life inversion

Well, I have no plans for New Years Eve, probably just going to watch some movies and have a good day off the next day.

I feel like I am being so dramatic all the time now, every little thing just sets me off. I've always been 'uptight' but dramatic was never the way one would describe me, far from it. I always just feel on edge now, every little thing becomes so very insulting to me.

I feel that the two primary things contributing to this state of mind are 1) My living situation and 2) The Delays of my divorce (and the reasons behind the delays).

When I moved here in April of 2006 the plan was for me to just work a couple months and live with my mom so I can save some money, then I was to move to Phoenix once I had saved enough to move our stuff down there. I was probably going to be living down there by the end of summer.

Obviously things changed quite a bit, but underneath it all I have been continuing to stay with my mom. All of our stuff has remained packed for 20 months, I had only kept out the very basic necessities (like clothes). I've lived in someone elses house for too long, I've never even really treated it like a home, eventually they made their office into my bedroom, but I am surrounded by their furniture, pictures of my Step-Dad's family. I've done what I can to make this feel like the boys' home, but it does not feel like mine, and I think that is because I have never let it.

I need my own home, I need to have my own pictures on the wall, pictures I haven't seen in far too long, I need my little ceramic Wizard Frog that always watched me type at the computer, with his little crystal ball that says "Courage". Speaking of which, I need my Courage back. I feel like I am holding myself back, like I can't make it without a 'partner'. And that is not why I want a girlfriend, by the way.

That 'courage' segue was wholly unintentional. I am going crazy living here, what am I going to do with a girl anyway? Bring her back to my Mom's place once we get to that point of our relationship? Maybe bring her into my 8'x8' bedroom that has 4'x4' worth of free floor space if you take the chair out of it!?!

I wouldn't say I feel homeless, that would be inaccurate. My mom and Rick have provided us with a very stable living envioronment, I just don't feel comfortable here, I don't feel like its my "safe haven" it just doesn't feel like a home. And I feel it has finally started to drive me crazy.

I think I was able to keep it together pretty well for awhile, once I filed for divorce I had clear goals in mind and things seemed to be moving fast. I was a nervous wreck ofcourse, but I was fighting a huge uphill battle that my lawyer and I didn't believe I could win at first.

The problem is that I should have been divorced 4 months ago. I am surrounded with the unknown, once things are decided, regardless of the outcome, I can deal with it, I will be able to move forward instead of standing stagnant. Its going to be 2 more months before my next scheduled trial date, and with the 2 prior delays I dont feel like its very solid.

I guess I just want to say I am sorry. To everyone, I am so centered around my own 'situation' all the time, it is always on my mind, it is always effecting my mood and attitude every day. Sometimes I unintentionally ignore people, sometimes I come on way too strong, sometimes I don't come forward at all. All my emotions, even basic ones, just feel so uninhibited at times, raw.

On that note, I am going to bed.

Merry Christmas

I was not prepared for just how horrid this Christmas was going to be without my children.

At the airport on Sunday I gave my kids as many hugs and kisses as I could before they left. I watched them walk through security, tears welling up in my eyes as they turned out of sight. It was a lonely drive home.

I miss them so much, I only got to speak to each one of them for a few seconds, I don't even know what they got for Christmas down there, and I am afraid that Nicole bought a present for Tristan that I got him as his present from Santa Claus. If she did, she did so knowing I had already gotten it for him and that I wasn't giving it to him until they return on January 6th. I hope I am wrong though, it would be an entirely new low for Nicole. We arranged for a specific time for me to call and she never answered, over an hour later all got was rushed "Hi Daddy" 's from them as they got ready to go to the next place on their busy christmas day schedule. She had 'Eric' give them haircuts even though I told her I didn't want much cut off because its winter and there is no need for them to be walking around with so little hair on their heads. Did she listen? no.

She is also still arguing with me that it was ok for her to take them to see the Simpsons movie even though it has tons of minor swearing, violence, sexual humor and even shows a glimpse of Bart's penis. I don't even let them watch the TV show, let alone the movie. Fuck, South Park bleeps out most of the words, I might as well let them watch that! Oh thats right, I actually give deep and meaningful thought to the way I raise my children, as oppose to "buy them whatever I can to keep them as happy as possible", Like Mother Like Daughter. But at least its not her money right? 

What? Am I being too harsh?

Today sucked, Christmas totally sucked this year. I wasn't depressed, but I just didn't want to participate. I still had fun playing games and opening presents, but I just didn't want to be there at all. Its the beginning of the end! What am I supposed to do? go about my life whenever my children aren't present? Make plans for christmas that I happen to include them in on the years "I" get them?

