We're Having a Grape Time Tonight

So I'm sitting here in the dining room, trying to concentrate. 

There's a whoop from the kitchen, and suddenly Youngest says, "It looks like I don't have a lip."

This is, in my world, what one might call A Clue.

I also suspect that dinner might be done, so I get up and gimp into the kitchen.

Youngest is sporting a cloth bandaid over her lip. It does indeed look like her skin goes straight to her upper lip without stopping. More than a little weird, if you ask me.

Knowing I'm violating Rule #2 but feeling I need to, I asked, "Why do you have a bandaid on your lip?"

Middle answered. "Youngest had her mouth on my knuckles, and so I went to bump her with my fist, like this"--here she mimicked a gentle punch, if you can call it that--"but I really went like this"--she gestured a nice uppercut--"and I split her lip. I feel so bad!"

I avoided the question of why Youngest was apparently kissing her twin's fist and swiveled my head to look at her instead.

"I'm fine," she insisted, touching the bandaid centered neatly on her lip.

Oldest is trying to muffle her giggles.

Middle fetched some grapes from the fridge, which were quite tasty and had a pleasing crunch, as she then told us. "Youngest, you have to try one of these."

Youngest balked. "I don't like those."

We are a house divided when it comes to grapes: we all love seedless, but Youngest and I love green grapes, while Oldest and Middle will only eat the red ones. Middle was brandishing red grapes.

Middle selected a fat red grape and pushed it towards her twin's mouth. Youngest reared back. 

"No, they're really good. Try it!" Middle switched out the next grape she picked, which was smaller, for the monster she was trying to force on Youngest. Youngest gamely let her twin pop the grape into her mouth...but then couldn't close her mouth to chew without it putting pressure on the split in her lip.

Now everyone's laughing as Youngest tries to eat the grape without having to hold her lip in the middle.

Middle grinned at me. "You might as well have had boys!"

New Beginnings

May 22, 2024

I sat in the conference room of Lady Tiger's office. Ironically, it was the one on the opposite side of the building from where I'd been on my first visit to her office.

I felt a lot of the same emotions, and tears threatened. I blinked them back.

This time, I was here to sign documents. Five of copies of the same thing, to be precise: the Marital Settlement Agreement. It was finally back in Lady Tiger's hands after more than a month. More than a month and a half.

Lady Tiger walked in and greeted me warmly, and we got down to business. Each of the sixteen (16!) pages of each document had to be initialed before the notary would be brought in and I would sign each of those five copies in her presence.

It felt a little like signing a mortgage. But only a little.

The visceral shock of seeing Hubby's familiar initialing and signature on the pages hit hard. I thought I'd prepared myself for it. But there it was, on these documents that would help formally end our almost-29-year marriage. Familiar and beloved, yet at the same time...written by the hand of a stranger.

Lady Tiger brought in the notary once all of the initialing was done, and I did the actual signing then. After that, the notary had me swear an oath that every mark I'd made was true and correct and not under duress.

The whole thing took less than thirty minutes.

Lady Tiger explained that she would forward the divorce decree by email as soon as she received it, that they would keep my file for five years, and if I needed any help getting the car titled in my name, or with the sale of the house, then all I had to do was ask. She said the MSA would be filed in court the next day, and it would take a week, no more than two, for the divorce to be finalized by the court. We shook hands, and I left.

May 31, 2024

I'd been monitoring my email since Tuesday, which made me plenty distracted at work. I knew nothing would come then; the holiday would have slowed things down at court, so any work that normally would have proceeded on Monday was now happening on Tuesday, and so on, but still. I checked my email far more often than I normally would have.

Wednesday, I thought I might have a shot, and it was a lather-rinse-repeat of Tuesday, but the day went by with nothing from Lady Tiger.

Thursday passed in much the same fashion. I'd told the girls when we went out to dinner that night to celebrate Family Day that I was kind of glad nothing had happened that day; it could still just be Family Day, not the anniversary of my divorce too.

Math is not my strong suit.

Mid-morning, we had a lull at the clinic, which we never say out loud for fear we'll lose it, and I checked my email again.

There was an email from Lady Tiger. Congratulations! said the subject line.

