Changes, Part Two

April 26, 2021

The hardest part in all of this became the need to tell selected people what had transpired at our home that April morning. Who do you tell this? How do you tell something of this magnitude?

My counselor had made half an hour available to me, so I took it. We got back to the house about 15 minutes before I needed to be there, and the girls were old enough that me being gone for the grand total of 45 minutes for that wouldn't be a big deal. I told them I wasn't going to make them go to school for a whopping two and a half hours. We were all still reeling from the morning's events. I'd call it a family emergency when I wrote the excuse out for school. They got lunch; I drove to the counselor's a whole 7 minutes away.

I've been seeing my counselor since 2015. We have a long and established relationship and an excellent rapport. But she was still in just as much shock as she'd been in when I first emailed her. This was mind-boggling. I used the half hour to process as much as I could with her, and drove home.

I stood in the kitchen and faced reality. I needed to call Special Edition. I needed to call my mother. I ... I needed support. I'd have to get a full-time job. There was no way my work at the grocery store where I was employed part-time (I worked maybe 12 hours a week) would carry us through, and I couldn't hack 8-10 hours a day on my feet full-time there. I would have to tell my boss. 

Everything was falling to me now. 

The enormity of that was overwhelming.

First things first.

I called Special Edition. She was on the phone with her BFF, whom I adore, but when I only offered a curt apology for interrupting their call and didn't say Special could just call me back later, Special dropped the call with her BFF and came back on the line with me.

"What's wrong, Momma?"

So I told her. "Dad was arrested today on counts of possession and distribution of child pornography."

There was a hasty conversation between her and her fiance, Mr. Nurse, and before the day was out, Special Edition came home for an extended stay.

I got a text. "How are you doing, neighbor?" I almost cried. One of my pastors lives in my neighborhood, and he walks his kids to the school right across the street from my house. There was no missing the activity at our place this morning. The text was from him. I texted him back, asking if he might be home that afternoon so I could bend his ear. We agreed to meet at 4.

I called my mother. I can't even remember how long we were on the phone. She was shocked and devastated.

I met with my pastor. I felt somewhat better, knowing I had that support.

I got on Facebook Messenger, swallowed my pride, and messaged SnarkyDad, who is one of my closest friends. We've known each other for decades. Not only would he let me tell the story again and process it out the way it had happened, he would listen with sympathy. And he did, while being flabbergasted that I was telling him any of this.

The next day, I spoke with Hubby's court-appointed attorney. The charges, she advised me, were so serious they meant an automatic not-guilty plea would be filed when he was formally arraigned later in the week. And it would take time to come to court, with all the motions and counter-motions and discovery and the ongoing investigation.

"So this could take a year?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Oy.

The best he could hope for was about five years, she said. I struggled to wrap my mind around that being good news.

I learned quickly that the prison system--at least our county prison system here--is quite a racket. I had to sign up for all sorts of stuff to be able to communicate with my husband, who I still trusted. Sort of. Letters were a cheap form of communication, but thanks to Forever stamps, nobody knows how much a stamp is anymore. But I'd have to pay for my stamp and his, by depositing money into his commissary account. Which was different from his tablet account, where he was able to send and receive instant messages for 10 cents apiece. That was by far the cheapest form of communication. All that was different from the phone account, which was what enabled him to call me. Phone calls cost 22 cents a minute, and we could talk for 15 minutes at a time, when he was given free time to talk on the phone.

Yeah.

It didn't take long before I preferred the tablet's instant messages.

May 25ish, 2021

We'd just finished dinner but the conversation was still flowing. As it often had in the last month, the subject turned to Hubby and the case that we didn't talk about with him on the phone. And the way life had changed. But what started coming out of my girls' mouths was shocking.

I'd never heard any of this before.

Things my husband had said and done to the girls.

Ways he'd made them uncomfortable.

Boundaries he'd pushed. In some cases, flat-out violated.

My stomach churned as I listened to them talk.

"Where was I?" I asked them, wanting to know. Needing to know.

"Mom, you were gone. At work. Or at Waffle's. Or at group. Or having a migraine."

"Did he ever do any of this in front of me?"

"When he'd try, you would shut him down."

Well, that's something.

Dinner was cleared, and the girls shifted off to do their own things. I retreated to the room I was slowly turning into my library, and pulled up Messenger again. I messaged SnarkyDad. We talked almost daily these days, God bless his wife. I told him what I'd learned from the girls. All of them, for Special Edition had confirmed what the younger ones were saying.

