In this house, I’m the Mama…

There has been a lot of round and round between The Egg Donor (ED) and the Director of Before- and After-School Programs for the School District in the past day.

ED, of course, denies owing the balance, and puts the impetus back on the County to pay. She tells the Director that the Head of the State Child Care Assistance Program will be calling to “straighten it all out.” She tells My Hubby that he needs to stay out of it, she has it all handled.

(Side Note: One other thing ED always does that drives me crazy is she inflates everything. I do mean absolutely everything. The Head of the State Child Care Assistance Program wouldn’t have a clue about this measly little issue, and wouldn’t involve himself/herself in it. It’s the county that manages these things. But you know, it sounds so much better to make it sound like she has the Head of the State Program on a string…)

Right…

What she doesn’t count on is that anyone on the planet but her actually has a clue. The Director? Seriously clued in. Smart lady. Head and shoulders above ED. Hands down. And the lady that handles Child Care Assistance at the county? A pretty smart cookie herself.

So here’s the e-mail the Director sent ED yesterday:

I have received the documentation from (name of old school before- and after-school care program) for the account that is still outstanding. Even though I have left a phone message for the Head of the County Child Care Assistance Program and she has not called me back, I have documentation from (name of old school before- and after-school care program) that most likely includes the same statements that she has.

If you would like to come to my office I would be happy to show you the child care certificates, a signed copy of the county client responsibilities agreement, a signed copy of the attendance and payment contract, account statements, attendance book, sign-in sign-out sheets, a letter sent to you in 2005 by the director terminating care due to the significant account balance, etc.

It appears to me that that the confusion has occurred because the county authorized care for just Monday, Tuesday before and after school and Wednesday before school. The Child Care Certificate from the county states that “Wednesday after school and Thursday and Friday are not authorized”. However, the attendance records and sign-in sheets show that care was provided for days not authorized by the county. These are the days for which the account is still outstanding.

Please make the full current payment due to (the kids’ current before- and after-school program) on Friday so that child care can be continued on Monday. Please also make payment to the Collection Agency so that child care can be continued on Monday, February 18.

Just like we said, she didn’t bother to pay the daycare bill for the daycare required when the kids’ were physically with My Hubby and me. And the county doesn’t cover that time because we don’t qualify for assistance.

She doesn’t seem to get it.

Interestingly, she didn’t bother to respond to the Director yesterday. I wonder if she’s planning to run this little issue further up the flagpole. That’s a specialty of hers. When the water isn’t quite muddy enough, escalate.

We’ll see if she actually pays the amount due to their current provider this Friday (somewhere in the $500-600 neighborhood). Then we’ll see again if she actually pays the $700 balance for the old care provider by February 14.

I don’t know where on earth she’ll come up with $1300-1400 in a two-week timeframe, but she has surprised me before. Maybe her new creepy boyfriend is loaded.

It’s a roller coaster.

At least it’s never dull.

Because very recent craziness takes precedence…

I don’t see anywhere that I’ve previously mentioned the ridiculous balances The Egg Donor (ED) has left at daycare establishments all over the planet. If I have already told you about it, I apologize.

Anyway, the kids went to multiple daycares from the time they were fairly small. They started at the first daycare shortly after My Hubby and ED separated, because it was the most expensive daycare she could find and that’s what her attorney told her to do to increase the amount of child support My Hubby would have to pay.

Thankfully, it was also a pretty good daycare, and the kids really liked it. My Hubby was happy that the kids were happy, regardless of how much he was paying out in child support (which was a lot).

They attended there until our hearing in January of 2005. Despite a court order stating that she and My Hubby had joint decision-making, and despite a Contempt Motion on the table for her prior unilateral decisions, she actually pulled them out of that daycare, the one they had been attending for almost four years, on the day of our hearing. My Hubby had to tell the judge that he didn’t even know where to go to pick the kids up that day. It was unbelievable.

She pulled them to save $200, which she couldn’t pay. She cited their lack of organization with billing, and claimed that they had jerked her around for several years, but the sad reality was that she never paid them regularly, always carried a large balance, bounced checks, argued with them about the account, and was just, in general, a giant pain in the behind. They were done working with her. I’m sure they told her as much… which made her angry… and caused her to pull the kids and stick them with a balance. Sound familiar?