I popped open the email. 

Sure enough, there it was. The divorce was final. As of the 30th.

My provider had stopped by my desk to chat, and leaned over my shoulder to read. "That is awesome," she declared.

And yet...while I felt relieved...I couldn't seem to feel happy. Inasmuch as I'd been alone for the last three years, now I was really alone. Yes, this was what needed to happen. For that reason, I'd wanted it. But for that reason only. As the lies had come out, and the wounds to the children, I'd wanted it because they needed to be believed and protected at all costs. But never had I wanted my marriage to die. Not to the man I thought I'd married. The man I'd actually married had morphed into someone I no longer knew, and this needed to be the choice I made.

It still felt like I failed.

It still felt like I'd been robbed of the kind of 40-year love story my parents had enjoyed.

And, in one single piece of paper, it was now all over.

I felt very grieved.

Still...I'd been waiting a long time for this. The year and a half Lady Tiger had initially warned me it could take had become almost three years.

I texted the girls. The divorce is final. Rita's tonight, to celebrate?

One of the lesser delights of my life is that I am now gluten free, which means I can eat the frozen custard at Rita's that I love, but I cannot have a cone. Let me tell you, a large chocolate/vanilla twist in a dish is much smaller than one in a cone. When I say I want a large, I have expectations. What I got was not it. Should have gone to the old river-side dive place I know back home. But that's six hours from here. The girls all got their favorites, and we made a dinner of it, despite Middle's (great) idea that we all have something healthy to spite him as our celebration.

Honestly, being free and being together was the best celebration we could have.

Who's Tracking Who?

So the church we go to is rather large. And by "rather large," I mean we have three campuses that run a total of seven combined services over any given weekend. "Rather large" also means we topped 3500 people, total, across those seven combined services for Easter weekend.

That's over two-thirds of the year-round population of the town I live in. (We're a university town. We double in size during the school year.)

So. Large.

We attend the main campus in Cburg, and somewhere along the line in the last couple of years in the brouhaha that is my life, I discovered that there was an over-40 singles group. They met, I discovered, after the Saturday night service. I have found in these ladies a group of hardfast friends...even though I'm technically still married. Therefore I go to church on Saturday nights so that I can go to group, and again on Sunday morning, I take the kids.

I'm telling you all this so I can tell this story.

Now, the Fries all got phones the fall after The Event. They were going to school full-time; I was going to work full-time nearly an hour from home...phones for everyone! They came with a hitch: Everybody installs Life360 on their phones and commits to using the app. I know where you are, you know where I are. I also explained this does not absolve them from telling me when they're going places just because "you can see me on Life360." I should not have to check; I should already know. (We've had this conversation, along with various others surrounding what Life360 needs to work properly, a few times.)

I've discovered, to my amusement, that I get tracked an awful lot.

I have the least social life, but the times I've gotten "Why did you leave work today?" when I get home are more numerous than I care to admit. I went to the dentist, child.

Today, while out grocery shopping with the twins (this is what constitutes an outing in my life), Middle asked me, "Are you going to church tonight?"

Well, duh. It's Saturday. This is my social night.

"Are  you going to Olive Garden?"

I tried not to look astonished. How does she know? J only texted this morning that we were meeting there after church tonight! "As a matter of fact, I am going to Olive Garden tonight."

Middle gave me what can only be described as a wicked look. "Bring me breadsticks!"

This conversation then became a hilarious topic of discussion at the table after church, and conspiring how we were going to get our poor waiter, Al, to bring us some more breadsticks after we'd finished what we could of our meals, since three of us wanted to bring breadsticks home and there was only one left. Y said she would ask, since the rest of us were shy. She pointed to three of us, who were definitely not shy. Y is, I will admit, the least not-shy of all of us.

Our group broke up a little before 9, and I ended up with two breadsticks in my bag, and headed for home. Knowing I needed to pack at least one more box tonight before bed, I wasn't in any hurry to get out of the car and into the house. Since I knew we would only be at church for the 9:45 hour tomorrow, I wrestled my church bag out of the car with me. (Usually I just leave it in the car on Saturday nights for the next day.) But Youngest has a parade she's marching in tomorrow, so we have to cut out early. I looked at my Olive Garden bag. "Two breadsticks and three girls..."