Sure, I want to open up and spread out, have my own life outside of my kids, but still dedicate that life to them. How am I supposed to do that? I girlfriend would help I suppose, but I have a better chance of attracting flys.

Russ comes onto me more than any girl ever has, and I suppose that is my fault. I either don't say enough to them or I say way too damned much.

Is dinner too much to ask? Am I down on one knee holding up a ring on our first date or something? At this rate I'll never have another girlfriend unless I meet a girl that likes me and happens to be rather forward on her own. I'm sorry lady, I don't know how to introduce myself to you without drooling. Yes, I want to stop staring at your breats, but I know that as soon as I do I will say something incredibly stupid, and yes I would rather look like an asshole than a dumbass.

God, I am so frustrated. I hold myself back so much, I am afraid of holding my children back as well. I am a good father and I know this, I love my children, I provide for them and I fight for them. I will never stop doing any of those things. 

Is it too much to ask that I can go on a date without talking about the fact that I want to get married again someday, have more kids? Yes, for our first date I want to concieve our first child together and while we are in the middle of the 'conception process' I want a priest standing over us performing our wedding ceremony.

You know what I want? I want to have more kids, and yes I do need a lady for that, hopefully one that is nice to me and wants to raise kids for the next 20 years like me. I want things for myself as well, I am taking steps as we speak to hopefully form the foundation for a Freelance Web Development career. I have also written the first several chapters of a book, though I haven't put down the discipline neccessary to get through it all the way yet. Sure, I am not going to be quitting my day job any time soon, but its time for me to start somewhere.

God damn, I want 6 or 8 kids! I dont know if thats true or not, 4 is always my 'practical' answer. I want to have a family, raise children, play with my grandchildren and then die. I could write 20 books, build the worlds best webpages and become a financial genius and make ga-jillions of dollars, but "having a family, raising my children and playing with my grandchildren" will always be the shining point of my life. The best thing I can do, doing it the best I can.

Im sorry, I am going back and forth on all sorts of issues. But I am Frustrated. I have been waiting so freakin long for the judges decision, trying to prepare what my reaction will be regardless of his judgement. Hoping that my trial won't be delayed AGAIN and that I can spend Valentines Day 2008 unmarried (note that I didn't use the word single *wink* *wink* ladies).

Ill probably post another blog soon, but here is a list:

Happy that I found my brother and sister

Thankful for being the primary caretaker of my children (so far)

Pissed that I am seperated from them for this WHOLE winter break

frustrated that I dont have a girlfriend, though I want one for several reasons

Happy that I am starting to get things back on track (though slowly)

I hope everyone's christmas was fun, I went winless for games this time around but I was bidding in pinocle like a freakin madman. I had fun, despite all this crap exploding out of me in this blog. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Cookies

So I've been chatting with my brother Kyle online fairly often since we found each other on MySpace, my sister Shawnna added me to her friends list so hopfully we will start chatting too. I am pretty excited about the possabilities. I never had a dad, not really, I see pictures of him on their MySpace accounts and he doesn't even look familiar to me. Aside from when I was an infant, I have seen him only twice in my life. I've only met Shawnna and Kyle once, 14 years ago when they were 4 and 1, now they are 18 and 15!

Now that I have re-completed my collection of Friends, I am about to jump into season 9! I am super excited!

I don't really have too much to say right now, I am just running around bored on the internet. Randomly searching for people I know, have known or might know. I think I've found a few people I work with.

I am feeling almost sick to my stomach though, my first Christmas without the boys.. They will be leaving in less than 48 hours and they will be gone until the 6th of January, this totally sucks. I am going to have a lot of free time on my hands, but I cherish the moments I have with my kids. They will be coming back up again though, 2 weeks isn't that long of a time right? I'll find something to keep me busy. Ofcourse the best part is I get to hang out with my ex-wife for several hours while we wait for their plane lol, I'm sure we'll get along.

The boys and I made a bunch of Christmas cookies tonight and then sat down to watch Underdog together, Friday nights are movie nights! Normally Saturday nights are game nights, but tommarow we will be in Coeur d'Alene having a mini-christmas with my best friend (and cousin), we will hopefully have a chance to check out the Resort's christmas lights too!

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was thinking about waiting before considering dating again, but I don't think waiting is neccessary. I just need to make sure to keep it local and keep it simple, not that it can't be serious or become serious, just a simple start would be nice though. Someone I have things in common with.