"Auntie Jlwrites, that is grooming!" he wrote back to me.

Yeah, that's what I'd been afraid of. It was exactly as bad as I'd feared.

The next night I talked to each of the girls in turn, one at a time, and asked them one simple question: What would you think if I told you I was going to divorce your father?

The reaction was unanimous. They were in favor, very much so. With a certainty that left me breathless.

But also very sure of my next move.

I was going to be filing for divorce. And my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary was in two months.

Part Three

A Farewell

This is one of those posts I hate to write, even two months after the fact. It still hurts.

I had noticed back in September that Nokea, fondly referred to as Chonky around our house, wasn't doing too well. I took him in to the vet. We opted to treat him conservatively for what we could tell was

immediately wrong: he was off his feed a little and just wasn't himself. He may have caught a virus. A stool sample told us that he (and probably everybody sharing a litterbox) had roundworm. We treated everyone aggressively for that. Nokea fought the treatments harder than the others, but I'm a stubborn cat mom. I might have dewormed the carpet a little but he got the brunt of the medication.

But I noticed he didn't clean it off his face.

And his white coat had become dull. He wasn't taking care of himself.

I checked. He'd lost weight since we'd seen the vet two weeks ago.

I took in the Small One for his checkup so he could be scheduled for neuter surgery (I also don't mess around), mentioned Nokea's worsening symptoms to the vet, and scheduled another appointment for Chonky in four weeks. It was the soonest I could get in that wasn't "emergent." And I scheduled Kahi for his surgery.

I worried the whole way home that Nokea wouldn't make it that long...or that I couldn't go that long without acting.

I was right to worry.

I checked his weight again another week or so later, and in the space of four and a half weeks since his vet visit when I first took him in, he'd lost four pounds. That's a lot of weight for a cat who only weighs 13 pounds or so to start with. That Sunday I texted my boss (a very understanding lady) and said I had to get my cat in to the vet as soon as I could on Monday. I wangled a 10:40 appointment.

The kids were all aware of how dire the situation was. Oldest graduated back in June, and does not have a job, so she was free to go with me to the vet. Youngest didn't want to miss school, but also didn't want to really be there if the worst had to happen. Middle, by contrast, did.

I pulled Middle out of school, citing a family emergency. I knew this was bad. She, Oldest, Nokea, and I drove to the vet.

Dr. W. was very concerned as I laid out the symptoms. Nokea had lost more weight than I thought. He was down to 6 pounds. I okayed bloodwork, to check for all kinds of functional values, and the scary things: FIV, feline leukemia, feline panleukopenia. And we waited.

The results were not pretty. His liver values were way off, and it was in danger of failing. Initial reports didn't suggest FIV, but the final results came back positive for the disease. FIV is feline immunodeficiency virus; like HIV, there is no cure. There were lots of supportive things we could have done, hospitalization, diet changes, subcutaneous fluids, and it all might have worked. Might. There was no guarantee.

My heart broke as I chose to be merciful to our feline friend who had shown us nothing but love and kindness from the day he entered our home.

Dr. W. allowed us to take things at our own pace. She put in a catheter so she wouldn't have to stick Nokea twice. She let Middle hold him while she administered the drugs that would let him drift off and fly to Jesus. And I do believe that's exactly where he went when he left us.

I called friends to help me dig the hole in the back yard that night so we could lay him to rest.

And the next night I found the perfect flagstone to mark his burial site in our yard.

Nokea Oreo, you will forever be missed. No one greets me at the door like you did (for you greeted everyone at our door for four and a half years). Thank you for teaching Kahi how to cat before you needed to leave us.

An Introduction

 I'm making this about five and a half months late. But at least I'm doing it.

Meet our newest goober, Kahi.

This is how he spent a lot of his time when he first came home with us. He loved shoulders.

He did not love my master bath, which was his home for several weeks. Like, six of them. Then he spent several more weeks confined to my bedroom until I was sure he was big enough to handle himself among the others and not get killed. And woke me up in the middle of the night a couple times each night to get love. It's a good thing he's cute.

The other cats--Kimo (age 8), Makaha (age almost 8, who doesn't quite count as he lives in bachelor quarters in the basement), Kala (age 5.5), and Nokea (age 5)--were not amused. (Actually, due to aforementioned bachelor lodgings, Makaha didn't care one way or the other. He didn't have to share.)

