July 1 catch up session

 Six months have passed since I felt like blogging! It takes a special kind of peace. Or a special kind of unrest. Thankfully I'm in the former. 

We got through the holidays marked by 6 weeks of chronic and periodically profound stress as the ex took the kids to 3 airbnbs/motels in 6 days and then pulled some last minute peace outs on his parenting time for 3 weeks in a row until finally shacking up with the new (new?) girlfriend and telling me during the kid's goodnite call with me that they were going to be living there during his time, name not allowed, meeting not allowed. Classy as most of his moves have been. I guess that is where 4 of the last 6 months went. Lawyer consults, private group parenting plan consults, emails, and a momma's heart trying to ride the ridiculous system our culture is prisoner to post-divorce, deal with costs associated, and most importantly be there for the kids and all of the confusion that comes out in words for a 6 year old and just confusion for a 2 year old. She started a course of needing 3am comfort daily, and when momma's heart is worried there is typically not sleep after that. It is unknown if she experienced a natural toddler sleep regression or spiked with anxiety being thrown into a house with a new "friend" (does he even have the balls to label her for his kids?)...but I bought everything recommended including placing limes in the bedroom, and for the most part just took tired joy that I was her 3am snuggle buddy and not someone else.

The peace I have now is found in incremental progress documenting and planning for a fight with this despicable human, watching the kids like a hawk and finding that in their incredible resilience they have accepted this new chaos as a form of stability. As this unknown person makes them pancakes and owns a dog I take heart that the ex is capable of attracting reasonable people. I pity her her future unless prayers (mostly of others as early 2024 prayers from me only wanted a jail cell -- I can ask more objective people to pray) are answered in a way that has this man developing into a balanced human capable of unselfish love for his children and basic respect for their mother. I'm going to say that based on behavior 2 weeks ago we will have to be temporarily satisfied with him giving them a good time/adventure while he rides the high of his new job and whatever domestic arrangement currently has him locked in cocky abusive mode. 

Enough of that. 

I started reading a book this week. This is kind of a big deal for me as my peace/energy levels for several years have not allowed for true curiosity based reading. The first half of 2024 and its darkness is marked mainly by escapism that manifested as a late-to-the-party Grey's anatomy interest. I was curious what happened to one person I saw on an episode during vet school, jumped to season 5 and found medical soap opera to be a thing of interest. I waded through a few seasons, came to realize everyone important was doomed to die, googled ahead to find the episode that answered my questions and thus saved myself some time. It was a good escapism that my brain needed to destress from being awake in my world. Something to ultimately laugh at as at some point when someone is shooting another person from a gun stashed in the nethers it becomes medical comedy. 

The book I am reading now is called "Don't sleep, there are snakes," written by a man who lived among a tribe in the Amazon for 30 years as he studied their language in an attempt to ultimately share the gospel with them. It is possible he will lose his faith or at least drastically change his views on proselytizing by the end of the book and I'm so curious to see how it turns out. I'm not feeling much of a pull in any direction on how I want it to turn out, I'm just really enjoying learning in depth about this other culture and language. They are a truly "in the present" people group, accepting of life and death and most things in between that impacted the author greatly and finds me at a place where I can almost match that. Putting all the things that bother me in a corner of my brain and taking the kids to the beach is an acquired skill and well worth the effort. 2024 mantra - minimize the amount of peace that man can steal from you and your family for the rest of time. Thank God a billion times over that they can enjoy his current high on life and have adventures and look up to him right now as psychologists say this is the very best thing for them at this age. As long as I keep people nearby when I need to meet him he will show his fancy side and treat me with civility as well. 

In the coming days of my time off of work with the kids I have some big fish to fry. We are out of water again, the parenting plan is still completely unenforceable to this narcissistic personality and needs paperwork completed with lawyer review as holding this man accountable is unfortunately still partly my job... and I want a pony, a llama and a paddleboard. I have to say that as a mom with a deep need to emulate a llama I am going to plod forward at my steady slow pace to knock out these giants but I'm going to eat as much grass as I want/need on the way there. And I'm going to look pretty. Even with raggedy hair those creatures are gorgeous.