Enter their before- and after-school care program at their old school. ED put the girls in that program because they were actually in school, and she put Shaggy in a program far across town from us, but close to her. She also enlisted help from the state in paying her balance. What she didn’t count on was that she would still be responsible for paying something and, once the state found out about the new order reducing her parenting time to 49%, that she wouldn’t actually have qualified for help from the state for exactly half of the time the kids were there. Bummer.

It took the state about four months to figure it all out, get a copy of the order, and cut through the red tape, but eventually they did. And she owed a significantly large balance to the school’s before- and after-school care program, and a good-sized chunk to the other daycare as well.

Her solution? To yank the girls and start sending them home on the school bus, to an apartment complex at a busy intersection, to her then creepy boyfriend (incidentally not the same creepy boyfriend who caused us to file an Emergency Motion, and not the same creepy boyfriend she has now) who sometimes answered the door, sometimes didn’t bother because he was sleeping, and sometimes just wasn’t home at all. Great.

We tried valiantly to change things, to get them re-enrolled with the school’s before- and after-school program, but it was a no-go for the remainder of that school year. Things changed significantly the following year when they started going to T’s, who I told you about in this post.

Anyway, we tried to get those balances (from three providers now) taken care of. We tried to arbitrate that she pay them and that didn’t work. Of course, asking her to pay them didn’t work. Most recently we filed Contempt on her failure to pay the daycare balances, but that was dismissed. The Honorable What’s-His-Name (THWHN) evidently thought that as long as we weren’t burdened with paying it ourselves, she would have to face the wrath of those daycare folks and their collection agencies herself.

And I guess that wrath has finally caught up with her.

I’m not sure what she’s done to stir the pot since our hearing on the 18th of last month, but evidently she’s done something. The demeanor of everyone we deal with at the kids’ current before- and after-school care program has changed. And then we received the following from the Director for the entire district:

I regret to inform you that there is a delinquent outstanding child care account from the (name of old school before- and after-school care program) in the amount of $710.00 from April of 2005. A recent client status report from the Collection Bureau shows that the account is still active and has not been paid. School district policy requires that we discontinue current child care if this outstanding account is not paid in full. We are also informing The Egg Donor that this account needs to be paid in full to the Collection Agency by February 14 in order to continue receiving care effective February 18.

This is in addition to any monies due to the current before- and after-school care program.

We do not want our staff involved in custody disputes. We have asked the staff to limit conversations with either parent and not to mention one parent to another. If you have any questions about this issue or any others involving the other parent, please direct them to me.

The Queen of Psychosis responded with a bunch of drivel about how the state still actually owed the money to the program, she had spoken with them directly, the head of the state program would be contacting them to straighten it all out, blah-dee, blah-dee, blah, blah, blah.

It’s the same tired excuse she’s been using since 2005. You’d think she’d find a new one by now. Either way, she might be able to use the smoke screen for a brief time, but the folks at the district are quite used to this kind of thing and will ultimately figure her out.

My Hubby sent her several e-mails yesterday, one forwarding the above and asking for her plan on payment, one responding to her claim (again) that the state needed to pay the balance, and one last one stating that the only way the issue would be resolved (which is how she stalls people, by just saying “I am taking care of it, and the issue will be resolved”) was if she actually paid the balance due, because she clearly owed it. He copied the district director on that one.

Her response?

I am handling this issue and it does not require your involvment. I am looking out for the best interests of the children.

Thanks for your concern,

The Egg Donor

Translation: Butt out. I’m trying my best to give these people a serious run-around and you’re killing my plans, here.

She also tossed in one more e-mail, just for good measure, telling him not to e-mail her at her work address (which was on the original e-mail from the district so showed up when he hit Reply All).  I feel a harrassment charge coming on again…

All of this will likely mean that we’ll be up a creek without a paddle on the daycare front sometime soon.

And we’ll have to file another motion…

And wait for another hearing…

While the kids go without…

Again.

(Side Note: This reminds me of When Harry Met Sally, when Carrie Fisher’s character kept saying, “He’s never going to leave her. Of course, I know, he’s never going to leave her.” She was always surprised when the outcome she was desperately hoping for didn’t happen.  I feel ya, sister.)

The abuse claims have gone on for years. I think those are the hardest for My Hubby to stomach–that anyone on earth would think that he abused his ex-wife, that he abuses his children, or that he abuses me. It’s just too much for him to bear.