Kahi learned early on that the fridge held the good food.

I was mostly concerned that the other cats didn't think of him as good food. They were certainly jealous over his early canned-food diet, and howled how woe had befallen them when they didn't get to eat his food.

Things have worked out to a general peace now, and Kahi counts the others as playmates. Most of the time.

He's almost nine months old now, pings around the house faster than sonar, and has certain vampiristic tendencies (he likes to suck on my neck when he's feeling affectionate). Despite that, he's oddly drawn to garlic. He welcomes me home from work almost every day, which is kind of cute.

Welcome to our clan, bud. 

We sure can't imagine it without you. You certainly spice things up.

Changes

Regular readers have probably already noticed Hubby's missing photograph in the sidebar, and as with most things here, there's a story behind that. It's a rather long tale, so I'll probably break things up into a few posts, but bear with me as I do.

April 26, 2021

It was the pounding at the front door that woke me, fifteen minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off at 6:30 to start my day. And I do mean pounding. I'm not sure which of us woke first, but we threw off the bedcovers.

"What is that?" Hubby exclaimed.

I've watched enough Lt. Joe Kenda: Homicide Hunter. I know what that is. "That's a cop knock. We have to answer it," I tell him. WHY there's a cop knock at our door is something of a huge mystery. 

The pounding comes again. I literally fell on the master bathroom floor, trying to get both legs into my jeans at the same time. I wasn't going to answer the door just in my nightshirt. Hubby tries to help me up and we scramble for the front door. I pulled it open to find a battering ram drawn back, ready to strike, held by two officers. A third held up his fist to knock again. More lined the sidewalk behind them.

We were asked to identify ourselves. We did. We got hustled down the sidewalk and handcuffed.

"It's for your protection," we were told.

It's barely fifty degrees out, I'm watching cops sweep my house like I'm a common criminal, you're asking if I have children in the house--yes, in the furthest bedroom on the top floor--and I'm supposed to feel protected because I'm being held by the arm and I'm in cuffs?

"Are we under arrest?" I asked the cop holding me.

"You are not under arrest at this time," he said.

I stared at Hubby. I had no idea why this was happening and mouthed a guess to him. He shook his head, terror in his countenance.

That's when I caught the letters on the back of the windbreaker of the man holding onto Hubby: FBI.

"You're the FBI?" I squeaked.

"Yes."

Now I'm even more terrified. Did somebody manage to "SWAT" us? And why? Hubby is out of work. I'm a freaking grocery store cashier. We have nothing.

"Are there any guns in the house?"

I rallied to the question. "There's a BB gun, but I'm not even sure where the ammunition is for it. That's all."

"Any pets?"

"Four cats. Please don't let them get out," I pleaded.

We were led back inside and uncuffed. Hubby was diverted into the living room. I was herded downstairs and into the den, like they knew where they were going. Four agents--agents, not cops--stood in my dining room. One of them said, "Okay, let's make this our command area." What is even going on? I noticed my kids in the kitchen with another agent. A glance in their direction was all I got. We went into the den without so much as a backward glance.

And that's when these two agents informed me that they had traced child pornography to an IP address in my home.

WHAT.

I could not wrap my head around it. The questioning went on for two and a half hours and I still couldn't believe it. 

"Why do you think it's not your husband?" one agent pressed.

"I don't want a divorce," I shot back.

Around 8 in the morning, they had cleared my cell phone and allowed me to call work. I told the office worker who answered the phone that I wasn't going to make it in for my shift that day. As per protocol, I got bumped to management for approval. I got my favorite manager. "M," I said, knowing he's the soul of discretion, "the FBI is at my house. I don't know how long I'm going to be tied up with this, but I won't be in." Fortunately it was a Monday...not exactly a busy day at the store.

They gave me screen names. I'd never heard of them before. I couldn't believe my husband held any of them. They were horrible. The word "deviant" was in one of them. They asked if I was familiar with certain apps. Well, yes. They were ones I didn't want my children using. Did I use them? No. I was shown two pictures of a girl. Did I know her? No.

I begged them to clear my laptop and not take it; I needed it for work. Same with my tablet. They cleared those and the kids' tablets.

They asked me to unlock Hubby's phone. I was so flustered I couldn't remember his pattern code. (I never felt a need to; I trusted him.) I told them to ask Middle, feeling like six kinds of a fool. But Middle remembered it.

