Many Changes Coming

I hate day­light sav­ings time. It’s a sil­ly fic­tion. Okay, all human time­keep­ing sys­tems are a fic­tion, but dammit, why can’t we just stay con­sis­tent with them instead of mon­key­ing with them twice a year?

I want a sub­scrip­tion to this mag­a­zine. Real­ly. I haven’t seen it on the shelves in any book­stores yet, though, and I don’t usu­al­ly sub­scribe to any­thing sight unseen.

There are lots of changes com­ing in our lives.

The cus­tody case con­tin­ues slow­ly. We have a medi­a­tion ses­sion on May 16 and a hear­ing on May 20.

The guardian ad litem is sup­posed to vis­it the ex-wife’s place this week while the kids are there for spring break. real_pochacco has said that he wants to go live with his moth­er whether or not lit­tle­fire­fae goes (he’d orig­i­nal­ly said he did­n’t want to go with­out her). He’s 14, so legal­ly he can go if he likes. We’re plan­ning to just have the two girls liv­ing with us right after school lets out.

We real­ly think he’ll come back here before too long, though. Obvi­ous­ly, we don’t want any­thing bad to hap­pen, but we also don’t believe that his moth­er can or will pro­vide a healthy home for him. What she will do is give him far more free­dom than we do, and that is very entic­ing at that age. He’s very imma­ture for his age and has repeat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed a lack of respon­si­bil­i­ty that has dic­tat­ed the rules we have in place. We just hope he does­n’t have to learn any life lessons the hard way there. It’s like­ly that he will, though—that seems to be the only way most peo­ple ever do learn them.

The cus­tody bat­tle is real­ly about where lit­tle­fire­fae will live. Her behav­ior con­tin­ues to be very wor­ri­some. We took her to a new psy­chi­a­trist last week, who added Risperdal to her med­ica­tions and began taper­ing off her Pax­il dosage. She’s already much calmer, so we think we’re on the right track. Her moth­er is very much against med­ica­tion in gen­er­al and this type of med­ica­tion (antipsy­chot­ic) in par­tic­u­lar. We can only hope she’s con­tin­u­ing to see that lit­tle­fire­fae actu­al­ly take her meds prop­er­ly while she’s there. She has at least made state­ments that make it clear that she does know that stop­ping the med­ica­tion sud­den­ly can be dangerous.

She con­tin­ues to behave in obses­sive ways, though, steal­ing sharp objects and secret­ing them around the house. She’s absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ed with them and with fire. Her grades suck, no mat­ter how much work we and her teacher do with her—we’re see­ing 63s and 68s from her on a fair­ly con­sis­tent basis in all sub­jects. She’s extreme­ly intelligent—she’s just not engaged.

We did get the process going to have real_pochacco and lit­tle­fire­fae’s ADHD and oth­er issues doc­u­ment­ed with the school sys­tem and ask for any accom­mo­da­tions for which they may be eli­gi­ble. That’s large­ly so that they’re a part of their per­ma­nent school records, which would be sent to any new schools. That way their moth­er can­not deny that there are issues if they do go live there, so they’ll have a chance of some kind of treatment.

I wor­ry about shad­owkatt because she tends to take on too much of an adult role. She watch­es lit­tle­fire­fae and feels respon­si­ble for her. Some of that is nor­mal, and some of it isn’t, and it’s hard to help her find the bal­ance. It’s hard for me to even know where the bal­ance is because in many ways I was­n’t ever a child. 

Our lease here is up at the end of May. We have to give notice by May 1st that we’re mov­ing. We con­sid­ered extend­ing it so that we’d have time past the court date (May 20) to see if we need a three- or four-bed­room house, but it prob­a­bly isn’t worth­while. Appar­ent­ly, the only way the courts would keep real_pochacco from going to live with his moth­er is if she were bla­tant­ly run­ning a crack­house and broth­el out of her apartment.

The ide­al would be to find a house we can afford that has room for all of us, includ­ing the boy, so that if/when he moves back here it won’t be a big deal. I found a list­ing for such a house yes­ter­day, but some­one had just put down a deposit for it. And, of course, any­thing list­ed now is unlike­ly to be avail­able by the time we are ready to actu­al­ly move.

We are mov­ing to the Cobb/Cherokee coun­ty side of town (we’re in Gwin­nett now). I’m going back to school at South­ern Poly­tech­nic, and many of our friends and most of our home­school­ing group’s activ­i­ties are over there. My par­ents are extreme­ly unhap­py about the move (they’re here) and cam­paign­ing to get us to move clos­er to them instead. I don’t want to be fur­ther away from curiousmay9 and word­can­dlemage but I think we’ll man­age to stay close 😉

shad­owkatt is work­ing on a pro­pos­al to be giv­en to the trustee for her edu­ca­tion­al trust fund, ask­ing that it be used to fund her enroll­ment in Oak Mead­ow. That would allow her to inter­act with teach­ers who aren’t her par­ents, while still hav­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty of home­school­ing. I hope we can find a way to fund the same for lit­tle­fire­fae, as their Wal­dorf-inspired cur­ricu­lum is tru­ly much more suit­able for her than any­thing the pub­lic schools offer. (Yes, we want to take her out of school if she’s still here—and she very much wants us to do it.)

I began the process of apply­ing for Social Secu­ri­ty dis­abil­i­ty this week. I’ve avoid­ed it for years, but now I fear that my pride is hurt­ing my fam­i­ly. I can­not get health insur­ance through any oth­er avenue, and this takes a long time, I know. So I’m trying.

The appli­ca­tion process involves gath­er­ing the names and dates of every health pro­fes­sion­al who has treat­ed me for any of the inter­twined con­di­tions I have, ever. Depres­sion, PTSD, fibromyal­gia, and arthri­tis. I have records going back to 1985, but they aren’t in very good order, and I know that they aren’t com­plete pri­or to 1988 or so. I’m slog­ging through them. That’s a LOT of paper. On the bright side, I’m reduc­ing the amount of paper I’m actu­al­ly keep­ing, get­ting rid of the sec­ond copies of things, and so on. I love throw­ing paper away. I feel lighter already!

Look­ing at the dol­lar amounts on the med­ical expens­es, though, I’m seri­ous­ly think­ing I should have been item­iz­ing expens­es for tax pur­pos­es long ago. I’d assumed that since we don’t own a house, there would­n’t be enough to mat­ter. I was wrong.

We’re at the qual­i­ty-check­ing part of our fil­ing in gen­er­al. 99.9% of the paper is in some file. We know, how­ev­er, that some things were mis­filed. And there are labels that need to be made up, and we have to check to see that things were filed so that both of us can eas­i­ly find them (we think dif­fer­ent­ly in these terms). The QA process should involve much throw­ing away of paper, though, as we find dupli­cates. Yay!

There are more changes as well, but they are sam­bear’s to tell if he choos­es to do so.