I headed for the door...but didn't even have to dig out my keys. Middle yanked it open. "I've been tracking you!"

Well, usually they don't admit it out loud like that.

"Gimme."

I held out the bag to her. She was the one, after all, who asked for breadsticks.

"Thank you, Mother. Goodnight."

I love you too, kid.

Age is Just a Number

"Mom, look."

Youngest held out her phone to me earlier this evening.

I did as asked and looked.

She was showing me the song that was playing, Lauren Daigle's "Thank God I Do." Youngest has been on a fast from secular music, so it's been nice seeing what she's listening to.

Now, Youngest is familiar with the song because she likes Lauren Daigle and has it in her playlist.

I am familiar with the song because I love The Piano Guys, and they chose to cover it and mash it up with an old hymn, "Be Still and Know," on their latest album, Unstoppable. It's one of my favorite tracks.

This led me to ask Youngest if she'd heard about the too-young death of Christian artist Mandisa, whose music I knew the girls had loved at one time.

Youngest was quite sad, she said.

At this point, Middle entered the conversation. "How old was she?"

"Forty-seven. A year younger than me."

Middle clapped her hands to her mouth, vertically. "You're 47?"

Youngest's eyes were wide. "Really?"

I nodded, a little surprised. They know my birthday. I thought.

"You're 47," Middle repeated.

"I'll be 49 in July," I pointed out.

"I've been telling people you're 45 for, like, the last five years," Youngest blurted out.

Well, I'm not gonna complain. "Keep doing that," I said. I'll take the extra free years of youth.

Always one to look on the bright side, Middle concluded, "At least you're not 50 yet."

Gee, thanks.

$2632.50

The Marital Settlement Agreement has been with Hubby's attorney, Mr. Smug, since April 1. Almost three weeks, for those of you counting that sort of thing.

It took two weeks to hear back from Mr. Smug that he had at least forwarded it on to Hubby--he must use regular mail, you see, due to Hubby's current domiciling. He can't just email it.

So we are left to assume that Hubby has received the MSA. 

And we're left to assume that Hubby is actually going to sign it.

Forgive me if I'm a little less hopeful on the second count than I am on the first. Jail mail moves slow, but it does get there. See, Hubby and I had hammered out an agreement some time in September 2022, chatting via the app the county jail had that let us communicate in the cheapest fashion, I took screenshots and forwarded those to Lady Tiger, and she drafted an MSA then. She asked Hubby to respond ASAP with any changes he wanted. That was early September. In December, I asked if he was going to do anything with the settlement paperwork, since neither I nor Lady Tiger had gotten so much as a peep from him. We finally heard from him around the first of March 2023. Six months. Six months of him doing nothing before he reneged completely on the agreement we had, going back to his first offer of more than a year before and adding insult to injury with that one. This MSA gives him more of what he wants, so he may well sign off on it, but I'm not counting on it happening in a timely fashion.

Hubby doesn't seem to like doing things in a timely fashion if it hurts me in some way.

He said at one point that he didn't want to bankrupt me, but he's doing a great job of running my finances into the ground anyway with all of his stall tactics.

The bill from Lady Tiger arrived last week, and it's going to cost me $2632.50 for her services to not go to court last month.

Thanks to an unexpected anonymous friend, I have $500 more in the legal fund than I did two weeks ago. But I'm still short $1100 (and fifty cents).

Which leaves me here again.

I can't do this without help.

I probably have another $2500 in legal bills (sorry, SnarkyDad, I know that's above where we've set the goal on this thing) coming after this, because I still have to sell the house and wrap that up before I can finally be fully free of everything.

And that's if I'm guessing my expenditures right. Lady Tiger is good, but she is not cheap.

So I'm asking again. If you can, help us out financially. Invest in the future of my kids. If the only help you can give us is sharing our link, I'm more than grateful.

The Good News

It's the 27th, and I did not spend my morning in Court as scheduled.

But that's okay. 

On Tuesday of last week, my lawyer approached me with an idea: What if we sent another settlement offer? 

