The visit...

Ahh.... the visit...

Well, the visit its self went fine. At least it seemed to. I picked a third party supervisor, FoTB's uncle, whom I feel comfortable with and whom I felt would keep Zack's best interest forefront for the entire visit.

The aftermath of the visit... not so great. First of all when we got there I got cornered by his girlfriend and asked all sorts of prodding questions about why she couldn't be a supervisor and what we were hoping to accomplish with all of this. Luckily Jim realized what was happening and got out of the car to come inside with me.

I won't rehash every detail but basically she wanted to know why she couldn't be supervisor - we picked a non-interested third party because a week ago you tried to kidnap our son. She also wanted to know (yes... she speaks for him... I controlled him, his mom controlled him, and now she controls him... is it any wonder he refuses to grow up?) why we felt overnights were so bad and if we were willing to give some extra time to them during the week to make up for time they were missing if they didn't have overnights.

I asked her what time they were missing and that is when she hit me with well, if you take him at 7 and we pick him up at five we are missing a few hours. He only sleeps 7 - 8 hours. Ummm.... ding, ding, ding... there is your problem. No, he sleeps 10 - 11 hours, every night, consistently. And that is why we want the overnights taken away.

Of course he had to make some smart ass comment about how he tried to do this without lawyers but no... we had to go and get our lawyer involved. To which I reminded him, that actually, if we wanted to get our facts straight... I tried to do this without lawyers four months ago when I offered to pick Zack up at 7:00 at night and bring him back at 8:00 the next morning, thereby only inconveniencing me and they flat out refused and told me he would just have to adjust.

Then... and this one is lovely... then she hit us with, well if we are amending the visitation I think it is important that we put in a time line for when we will go to joint custody.....

**chirp, chirp... can you hear the crickets**

Excuse me? You think what? FoTB screws up and you have the nerve to think we are going to agree to MORE custody? Needless to say, we politely declined her request and simply said that we had no way of knowing when that would be and that we were not willing to put in a certain age because we had no way of knowing what Zack would be comfortable with.

They are oblivious to the fact that anything could possibly be their fault. At one point FoTB asked me how I could say that Zack's complete turn around was because he hadn't seen him. Well, because it happened in the time he hasn't seen you. He of course came back with well, he has been seeing a counselor. Actually, if you would pay any attention to your son at all you would know that he had been seeing the counselor for a month BEFORE all of this happened. But hey... who is counting.

As for Zack, his fallout from all of this has been just as great. Yesterday he hit someone, he kicked someone, he pushed someone, he spit on someone, he yelled no at his teachers, he ripped a book.... need I go on?

I took the opportunity last night to email FoTB and explain to them a few things. First of all, his girlfriend gets to be supervisor (on the advice of our lawyer and in the great spirit of giving a little to get a little) but we reiterated our desire to remove the overnights from the custody agreement. We also explained to them the day he had yesterday in the hopes that perhaps they would see, or at least no longer be able to deny that they knew, that their presence does affect Zack's life.

Do I think this is because of something they did wrong? No. Do I think it means that he hates it over there and should never go back? Not necessarily. I think it just means that Zack is confused. FoTB was there and then he wasn't and now he is again. I'm sure there is part of him that was happy to see him again and part of him that was scared of what will happen and the anxiety he felt before.

More than anything it shows me that FoTB needs to get his sh!t together or he needs to disappear because being in and out of Zack's life like this is too hard on him.

One day at a time... hopefully today will be better....