the leg in the hall. K. yelled loudly to never do that and then shoved Thing One, by one arm, roughly toward his room. Sigh. Thing One was crying an... Read Full Story

So. Things are settling into a sort of stasis. K. is not stellar, but he’s at least been on time and present on his two afternoons a week. I am trying to do what my old friend suggested and view him as a babysitter. He’s an adequate babysitter, and yet at times I’m struck by how the scene, players, and script seem to mimic so exactly the time when we were married. This is not as incongruous as it sounds, I realize, because we still have the same problems: we don’t comm... Read Full Story

Hello, Internets. I’m kind of tired. We’re back from the road trip through California that followed the plane trip to Hawaii. If I were going to really do this justice, I would write four posts: 1)IN WHICH pictures of K. and Jezebel, her arm round his neck, on the beach appear in my Facebook newsroll, and I am forced to reflect that a)she, at least (who posted the pictures and tagged him), appears to have come out with the relationship he repeatedly denied and b)he has ripped off ... Read Full Story

Someone’s been drinking Mai Tais. I’m up at five Hawaiian time on Day Three of the Webber family reunion. That’s right; the kids and I flew halfway across the Pacific, on a journey you probably already know gave me grave misgivings, to attend a reunion put on by my ex’s grandparents and which would include seventeen members of my ex’s extended family. In a house. Together. Plus the three of us. There are advantages. Back when the reunion was being planned, K. and... Read Full Story

Yeah. Right. So: “You’ve eviscerated all goodwill. You changed my son’s name. Fuck you.” And therefore, he is paying $400 less in child support tomorrow. Because apparently, the child support is “my only way to express my protest.” And apparently, it has nothing to do with the children. Apparently, it’s all about me. I tried talking to him about the importance of our having a good working relationship. I tried asking him if I had treated him with the ... Read Full Story

We’re getting used to it. You probably figured that out already, but the rhythm of life in its new configuration, up to and including K.’s parenting time and his occasional flakiness (in his defense, he has been no more than ten minutes late recently — the state says after fifteen we don’t have to wait for him). Perhaps even up to, and sometimes including, K.’s parenting, which by all accounts (even his adoring mother’s) leaves much to be desired. Part of i... Read Full Story

With apologies to the documentary of similar title, which is far more serious (and well worth watching), that’s what I’ve been thinking this week. Because Thomas Wong is no longer with us. It was a joke K. and I used to have. Somehow, I ended up choosing both children’s first names, which are unusual, historic, Latinate names that very few people in this country have, and K. ended up choosing their middle names. Well, specifically, in my 20th hour of labor with Thing One, K.... Read Full Story

So today was the hearing. The procedure in our state is that you have to post your intention to change the child’s name, and you have to serve the other parent with thirty days’ notice. So I did that. I had my dear old friend Jules, who’s like a big brother with me, go into K.’s work and serve him a month ago. And then we waited. I fretted and read and researched and prepared and guessed and paced, and I don’t know what K. did, but we didn’t mention it to e... Read Full Story

Sometimes I listen to the radio in the morning commute. Usually, I try to download some podcasts of RFI so that I can provide my children with incidental exposure to French that is not just me speaking it, but lately I’ve felt paralyzed, slow, stupid, and heavy, and everything is a huge and Sisyphean weight to lift, so I’ve defaulted first into the local NPR affiliate and then into the local “alternative rock” station, which plays thirty-year-old songs that the 25 to 3... Read Full Story