My knee-jerk instinct was a big, fat NO. I had offered two reasonable settlement options, and Hubby had discarded both. What I haven't said before is that both of those options came with me completely waiving all alimony and child support. So not only is he getting money out of the sale, he's also gaining-by-not-losing future cash in the realm of any support, of any kind, to the family he has essentially abandoned.

But I also knew, from my discussions with my attorney, that I was probably looking at getting either Hubby's last offer (a 60/40 split) or 65/35 on the house when it came to the hearing. I asked what the chances were I'd get more than 65% in trial. My attorney said about 20-25%. Eep. Not good, then.

Lady Tiger (my attorney) proposed a 65/35 split on the house, with closing costs to be split 50/50 by both parties, an agreement not to list the house for sale until a date of my choosing, and several other things that had already been mutually agreed upon regarding personal property and such. No digital photographs would be exchanged.

Well.

Decisions, decisions.

I talked with my mother. She liked all of Lady Tiger's proposal except the house sale split. Mom thought I should get more.

Heck, Mom, I think I should get more. And so does everybody else who knows this story.

SnarkyDad thought it was a good idea and offered his suggestion for when I should list the house for sale.

In the end, I was bothered by why we were reneging on our "last and best" offer, so I asked Lady Tiger exactly about that.

She gave me three excellent reasons for it:

1. So that Oldest would not have to testify at Court (she was going to in regards to the pictures and not wanting them to go to her father).
2. So that we would retain as much control as possible over how things panned out in the final order.
3. So that I wouldn't have to pay assorted court and court reporter fees (Hubby magnanimously refused to pay half the court reporter fees since I was the moving party in the divorce).

I thought those were sound reasons and said we should move ahead with extending the offer. Lady Tiger drafted it, I approved it, and it was sent off electronically that afternoon, with a deadline of this past Monday at noon to accept it.

We got an email from Hubby's attorney, Mr. Smug, on Thursday, I think, that said basically that he thought now we were getting somewhere and that this was how he thought Mr. Divorce Master was going to split everything anyway. I wanted to boink him right between the eyes, a la the Three Stooges. He didn't have to be so, well, smug. Even if he was right.

Over the next few days, I continued to be easily distracted by new emails on my phone, and my anxiety went up several notches over the weekend. I honestly wasn't sure how this was going to go: would Hubby take the deal and be done with it? Or would he reject it just to hurt me/thinking he'd get more out of the Divorce Master? I could not begin to predict how Hubby would react to this. He'd changed so much from the man I once thought I knew down to his soul.

One of my friends asked me what I was going to do if he didn't take the deal. I chuckled humorlessly and said I'd go to Court and get 65% anyway.

Monday mid-morning, I got an email from Lady Tiger, stating that Mr. Smug hadn't yet been in touch with Hubby about the terms of the offer. The prison had been supposed to call on Friday, but hadn't, and was supposed to call this morning at 11:30 to let them discuss. Talk about cutting it all close to the wire!

Lady Tiger's email pinged in at 11:58 a.m. The offer, she said, had been accepted. No need for trial prep that night at her office; no need for Court on Wednesday.

The next steps are to draft the Marital Settlement Agreement, have Mr. Smug review it, and then get it signed by both of us and filed. After that, the Court will issue the Divorce Decree, and the divorce will be finalized. I figure it may take a month for all that to happen at the most, depending on prison mail.

I still feel like the whole thing is a little surreal.

I am annoyed that I am waiving so much child support, alimony, and APL in the face of him getting such a huge percentage of the house's sale value AND getting to pay off his entire DOJ indebtedness all at once. That's something I feel he should have to work at paying off, not just essentially get lucky at paying it all off in one fell swoop because a) there's a lien on the house that has to be satisfied with the sale, and b) the DOJ will come in and take any incoming money in his name to apply towards his debt; that's part of his sentence. It feels a bit like a slap in the face to only get 65%. It feels even more like a slap to realize I wouldn't have gotten more in court.

Oldest and I went out to lunch today in a small celebration of Not Having To Go To Court. We sat in Chipotle, ate good food, and talked about Hubby (she's finally getting past him and what he's done), Youngest and their relationship (some things don't change, some things do), her boyfriend (he seems to be a good egg), and the upcoming move (she's looking forward to it now). We're continuing to hope and pray for a home that meets all of our needs. (We have a list.) We also talked about the differences between getting married and getting un-married. Both are expensive, I told her, although unless you're rich, getting married doesn't usually involve a lawyer. Getting un-married does.