And yet, The Egg Donor’s (ED) claims go on, on an almost daily basis. Despite school psychologists, family therapists, Special Advocates, arbitrators, and judges finding that there has never been any evidence whatsoever of abuse perpetrated by My Hubby, she continues to spew that same tired spiel to anyone who will still listen.

Fortunately for us, her choices are wearing thin. Not so fortunately for us, the people she continually reminds of it are people that don’t have her figured out–like her children.

When Daphne was almost seven, My Hubby picked the kids up from school and daycare on a Wednesday afternoon and brought them home. He had to go back to work and I happened to be home that afternoon, so they were hanging with me.

To say that the children were dressed in filthy rags would be an incredible understatement. They were in clothing that was far too small, torn, stained, and covered in food and other unidentifiable funk. Although this was a regular occurrence, it shocked me every single time it happened. This time was no different.

As the kids came through the door ready for hugs, I instantly stepped back. Not the right reaction, I know, but it was involuntary. I asked Daphne about the clothing.

“Did you put on dirty clothes this morning? Or did you do a lot of messy things in school today?”

I was thinking maybe painting, something with mustard and ketchup for lunch, anything that would explain the funk that covered almost the entire front of her shirt.

“No,” she replied, like it was no big deal. “Mommy just hasn’t had a chance to wash.”

“Oooooo…………kkkkkkkkkkkkkk…..,” I thought to myself.

Keep in mind that, at this point, I was relatively new to this whole deal. My Hubby and I had only been together for a little over a year and I had never been a stepmom before. I didn’t know yet that I had to hide my reactions from the kids, that I wasn’t supposed to be angry when they looked like orphans. I didn’t understand that my ire would make them feel put in the middle, that it would make them jump to ED’s defense. I’m sure it felt like the Spanish Inquisition to them, but bear with me. It was a long time ago.

“What about your shoes?” I continued, my voice not disguising the frustration I was feeling. “They’re full of holes! Are they the only pair you have?”

Velma and Shaggy both stood looking at the floor as I spoke to Velma, their clothing and shoes in the same shape.

“Yes,” she replied, and looked up at me with sparks in her eyes.

And here’s where it gets good…

“If Dad didn’t cut up everything we had, I would have more pairs of shoes!”

That stopped me dead in my tracks. Did I really hear that? Did she really just say that her father cut up everything they had?

“What?!?” I shot back. “What did you say?”

“I said,” she spat at me, “If Dad didn’t cut up everything with his hunting knife, I would have more.”

Velma, just shy of five years old, got in on the action now. She was visibly upset, her eyes filling with tears. “Stop Daphne. I don’t want him to get the knife. What if he cuts up this pair? It’s the only one I have!”

Shaggy was still a toddler, but he felt the tension, too and he began to cry.

I felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone. What knife? What on earth were they talking about? It was taking me time to even digest their words, let alone to come up with a response.

“What knife?” I asked Daphne. “What knife are you talking about? Your father doesn’t even have a knife!”

“Yes he does,” she shot back. “A hunting knife. And he cuts up everything we have so Mom will have to buy more.”

“Yeah,” Velma chimed in. “And I only have this one pair left. Mom could afford to buy us more stuff if Daddy didn’t keep cutting up our stuff. And I’m afraid that he’ll get mad at me. That knife is BIG!”

I sank down on the bottom step and tried to understand where this was heading.

I had honestly never seen any kind of knife and I didn’t know why they would have this vivid description of the knife and him cutting things up with it if it truly didn’t exist. My immediate guess was that they were confused about some other incident–maybe they saw him carving a turkey or something and associated that with hunting? No idea.

What I did know is that the story about him destroying their things came directly from ED, nowhere else. I decided to dig a little further.

“What does the hunting knife look like?” I asked Daphne.

“It’s big,” she replied.

“Yes,” I said. “But what does it look like? What kind of handle does it have? How long is it?”

She shrugged her small shoulders.

“Have you seen it?”

She shrugged again. Velma shook her head.

The picture began to come together for me.

“And what has Daddy cut up?”

Daphne couldn’t think of anything. Velma timidly offered, “My last pair of shoes?”

“Did you see that happen?” I asked softly.

She shook her head again, and looked at the floor.

“Can you think of a reason that Daddy would cut up your things?” I gently tipped Daphne’s chin upward so I could look her in the eye.

