My bride is on the phone with her sister. My SIL is the youngest of 4 kids.  

SIL is in tears and just came out to my bride that she is lesbian and leaving her DH for a GF.  Their eldest finishes HS in a couple of months and they are waiting to tell the kids about the divorce after his graduation.  I called this more than a decade ago. DW agreed but SIL was hell bent on not being gay. She is trying to deflect with the stance that she has always known she was bisexual.

STalkers,

I have long shared how much of a Unicorn my SParent life, marriage, and my SKid are.  Though foundationally nothing has changed, we have had some setbacks related to our son.  My former SS-32 (approaching 33) who I have raised as my own since his mom and I married a week before he turned 2yo.  He asked me to adopt him when he was 22.  We made that happen.

Earlier this month he reached his 14th service anniversary in the military and is now less than 6yrs from qualifying for full retirement.

How do you guys do it?! I try to not let what HCBM says and spreads about me to others get to me, but it only lasts a few minutes and I'm back to wanting to beat her into shutting her mouth! Am I really supposed to just ignore it? I just feel like some people need taught a lesson. I really want to put hands on her (she actually assaulted me the first time we met almost five years ago) but I'm not going to do that because we're currently going through court and obviously that won't help our case. I hate that she has so much power over my emotions.

Listen to this, BM, SS, DH and all the grandparents, along with SD's new boyfriend's small family will gather for an exciting "wedding" celebration next month. Note the quotations of wedding... it's not a wedding in the common definition, but it's their thing, and that's ok. The real fun is going to be literally stuck in the space with all these delightful people for a good 6 hours.... I can't really escape to my phone or another space, so..... what do I do?! 

We just planted back at home after a spur of the moment 2100 mile road trip to one of our happy places.

My bride finished tax season late afternoon on Tuesday April 15th. For those of us in the USA, this is both an auspicious day and an infuriating one.  Tax day!  For those in the accounting/tax profession it is the day that ends the brutal 80hr/wk tax season that starts in mind to late January.

SD63 has been quiet the past few months.  We see her early each month when she pays us her share of "rent" and cuts DH's hair.  For months now, we've seen her hands trembling.  I know she also had some kind of heart issue identified during a December hospital visit.  She was supposed to schedule further testing but never did.

She called Tuesday, had an appointment with her primary that day but car trouble.  I offered to take her since DH87 is not up to travel to unfamiliar destinations.  The trip was "eventful" in typical SD fashion with wrong exits, confusion and all the rest.

BM has been silent about SS13's therapy since she sent the initial email a few months ago, simply telling DH she was enrolling SS in therapy for "anxious thoughts" and providing the therapist name/phone number, along with the insane out of pocket price, because this therapist is private pay only. DH responded that he was in disagreement with using a private pay therapist.

I've managed to avoid being in the same space as BM for about 8 years, but I broke my streak this weekend. OSD had a sorority event that she invited XH, DD, and me to. I should have asked, but I just assumed BM wasn't coming because in the past OSD has always given me a warning and BM also hasn't been super involved in anything to do with SDs' University. I don't know if BM decided to come at the last second or what, but she was one of the first people we saw when we walked into the venue. 

My stepdaughter is 7 almost 8, and since the beginning I’ve realized that she is a people pleaser to please her mom. Biomom is a nightmare. She is the epitome of toxic and narcissistic. Wretched is the word that comes to mind. At the beginning of my relationship with SO she would scream obscenities at me from her car during pick up and drop off of my stepdaughter. The first nine months of our relationship were that way until finally I guess she realized the only way I would communicate or engage with her is if there was some civility.
 

BM worked hard to create mutual dependence between/among herself and the skids. The enmeshment with SD in particular has been like nothing I've seen. For years, I likened "BM's world" to a cocoon inhabited by the three of them. SS was at times an outlier, but it appears that he, now in his late 30s, has fully entered the fold. Like he's going backwards.