"We're ready for her," one of the lady agents said from the doorway.

My interview with the two male agents was just about done, and it was slowly sinking in: they were really looking at Hubby for child pornography. They really were. He'd done this terrible thing.

I was allowed to go upstairs and dress under the supervision of one of the female agents. I got the shock of my life when I came across a big black Labrador Retriever in the upstairs hall. Oh, gosh. Youngest. She's afraid of dogs. Hope she didn't encounter this guy. Electronics-sniffing dog. Who knew. Once again, I was so flustered by the whole day's events thus far that I could not find the jeans I was looking for...the ones I was literally wearing. I threw on some more clothes, put up my hair, and went back downstairs. 

A victim specialist had spent the morning with my kids. Now she, the girls, another lady agent, and I drove to our local PD to meet up with another lady who does forensic interviews of minors for the FBI so that my daughters could be forensically interviewed, one at a time. 

I stayed in the conference room at the PD and prayed, paced, and read the gospel of John. I also shot off an email to my therapist, telling her what was going down and asking if she by chance could make time for me today.

I wasn't allowed to know what the girls said in their interviews. The only thing the victim specialist said was that she was reasonably confident they had not been harmed, but a number of red flags were raised. I just nodded numbly.

It was noon by the time the lead agent joined us at the PD. He informed me that they had finished up at the house, and had left me with an inventory of the things they had confiscated. He also informed me of Hubby's arrest, for two counts of possession of child pornography and one count of distribution.

"Is he...already gone?" I asked.

"He's already en route to Big Town for processing," the agent assured me.

And that, dear readers, is how my world rocked off its anchor.

Part Two

A Day Late

 ...and probably more than a dollar short, but from our house to yours, Happy Thanksgiving.

We had a great time with family at our celebration yesterday, and the girls enjoyed the chance to hang out with their cousins. We missed sharing the day with Special Edition and Mr. Nurse, who moved to the other side of the country this summer due to Mr. Nurse's job pursuits, but we were at least able to connect with her via Messenger.

We are so thankful for all that we have, but our biggest blessing by far is our family.

It's also sort of miraculous that I got three teenagers to pose for a photo with their mom. 

Superior Somehow

 I came home late today after a long day at work to find Youngest struggling with pie crusts in the kitchen.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the States, and this year, rather than me cooking a great meal for the four of us, we're journeying one state south and celebrating with a bunch of family. We are to bring pumpkin pie, and Youngest volunteered to do the baking.

Now, I had bought some pre-made pie crusts so this wouldn't be an issue.

But, as Youngest knew, that would mean I shouldn't eat the pie. (We learned earlier this year that I needed to go gluten-free after a series of medical tests.) And if there's one thing I love about Thanksgiving, it's pumpkin pie.

I was touched that she chose to go to the effort to make gluten-free pie crusts so I could also have the pie we're bringing. "Awwww," I said.

She smiled, perking up her whole countenance.

She was also listening to Christmas music as she worked.

A playlist that sounded awfully familiar. We have Spotify Family, so you can share playlists...

"Did you yank my playlist?"

"Yeah. You've got the best music."

Finally. One of my kids admits I have superior musical taste...even if it's just in Christmas music.

The Thermostat Wars

The house we live in dates back to 1959. As such, it has a few cool little features, like several pocket doors, a respectable-sized pantry, radiant heat in the floors, a boiler system for heat, and a genuine bomb shelter.

The bomb shelter has great acoustics.

The heating system is great if you have perpetually cold toes, because the floors themselves get warm. But it's not without a hiccup or two when you first turn things on for the season.

This year, half of our split-level got warm. The other half . . . didn't. Seventy degrees in the front half of the house. Sixty-three in the back half.

Given that our thermostats are approximately as old as Methuselah, I suspected two of them had broken. It was downright chilly. 

No problemo. I had some new thermostats that we were going to change out for the old ones. I watched a YouTube video, flipped off the appropriate breaker, and went to work. I also looped in my neighbors for help. 

Problemo. The wiring in the house didn't match up with the diagrams for the new thermostat, so we put a kibosh on things and I called first an electrician and then an HVAC company the next day. Unable to get the old thermostat back up on the wall, we left the breaker off for the night and borrowed the neighbors' space heater to keep the bedroom level from being frigid.