She shook her head again, but said, barely whispering, “Mom said he did…”

“Daddy loves you. As far as I know he doesn’t even have a hunting knife, you’ve never seen him with it, you’ve never seen him cut anything up with it, and you can’t think of a reason why he would ever do that. I can’t think of a reason either. Maybe Mom just misunderstood something.”

That seemed to pacify them for that moment.

But it wouldn’t be the last time we would talk about that hunting knife. Velma spent almost a year working the image of her Daddy cutting up her things out of her mind.

And when those accusations faded? ED moved in with escalating claims of abuse, like I described in Why It Hurts So Much - 1. There’s nothing worse than watching children shrink away from their Daddy…

because of their Mommy.

Especially if you are their Daddy, or you love their Daddy.

It’s abominable.  It hurts.  A lot.

The kids were small. Shaggy was 2, Freddy was 3, Velma was 4 and Daphne was 6. The kids and My Hubby were all sitting at the dinner table in the house we were renting. I had just walked through the door from the kitchen, carrying a giant bowl of steaming green beans. The rest of dinner was already on the table. The fish tank was bubbling away in the corner and it was snowing outside.

The pieces of that moment will forever be burned in my brain. Almost the same as the things I remember about where I was on 9/11. It was that impactful…

As I set the bowl of green beans down, the chatter around the table subsided and I noticed that Velma was crying. Her little head was tucked down to her chest and I could just see the tears streaking down her cheeks. Her curls were a wild halo around her head.

“Velma, what’s wrong sweetheart?” I asked.

She looked up at me through wet lashes, stray hairs sticking to her wet cheeks, and wailed…

“Daddy abandoned us!”

I was immediately taken aback.

“What did you say?” Had I really just heard those words from a 4-year-old’s lips? My Hubby looked like he’d just been slapped in the face. His mouth was agape and color rushed to his neck, then his ears, then his face.

He and The Egg Donor (ED) had already been separated for almost two years–the divorce had been final for one. True, he left ED because he couldn’t continue to deal with the level of insanity in their relationship, in her relationship with everyone. But he had never stopped seeing the kids… EVER.

“Daddy abandoned us!” she repeated, sliding the back of her hand across her lips, through the river of tears on her cheek, and pushing the hair back.

“Velma…” I started softly, “Do you know what that means?”

Her little head nodded uncertainly.

“Why don’t you tell me what it means.” I waited to hear her response.

“Mommy said it means that Daddy left us forever because he doesn’t want to be with us anymore.”

I felt my blood begin to boil. This certainly wasn’t the first time I had heard words like this, grown-up words from the mouth of someone decidedly NOT grown-up, and I knew that it wouldn’t be the last. But I wondered how she could look at herself in the mirror every day, planting ideas like this in the heads of these sweet, little children. I wondered how she slept at night.

My Hubby got up and left the table while I sat to talk with Velma.

“I understand that Mommy said that. But if Daddy left you and didn’t want to be with you, would you be here right now?” I looked into her eyes as she thought about that for a minute. Her brow furrowed and I could see the wheels turning.

“If Daddy didn’t want to be with you, would you spend so much time with us?”

I pressed on. “Abandoned means that someone left and didn’t come back, that you never saw that person again. That’s NOT what’s happening here. Daddy loves you very much and would never leave you. You will always see Daddy. Do you understand?”

Slowly, she nodded and she took some deep breaths as I wrapped my arms around her shoulders.

“Daddy will never leave you…”

Later, I wrapped those same arms around My Hubby and told him how sorry I was that ED would try to destroy his relationship with the kids in that way. He nodded and, like Velma had earlier, took some deep breaths, himself recovering from the grief that had enveloped him the second Velma spoke the word “abandoned” alongside his name.

Several years later, we’re all a lot more comfortable with the permanence in our relationships with each other, but I think back often on that day, on those words, on Velma’s little shoulders shaking, on the tears streaming down her face, on the look on My Hubby’s face as she spit those words out, and I wonder why ED would EVER purposely plant seeds like that in the mind of a child…

in the mind of her child…

why she would be so bent on the destruction of another human being that she couldn’t see the damage she was doing to her own precious children in the process.

Just like Daphne, Shaggy had made what we thought would be a lifelong friend at the daycare they started attending when he was just two.

Shaggy and Adam were inseparable at daycare and, like Daphne and her friend Jade, got together outside of daycare for sleepovers and trips to the local amusement park. Shaggy didn’t even call him Adam for a very long time. He was simply, “My Buddy”.

