Small world

I'm going to go a little crazy here and actually give a description and

a pseudonym to each of the Little Ones. I'm going to call "my two"

Mickey and Minnie. Minnie is 5 and my little girl. Mickey is my youngest, a boy, age 3. Hub's daughter, "Daisy", is 6 and is the one at the center of the custody fight from hell.

The "bio-dad" of Mickey and Minnie is "Dick", who I think I've mentioned here before. He hasn't seen them in almost two years, doesn't call them, owes $11,000+ in child support and has basically abandoned them. He's a classic deadbeat. As soon as I track him down, he's gone again. At one time, he was more involved with the kids, when they were really little. I mean, they're still pretty little now, but they were really little then, like 1 and 2.

Dick and I met through friends back in 1997.I was 26 and the single mom of just one child, Beavis. Dick was looking really good at the time, since he'd been working framing houses and was all tan and buff and his hair was sunbleached blonde. I remember what he looked like at that time and I know why I was so hot for him. We'd hang out at my neighbors house and it was summer, so he'd have his shirt off and he had these old levi's cut-offs that he wore (with no underwear) and he was tan and his body was so hot, it made me crazy. I got the impression he was a little "sketchy" and wasn't so much interested in any kind of long term relationship thing with him. My main interest in him was sex. We hooked up in August of that summer and fucked the shit out of each other. He was the first guy to just make me come without extensive coaching by me and he did it often. Soon, it became a love thing. I blame that whole relationship on my pussy, because if it weren't for wanting to fuck him so bad, I never would have hooked up with him.

The relationship got crappy within months, as Dick turned out to be a jealous psycho. So many times, early on, I saw things that should have been a clear reason to end the whole thing, but I ignored them. Plus, he started living with me and was impossible to get rid of after that. He would drink and get nasty, then after I pretty much gave him notice to move out, he quit drinking and that lasted for a year and a half. But then he had his crack binges, which he never did around me, he'd disappear altogether for those. We fought all the time, and he was constantly accusing me of fucking around on him--to the point where it was ridiculous (like, I'd go grocery shopping and take like 10 minutes longer than he estimated my trip to be, he'd flip and it was like, "I had time to get all these fucking groceries and cheat on you in an hour and 10 minutes?"). I thought I was in love but I was truly miserable, even though I didn't "know" I was miserable. I gained like 25 pounds in my first 6 months with him. Moo. Then I got pregnant with Minnie and really felt stuck with him. We moved and got an apartment together just a month before Minnie was born, more rent and it was decided that I would stay home with Minnie because she was "too young" for daycare. Thus began the real downward spiral. I'd gained 70+ lbs, I felt like I was stuck, and I'd lost so much freedom--the freedom to be me, to have friends, to do stuff. I had to tailor my movements to avoid fights with him. And once Minnie

arrived, he started treating Beavis, who was 7, like a second class

citizen. And then he started drinking again. The last 9 months were

really hell. The best memories I have of that time were the times it

was just me and the kids.

Finally, when Minnie turned one, I got a really good paying job with a large discount brokerage house, and that income gave me the courage to get rid of him. He wasn't paying any bills or rent, we were facing eviction, and he was doing whatever he wanted, which was crack and alcohol. He was threatening me and then he started

threatening Beavis and that was it. I went to court, got a restraining order and had the cops get his ass out of there. It was a liberation that I'll never forget. March 2, 2000. Independence Day. I managed to catch up on the rent and kept the apartment and took care of my two little ones. Then I found out I was pregnant. I was actually about fourand a half months pregnant when I woke the fuck up and smelled the coffee and admitted to myself that I was pregnant. I had some denial going on for a while but it was a good thing in a way, because had I known I was pregnant, I never would've gotten rid of him. I was pretty upset about having another kid, I'd had my own superstitions about "the 3rd child", I never wanted 3 kids, only two (a boy and a girl and I had both), and besides I was done with my two year and nine month trip through hell with Dick and then I'm fucking pregnant with his kid AGAIN.

But I dealt with it and worked and got ready for the baby. Basically by myself, cuz while he kept seeing Minnie and once in a while paid child support and constantly begged to have me back, he didn't do anything in preparation for the baby, except argue with me about the name, as he didn't like what I'd chosen. Too bad, so sad.

Three months after I threw Dick out, while I was 8 months pregnant, I was set up with Hub. I wasn't particularly looking for a relationship, in fact it was my plan to be single for a good two to three years, but I gave it a shot going out with Hub and he was just so great. He had kids, too, with custody of two of them, and just really had his shit somewhat together, even though he was still a couple months from being divorced from The Douchebag and she had dragged his ass through the mud. I hid Hub from Dick for a good four months beacuse I was still a little scared of him.

This story is getting long. Anyway. I worked with DIck as far as the kids went because even though we had our differences, I didn't feel he should be deprived of his kids. We went through the courts for custody and support in 2001. It was so amicable, and we got joint legal custody and he got all kinds of visitation. And it worked for a few months. Then he just started sketching out again, and in 2002 he saw the kids less and less, blew them off, never took them for his visitation. I never said no at first, but when he started not being in touch for months at a time, I had to put my foot down. Even though Minnie was so little, like 2, 3, she knew him and he was fucking with her head. Finally, he'd been gone for so long, and by then Hub and I were married (which Dick referred to me being "re-married" even though we had never been married to each other), the kids just started calling Hub "Daddy", because he basically is. Dick doesn't do shit for them.

I'm preparing to finally do something about the custody arrangement in court. I don't see why someone who is a stranger to my kids now should have the right to just pop in on a weekend and say "Hey, it's my weekend". Which might not happen but you never know. So today I went out looking for him. I network through people to try to locate him, and I know he has a girlfriend who works at a local breakfast diner. I also know he goes there a lot. So today Hub and I took a ride. I went in looking for him and he wasn't there, but I ended up talking to his girlfriend, asking her to get a message to him to call me so I can talk to him about the kids. That was pretty nutty. And it turns out his girlfriend is a woman that I know of. My friend, Gina, from work, was married before and the marriage split up because her husband at the time cheated on her with that woman! It's a small world. And Gina knows Dick because Dick was working for the roofing company that put a new roof of Gina's house. Which, by the way, Gina and her husband, "Bud", bought their house from Hub, as it was the house he bought when he was married to The Douchebag. And the population around here isn't that small, my town's population is roughly 40,000, and the city right over the bridge, where I was born and raised and lived until 2 years ago, is about 90,000. It's just a small world.

I think that's enough for one day. Big details, ey?

Ciao!

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