HVAC Company #1 comes out on a Thursday afternoon to look at my system. They tell me I have two leaks, it's problematic that my pipes aren't warming up, and I probably have a lot of air in the lines. Cost estimates: $1350 to flush the lines and get hot water back in and all the air out. $1300 to upgrade fully to digital thermostats, should I choose. $2700 to fix the two leaks, and almost $7000 to replace all four heat pumps that run my heating system. I asked about the thermostats. He suggested I just leave 'em alone if they're working. They were able to get my one thermostat back on the wall, so that was something. $99 service charge for the visit, and they emailed the estimates to me. Mind you, all of my heat pumps are running at this point. 

Friday afternoon, while things are slow at work, I placed a call to a local HVAC company. They agree to come out Tuesday afternoon to look at the system. We just have to figure out how to stay warm until then.

Friday night, when I got home from work, I turned down the thermostats on the living room level (a toasty 80) and in the basement (a sauna). I'm able to bleed the lines a bit more and get five minutes of air hissing out of one line. Within an hour, the temperature on the bedroom level is up to 70. Now three-quarters of my house is warm. I still have a problem.

Tuesday. I meet HVAC #2 tech at my house. Still have no heat on the kitchen level, but it's been really nice the last few days, so it's 68 on that level. He pokes around my boiler room, knocks on the valve releases, and more air hisses out. Lots more. He checks the power lines to my newest heat pump, the one going to the level with no heat. Well, it's functional. Finally, he actually checks the thermostat.

What do you know. It's broken. A little copper wire had frayed. He was able to repair it, but suggested I get new thermostats sooner rather than later. I'd need ones, he said, that could handle 120 volts. I should be able to find them at any hardware store.

Since I had the rest of the afternoon, I went to the hardware store, explained my need, and had four thermostats ordered before I left.

They came in on Thursday and I picked them up. Got them home, unboxed ONE, and decided it might be smart to call the 800 number to make sure I knew what to do when I tried to wire it myself.

"That model," the rep told me about the thermostats I'd bought, "is incompatible with heat pump."

Fantastic. 

She further told me I could try, which I did, but to no avail.

I called again tonight to see if I could find out exactly what model I needed.

Which, I learned, I won't be able to find out unless I also know amperage and wattage.

Which I don't know.

What I do know is this: The repair to the thermostat is stable for now. As long as we don't mess with it further, it should stay that way.

I'm going to need a pro to handle upgrading these thermostats in any way, shape, or form.

Hooray for home ownership.

The Sunglasses Saga

 So I lost my sunglasses today. Totally first world problems and all that, but since bright light is such a major migraine trigger for me, and the sun is such a huge flaming ball, I tend to go nowhere without my sunglasses.

Nowhere.

Losing them is therefore a Big Deal. A big enough deal, in fact, that I stopped at the closest Walmart to the office to buy a new (if ugly) pair on the way home from work today, just so that I could get home from work safely and migraine-free. I hate the new ones, but they were the only ones that fit reasonably well. I hoped I'd only need them as a back-up pair.

Because, to be honest with you, I thought this would be another "It ain't lost until Momma can't find it" story, and I'd get home and find my sunglasses merely overlooked in one of the places I'd told Oldest to look. (When the sun started to come out from behind the clouds while I was at work, I texted Oldest to search for my sunglasses there at home.) They weren't lost; they just didn't make it back into my bag after last night's Walmart run.

I know, I know. Two Walmart trips in 24 hours. Craziness.

But this was not the case. No sunglasses on the island. Not on the counter. Nor the dining room table. Not even in my bedroom, which was a last-resort spot to check. Okay, really lost.

I was officially sad. I really loved that pair.

I changed out of my work duds and saw that a message had come in via the Life360 app from Middle. So I poked my head downstairs and hollered to ask if she'd meant to send that to me or to Youngest.

Her bad. She hadn't meant to send it at all. Oops.

Well, at least she wasn't overly concerned about how long it took me to come home today.

Hey, I wonder. I yanked open the pocket door to the downstairs again. "Hey, Middle? Have you seen my sunglasses?"

"Oh, yeah. I know right where they are. Let me get them."

What.

Hang Rule #2 in all its glory. "Why do you have my sunglasses?"

A pause.

"There's a slight chance I might have used them last night when killing wasps in my room."

And that's when I remembered her girding up for battle like Nanook of the North last night, ready to take on all comers . . . including wearing my sunglasses.