We knew Adam’s parents because Adam’s mother worked at the daycare. I think she was fairly familiar with the situation. The Egg Donor (ED) had as much problem paying for daycare then (despite My Hubby’s very large child support payment each month) as she does now and the kids were far younger and much more unkempt at that time. Most of the employees at that particular daycare, though off the record only, encouraged us to continue to fight for primary custody.

They would relate things like, “The kids act like they’re starving when they get here, like they haven’t had a meal in days,” and “Velma came this morning in flip-flops… it’s 30 degrees outside!”

They knew.

Anyway, that daycare scenario ended in 2005, right before the hearing, when ED pulled all of the kids out and left the daycare with an almost $300 balance. At that time, the kids were still going to school by ED’s home. Shaggy wasn’t old enough for kindergarten yet, so she enrolled him in a separate daycare and put the girls in the before- and after-school care program at that school (both of which, incidentally, she also left balances at–$750 at the before- and after-school care program and $250 at the pre-K daycare Shaggy attended).

Although they were no longer attending daycare together, Shaggy and Adam stayed in touch. They talked on the phone regularly, and each attended the other’s birthday parties. They continued to have sleepovers and get together. It wasn’t as often as when they saw each other daily, but we tried to keep it fairly steady.

In mid-2006, we went to arbitration to move the kids to the new school being built in our neighborhood. There were many reasons. ED had not participated in parent/teacher conferences, had not attended school programs, was not working together with the kids on getting homework done, and had disenrolled the kids from before- and after-school care program. During the last three months of the 2005-2006 school year, she was having the girls (then ages 8 and 10) ride the bus home to an empty apartment because she refused to pay the outstanding balance.

And then there was the school itself. The new school came with shiny new classrooms, new curriculums, new desks, and the opportunity for the kids to be the first attendees ever at the school. It also came with new staff… staff that did not have ED’s abuse claims running around in their heads, staff with whom we might have a chance to build a relationship focused on the kids. And the bonus? Adam was going there, too.

We made it through the arbitration, with the outcome being that My Hubby was awarded sole decision-making, and his first decision was to put the kids in the new elementary school.

While ED talked to the kids at length about how awful the new school would be, how we would never let them see their old friends, how far it was for her to drive, the kids seemed genuinely excited. When Shaggy found out that he and Adam would be in the same first grade class, he was beside himself!

The year started out well. The kids settled in and really liked their teachers. They still couldn’t seem to get homework done during the 49% of the time they were with ED, but they made new friends… friends that lived close, friends that they could get together with on a regular basis. They loved the before- and after-school program. Shaggy loved having Adam in the same class. He was back to hanging out with His Buddy, every single day. It was bliss.

Then came Adam’s birthday party. The invitation came home with Shaggy from school. I don’t remember who was on the front. It was probably Scooby Doo or some other first-grader friendly character. Shaggy set it on the counter immediately after we got home.

“Can I go?”

“Let me see, Buddy…,” I said, reaching for it. “It looks like it’s on a weekend you’re with your Mom. You’ll have to take it to her.”

“OK,” he said, and stuffed it back into his backpack.

The following weekend, I made sure he had the invitation. He did, right in the front pocket. He showed it to me. “See?”

“OK,” I said. “Make sure you give it to Mom.”

That night, Adam’s mom called to see if Shaggy would be there. I let her know that we were sending the invitation to ED’s house, that Shaggy would be with her on that weekend, but that I assumed he would be there. Surely she would take him to Adam’s party. They’d been friends for so long!

The next week went by and I forgot about it. But Shaggy didn’t. He reminded me that the party was this upcoming weekend. He told me all about what they would do, where they were going, who else would be there. He was so excited.

So when we picked them up from school that next Wednesday, it was the first thing I thought of to ask him about. I tilted the rearview mirror so I could see him and asked, my voice excited with the anticipation of how much fun he probably had, “How was Adam’s party?”

He glared at me in the mirror and didn’t respond.

It was not the response I had expected. I immediately surmised that ED had not taken him.

“Did you not go?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “Dad was supposed to pick me up and take me and he didn’t come!”

“What?!?” I replied. I was genuinely shocked. We had, of course, heard nothing about this whatsoever.

“Dad was supposed to take me. Why didn’t he come?”