I guess I like Friends

Well, I have completed my collection of Friend's for the 2nd time. The only thing I am missing now is a particular disc from Season 5. Friend's is such an awesome TV series, my addiction to it is humerous to some I suppose. I am not ashamed and now I just need to make sure I aquire the Scene It! Friend's Edition DVD game.

I won a miniature painting competition up in Coeur d'Alene, I submitted my Orc Shaman into the Amateur Division. I'm pretty psyched about it.

On a cool note I managed to get in contact with my brother Kyle, I've sent a message off to our sister Shawnna as well and I hope I can start communicating with her too. She is 18 and he is 15, he is a freshman in High School and learning to drive, she just moved out on her own and is going to Walla Walla Community College.

I just recorded two hour long specials on the BBC, Eddie Izzard! I LOVE Standup Comedy but I hand't really heard of him until a friend of mine introduced him to me earlier this year. I think one of them is the TV special that I have a CD version of.

Well, on a more serious note to followup my last few blogs. Today is Sunday, my boys are leaving for Phoenix in a week exactly. They are supposed to come back 2 weeks later on January 6th. When they went down there for the summer Nicole tried some shit with her lawyer in the last couple weeks. It didn't work but I won't put it past her again.

On a more pressing issue, if the judge's decision comes anytime in the next three weeks and he decides in her favor than Jadon may not be coming back from Phoenix... so I will probably be holding my breath quite a lot.

Fear & Progress

Well, wednesday night was awesome! The daycare had a christmas dinner, each class got up in front of everyone and sang too! The Bears (Tristan's class) sang the ABCs and Jingle Bells (while the little dinos used bells). The Firebirds (Jadon's class) sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It was totally awesome, I got it on video and I will post it as soon as I've edited it together.

Jadon and Tristan are both doing great with their letters (identifying them, pronouncing them and writing them). Jadon esspecially has made some significant progress, once his teacher and I agreed that he was afraid of answering questions incorrectly, we unlocked a wealth of knowledge he was afraid to use.

The boys are going down to Arizona for Winter break. They will be gone from Sunday December 23rd thru Sunday January 6th... long time, I only get 1 day of the break... Its stupid but it would have gone all the way to a hearing and with everything else going on I just didn't want to deal with court again so soon.

I don't know what to say really, so much has been weighing on my mind since the hearing. I feel more stressed now than at any point during this entire process. My chances are still good, and the process is far from over, but I feel very defeated right now. I don't even know how to continue the fight.

Its not the chance of losing that bothers me, when I started this process I was skeptical that I would even have a chance to win at all. What has ultimatly defeated me is the realization of just how far Nicole is willing to take this. The lies she submitted to the court when this process began were nothing compared to trying to seperate the kids. She knows full well I am Jadon's father and agrees that I should continue in that capacity and she even agrees that I deserve rights as his father. But she is willing to trample over all of that to win.

She agrees seperating the boys at such a monumental and sketchy time in their life could be horrible to both of them, yet she is more than willing to do it to win.

Partly this makes me feel even more determined to fight for what I believe to be right, but despite that it crushes me.

I am at a significant crossroads in this process. I can make a deal with Nicole that would secure my adoption of Jadon, that would get me 50/50 custody of both boys and allow the kids to stay up in Washington until the end of the school year. As long as I agree to move to Phoenix Arizona before the end of the summer of 2008.

I say it is a crossroads because there are three different possabilities.

1) I propose a deal similar to the one above right now while we are waiting to hear the judges decision about my rights to Jadon. Hopefully having enough legel weight to convince Nicole to give me primary custody while in Phoenix instead of 50/50.

or I wait to hear the decision, which is what a friend and my lawyer both feel I should do.

2) We hear the decision and it is against me. I lose Jadon, but propose the deal above and hope she agrees instead of pushing it to trial (she would agree to it, in fact she is ecstatic at the idea).

This is what I wish to prevent, I can't risk losing Jadon. Its too big of a risk.

3) We hear the decision and it is for me, I could potentially move on to secure a full victory in trial.

With the last option though, there is still reason to consider avoiding the trial and proposing this deal (much easier to convince Nicole of agreeing to give me primary custody if I move). I don't know if I could survive an appeal. She hasn't spoken about this, but if she is willing to totally trample all over our children to win than I feel she would definitly be willing to push this to the Court of Appeals. My lawyer is confident that they would not overturn our judges decision (he has had very few decisions overturned). My main concern is if she would even represent me, and if she couldn't than I could't defend against an appeal. She said, and I quote, "I've never done an appeal, I don't do them".