Lady Tiger will have the Marital Settlement Agreement to me by the end of the week. I asked her what happens if Hubby refuses to sign after we've done all this work. She said she didn't think it would happen, given what Mr. Smug has told her about Hubby's financial situation, but she asked the Divorce Master to leave the case open...just in case. That way we can quickly reschedule the hearing if we need to. But she doesn't think we'll need to.

Soon, the only thing left of this adventure will be selling the house and the legal bills.

Do I Call This Part 8? An Update

I met with my attorney before Christmas because I simply could not wait until after the holidays to learn the outcome of the December 11th Pre-Trial Conference. We met by Zoom for an hour and a half.

Most of the news was not good.

I'm going to tell you the good news first: the Divorce Master has declared this is not a 50/50 split case. That was something of a relief. But of course the Divorce Master hasn't looked at any of the evidence yet, either. He did, however, suggest to my attorney that I would likely be getting a larger portion of the assets because of the fact that I will not be able to collect any kind of alimony, APL, or child support from Hubby due to his imprisonment. To what end? Probably a 60/40 split, maybe 65/35.

It became rapidly clear, however, as my attorney and I reviewed the assets and debts of the marriage, that I wasn't going to be able to do the one thing I'd hoped for over the last two-plus years: keep the house.

I had already spent an hour one Friday night on the phone with our current mortgage servicer, seeing what I could do to put the remaining balance of our mortgage in my name. I cried when I got off the phone because it was so unfeasible. What they wanted to do to get me to keep my house was impossible, and that didn't even factor in an extra $30-40k to buy Hubby out. It was just impossible.

All because Hubby was insistent on having enough money to pay off his debt to the US Government with the sale of the house and have a little leftover to fall back on when he gets out of prison.

I'm sorry, but his worries about his after-jail life are not truly my concern.

My concern--and his, it should be--is the safe rearing of our children until they're grown...and thus a safe place for them to live.

I told the girls the day after Christmas that we were going to have to move.

On the one hand, they're mad. We love this house. It holds a lot of memories for us. On the other hand, the thought of a new place and new memories has a great deal of appeal. The house's memories aren't all good.

I have been packing up what I can here and there, stuff that doesn't need to stay out, filching empty boxes from work to bring home. The china cabinet. The library. The yarn for my crochet projects that are currently sidelined while moving is my new project. The scrapbooks. The shelves in the living room. Out-of-season clothes. Games that we're not playing. Christmas decorations.

Preparing to change our lives.

We sent an offer to Hubby's attorney of record: a 75/25 split on the sale of the house, since everything else was pretty much settled. We felt, my lawyer wrote, that this was a fair offer, given my lack of support of any kind from his camp.

The week that the response was due from Hubby's side, my lawyer received notification from the court that Hubby had changed lawyers. This is just five weeks before our trial is scheduled. My lawyer reached out to his new one to confirm he'd received our offer, and received a counter-offer in response: 55/45 split, and digital copies of all photographs from the marriage.

Well. There's a sticking point. The children do not wish for their father to have photos of them. Ever.

I discussed this with my attorney and we sent back what we called our "best and final offer": no photos, as we would be respecting the children's wishes, and a 70/30 split on the proceeds of the house, expiring on 3/15/24.

Hubby's attorney responded twelve days later with Hubby's own "best and final" offer of a 60/40 split.

My attorney and I began preparing for trial.

I began to quietly freak out.

My lawyer reassured me that she would support me no matter what I decided to do, trial or settlement, but suggested we prepare and gather our exhibits.

Court is in ten days.

Ten days.

The most recent bill from my lawyer's office came today. Almost $520. Between that and the one two months ago for $1500, I have maybe $100 in my little account for the divorce.

We meet on the 25th to prep for trial, which will be about two hours of time. Court is scheduled for three hours on the 27th. $100 is not going to cover us. Our GoFundMe is still active, and we'd appreciate your help as we head into this final stretch.