“Well, Buddy,” I stammered, “We didn’t know anything about that plan. We never pick you up on weekends with Mom and we never had any discussions like that with your Mom. Is that what Mom told you?”

He nodded sadly. I don’t think he knew what to believe, although it was far from the first time ED had pulled something like that. I think, deep down, he knew I was telling the truth.

Since that weekend, Adam has grown steadily away from Shaggy. There have been no more sleepovers, no more play dates, no more amusement park visits… and no more phone calls. When Shaggy calls Adam they never answer and the multiple times he’s left messages, we don’t get a call back.

I can only guess that ED had a conversation with Adam’s mother and told her the same story she told Shaggy–likely completely embellished, and completely untrue, but believable enough that she bought it, whatever it was. Believable enough that she thought Adam shouldn’t hang out with Shaggy anymore.

Poor Shaggy lost a friend that weekend, a friend he will probably never get back… and we don’t really know why.

While it hurt that My Hubby had to defend his actions that weekend and explain to Shaggy that ED had not been truthful (again), it hurts more that it hurts Shaggy so much… and it has now for so long.

Last Monday was MLK Day (a full year since Adam’s birthday party).  No school and I was home with them for the day. All of the other kids called friends and invited them over to play.

Shaggy ran through his list of friends and couldn’t find one that was available. As he held the directory in his hands, disappointment scrawled across his face, his eyes welling with tears, he pointed to Adam’s name and said, “I would call Adam… but he never calls back. I guess he’s just not My Buddy anymore.”

In 2004, we filed a Motion to Modify Parenting Time.

At that time, we weren’t interested in taking time with the kids away from The Egg Donor (ED). We wanted 51% of the parenting time because then we could keep the kids on good, stable health insurance.

It would be kind to say that ED has not had a stellar employment history. In fact, I’m a little shocked that anyone actually continues to hire her. By the time the hearing rolled around in January of 2005, ED was working on her sixth job in a two-year timeframe. She would work somewhere for a brief time, generally not long enough to get health insurance benes, and then “get laid off”. She never paid for COBRA insurance from the job she had where she actually did have insurance, so the kids went for long periods of time with no insurance.

Despite the fact that the child support order specifically directed her to carry health insurance, and despite the fact that My Hubby was paying her a hefty sum (almost as much as our mortgage) in child support based on her paying to maintain health insurance (and daycare), she just let it drop initially and then hopped from job to job without ever actually staying long enough to get it.

The youngest, Shaggy, had RSV when he was just a little guy and is very prone to asthma flare-ups that turn into pneumonia. Also, all of the kids needed serious dental work at the time due to the fact ED didn’t even have toothbrushes for them at her apartment, and that she evidently didn’t believe in dentists.

To this day, she has NEVER taken them to a dentist and Daphne is 12 years old. So there we were, multiple health and dental issues, no insurance on ED’s part, My Hubby’s job didn’t provide a family plan for insurance, and my job had absolutely fabulous insurance, but I was ”just the stepmom.” As a stepparent, I had to be able to prove that the kids resided primarily with us in order to add them to my plan.

There were a thousand more reasons, as I’m sure you can probably guess, to want them to spend more time with us, but that was the primary reason.

Daphne alone needed almost $3000 worth of dental work and, with My Hubby paying so much in child support and paying the rest of what he made to an attorney, we just could NOT afford to pay for it all out of pocket. ED would not take her, would not take responsibility for payment, would not get insurance, would not do ANYthing except watch her suffer with serious tooth decay.

Thus, the Motion to Modify.

The Motion was basically written based on health insurance and being able to carry it in a stable fashion. We specified a 51/49 split and asked for a blocked schedule to reduce the number of transitions for the kids.

We did NOT ask to restrict her parenting time. We did NOT ask to take the kids away from her. We did NOT ask to limit the kids contact with her. Maybe we should have, but we didn’t.

The day following ED’s receipt of the Motion to Modify, she had parenting time with the kids. She called them all over to the couch in her small apartment, pulled them up onto the couch with her and, with tears streaming down her face, said to them:

“Daddy is trying to take you away from me. He doesn’t want us to spend any time together anymore. He asked the judge to take away all of your time with me. If he wins, you won’t ever see Mommy again.”

I’m sure you can imagine the fallout…

It hasn’t just been school personnel that have been swayed by The Egg Donor’s (ED) lies.