When I spoke with her about my concerns in this regard she kind of half indicated that she would represent me if it went that far, but she didn't come out and say it and it still feels unsecured to me.

I feel like I just want to end this and control it as much as I can in the process. I want to get the most important things (not interupting the school year, not seperating the kids, adopting Jadon, having 50/50 or primary custody) and protect the kids from a never ending divorce where their mother has only acted in her own interests and not our childrens.

So right now I wait. Ill probably be posting it pretty quick once we hear the judges decision, which could come at any time between now and Mid-February.

On a final note, I've decided to not worry about dating at all until this is fully resolved. While I am interested in someone right now and I would love it if she wanted to be a part of my life, she just doesn't. I mean, there is no point in starting something if the chances are high that I will be moving 1500 miles away anyway. And even if we did I couldn't picture her, or anyone, moving that far away with me after such a short span of time.

Hard Day

I have to admit, aside from brief descriptions to summarize the event, or merely saying it happened, I haven't thought much or talked much about when I finally found out Nicole was cheating on me.

I was sitting at work today and I don't even know what happened, I just started thinking about it and I didn't realize how much pain it still made me feel.

After Nicole moved to Phoenix we talked on the phone a lot, almost everyday. Aside from the distance it felt like we were still together to a certain degree and we would even have a little bit of "phone sex" from time to time. From time to time the idea of "breaking up" would be discussed, but ultimately I wanted us to find a way to be together again and work out our problems as a family.

Nicole was having some issues and I missed the boys terribly so we agreed they should come up and stay with me. When we saw each other finally after 2 months apart she didn't even want to hug me or anything, it made me feel very uneasy as it was sharply contrasted to our conversations. 2 weeks later she called me and told me in a very difinitive tone that she wanted a Divorce.

I still stuck to the idea of us "working it out" and she caved into the ideas a bit, but she would bring divorce up as an idea fairly reguarly. I also started getting the feeling that she was starting to see other people but she would tell me she wasn't, sometimes I would even guess at a specific person (her supervisor from Qwest) and she would say no. I became very supicious but ultimatly I came up with a plan for us to get back together for 1 full year, get into couple's therapy and really try, I was even willing to move to Phoenix. She did not say no to this plan, she said she would think about it. This was about 2 weeks prior to Jadon's 5th birthday in October of 2006.

As part of me offering this deal I also decided in my mind to set my suspicions aside and trust what she was telling me. We planned for her to come up for Jadon's birthday party, over the next 2 weeks we spoke about the possability of this plan and she never said no to it or gave any indication that it was off the table. Then, on Friday October 6th she arrived at the airport.

She acted strangly around me and didn't hug me or anything, I was already crying because I hadn't seen my wife since May, and that was just for a moment, I hadn't spent any time with her since the very beginning of March. I was hoping this weekend would be a first step towards really reconciling and hopefully lead to us getting back together.

She had a weird looking suitcase with her and I asked who's it was, she said it was her friend Wendy's (who is real) and while I was skeptical I believed her. She was also texting someone a lot who she also said was Wendy, which I really did believe (though it turned out to be Eric the whole time). So we are driving down to Clarkston from Spokane, the boys are asleep and she and I start to talk.

I stupidly decide I want some confirmation from her in person and I ask her if she has been seeing anyone.. her response shattered my mind and my heart.. the answer was yes.

She indicated she had started seeing someone "casually", I immediatly fell apart. I immediatly asked if it was Erik, and she said no. Her first story was that she was dating someone casually, they had been on 12 dinner dates and hadn't slept together yet. Immediatly this didn't click in my mind as a plausible answer so I dugg deeper, each time she answered she revealed some truth but more lies. The final story, which I pieced together over the course of the weekend and the week after she left, is that as soon as the kids were gone she began dating her ex-supervisor Erik, within 2 weeks they were living together.. (which if you read above coincides with when she called me and told me she definitly wanted a divorce).

The weekend was horrible, I was in tears nearly the whole time, I completely segregated myself from my family and I nearly ruined Jadon's birthday party. I cried myself to sleep every night for the next couple weeks, and esspecially while Nicole was there. I couldn't even control myself I would just break down sobbing and crying. As hard as the last 7 months had been, this was my breaking point. Ever since then I have been different emotionally, all my walls and bariers have dissipated and see me and my emotions in their raw form, even now.

Recalling this unexpectedly while at work took me by suprise, it was like suddenly remembering some long forgotten nightmare.

I am over Nicole, I am over our marriage, I wish this divorce would just end. But regardless, I will carry the pain of her betrayal with me forever.