October 31, 2010 - Bought a new house. Out of the 1000 square foot trailer house... a tin can in a hayfield next door to my mother - and into a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, 2500 square foot, lovely brick home. Freshly divorced and finally away from my parents in an excellent school district and living only 1 mile from my office. Independant at last!

January 2011 - Boyfriend moves in. His children start to visit at my house when it's his weekends. Things are going well. My children LOVE him and his children. We start talking about getting married. He has been fighting for custody of his children, we start talking to a lawyer in town to continue the fight.

August 13 - Rescue SD from BM

August 15-21 - Like chickens with our heads off, preparing for school and a new kid. Paint, window treatments, furniture, school clothes, supplies, shoes, etc. We get a loan to pay the lawyer to set a court date and for all the aforementioned espenses. Still paying child support. SD insists on jeans that cost over $100 per pair and all that goes with that. My kids get $10 jeans from Old Navy. SD refuses to even try on anything else. Her daddy lets her get what she wants.

August 22 - First day of school. SD has never been made to do anything she finds even vaguely uncomfortable, so she decides she hates this school.

August 23 - Wake SD up for second day of school. Fakes illness. Complains, cries, bypasses me and wakes up her dad to see if he will let her stay home. So it begins. Force her to go to school. She says she has called her mother and her mother will be picking her up from school because she doesn't want to live here anymore. She hates us, hates the school, hates living here.
Restraining order against BM is filed. Long night of crying and hissy fits.

In the mean time she has a constant mainline to her mother - cell phone. She still has the phone that she brought with her, on her mother's plan. Therefore we have no control over it whatsoever, no way to monitor the usage, or anything. DH refuses to take it away from her even at night, even at school, even when she needs to be punished. Even after DH overhears her telling her mother that we are mean to her, that we make them ask for permission to eat, that she is making bad grades here because we won't make her study or help her with her homework, etc.
I'm still finding time to ask the lawyer questions, keep tabs on everything, get records from all the schools and get witnesses that are willing to testify. While doing so, I find that the SD has constantly been accompanying her mother to the bar and has even had to drive her home a few times because BM was too drunk. One of the mother's of SD's friend agrees to testify. She also tells me that BM took HER daughter to the bar before, too, and that BM was "daring" both of these 13 year old girls to get phone numbers from grown men for her. I also find that SD missed 37 days of school last year and was not allowed to come back there, even after taking summer school.

The SS was allowed to drop out of school back in February because he got his butt kicked in a fight and was embarrassed to go back. This is the third time that has happened. He changed schools twice before because of fights and he just didn't want to return so she would put him in a different school. This time she let him quit altogether, back in February. So, BM is served papers for our court date and she enrolls SS in school the next day, trying to save face. Now this kid is going to be 17 in November and he is a freshman. The school records I got for him show that his average in Algebra is an 11.

SD is telling everyone how much she hates it here, even posts it on Facebook. She tells us that she made up the story about her mother getting drunk so we would come and get her. We have already talked to the mother of the other kid that was with them and we know it's true. SD tells us that she fully intends to lie to the judge when we go to court. We talk to the lawyer and he says there isn't much we can do, he said if we don't bring her to court with us it will look like we are trying to hide something. SD and BM are in constant contact on the batphone, planning the story they are going to tell the judge. DH PROMISES me that if we win in court, that phone is not coming home with us from the courthouse.

September 2 - Engaged.

September 3 - Another loan to pay more for the lawyer and prepare for the wedding.

September 12 - Fiance is laid off at work. Technically we're common-law married? This is Texas after all, and I did put him on my health insurance already. Not terribly interested in changing my name, anyway. And it's not like we can afford a wedding NOW. Boyfriend/Fiance hereafter referred to as DH. Wedding loan goes to bills and lawyer. Apply for Food Stamps and Unemployment.

September 22 - Court hearing for temporary custody of SS and SD. Awarded temporary custody of SD. Judge looked at all the records I had compiled and also BM totally hung herself on the stand about a million times. She didn't have a lawyer and she was caught in lie after lie. The judge didn't even speak to the children. However, we didn't really want to rock the boat by telling the court that DH was unemployed. So, even though we got custody of one child and BM got the other, we are still paying some child support.

DH didn't take the phone away from her.

We talk to her teachers constantly and it seems that she is failing on purpose. She doesn't even do her work in the classroom, during class. All of her teachers agree that she just doesn't care. See, she knows now that bad grades are something we will bring up in court. She fails English for the first six weeks and DH STILL doesn't take her phone away or punish her in any way.

Nothing that we agreed upon as far as discipline has been carried out. Nothing is like he promised it would be. Nothing has really changed at all! I asked him, if she is going to get to do just whatever the hell she wants without any consequences, then why didn't she just stay with her mother??