In the year prior to Daphne starting school, she attended a local daycare and became fast friends with an adorable little girl that also attended. We’ll call her Jade. Daphne and Jade spent most of their waking hours at daycare hanging out together and Jade, being an only child, invited Daphne to lots of events — sleepovers, camping, trips to local tourist attractions, and the like. We knew Jade’s parents and interacted with them on a fairly regular basis because, at that time, the kids stayed with us every weekend from Saturday morning until Sunday evening. Jade also spent lots of time at our house for sleepovers, play dates, etc.

Up to the point, in 2005, that My Hubby was awarded primary residential custody, ED had nothing to do with Jade or her family. There were no sleepovers at ED’s apartment, no times that she took the girls out to do anything together, she didn’t have any interaction with Jade’s parents for weekend activities, nothing. Once My Hubby had primary custody (51%) and every other weekend fell during her parenting time, though, that started to change. Suddenly, ED was good friends with Jade’s mother Carol, and it seemed like there was a sleepover or some other activity in the works every single weekend that the kids were with ED.

Just about three months after the hearing, My Hubby got a phone call from Daphne (calling from ED’s house) on a Tuesday night, asking if she could go on a camping trip with Jade that weekend. The week prior, Daphne had been experiencing problems with getting her schoolwork done and My Hubby told her that she would be grounded from activities with friends over the weekend if she had not gotten it together with her schoolwork by the time they arrived at our house on Wednesday. He reiterated what he had told her the week prior and said that he would not make a decision about the camping trip until after he had seen her schoolwork for the week and had a chance to get in touch with her teacher. Daphne sounded disappointed, but agreed to wait until Wednesday night.

Not five minutes later, Jade’s mother Carol called. She explained to My Hubby that this particular camping trip was a big deal to Jade, that they had made plans far in advance, and that she had already gotten the go-ahead from ED for Jade to go. They were already planning on her coming. Couldn’t My Hubby just agree to let her go? Just this one time?

My Hubby explained to Carol that Daphne had been having trouble with her schoolwork, that their agreement was that he would see how it had gone since the previous week, that he would not make a decision until the following evening, and that ED did not have the authority to make plans for Daphne during his time with her. Carol got upset, pleaded with him some more, and finally agreed to wait until Wednesday evening for his answer.

At least those were her words. She must have immediately hung up the phone and called ED, because the whole situation escalated from there. ED called and left a voicemail for My Hubby telling him what a rotten person he was for not letting Daphne go on the camping trip (which he had not said, just that he was waiting to make a decision). My Hubby left her a voicemail back letting her know that he had not yet made a decision, but that it was inappropriate for ED to agree to things for Daphne during his time, that Carol should not be calling to plead Daphne’s case, and that ED should not be in the middle of the situation at all.

A few minutes later Carol called back and read My Hubby the riot act for putting her in the middle of this situation with him and ED.

What?!? Seriously?!? Was she NOT the one who called and put herself in the middle? Even after My Hubby had calmly explained the situation? Was it not ED that encouraged her to be in the middle by agreeing to something for Daphne on My Hubby’s time with her? What total craziness.

At that point, My Hubby decided that Daphne would NOT be going. He explained to Carol that, while he had been planning to consider the trip based on the outcome of Daphne’s schoolwork, Carol’s phone calls pressuring him to make a decision were forcing him to tell her no. Carol responded that My Hubby was hurting the feelings of both girls with his actions and hung up on him. Very adult behavior, right?

We didn’t hear from Carol or Jade for several days. My Hubby and I discussed the happenings and agreed that maybe a phone call to Carol would be in order. Jade and Daphne had been such good friends for several years and we did NOT want a simple misunderstanding to drive a wedge between them. My Hubby called Carol and apologized for the way the situation had played out. He said that he understood that Carol just really wanted Daphne to go, but reiterated that ED should NOT have made plans during his time. Carol angrily told him that she did not care what he had to say, that Jade would no longer be coming to our house for any reason, and that their conversation was over.

During the next week, Jade called several times to invite Daphne to play at her house. My Hubby said no each time. He refused to play Carol’s little game and explained to Daphne that if Jade wasn’t allowed to come to our house, Daphne was not going to Jade’s. It hit the high note when Daphne burst out in tears that Friday evening after a phone call with Jade and told My Hubby that Jade’s mother was afraid of him, that Jade wasn’t allowed to come over because our home wasn’t “safe” for her. Jade explained that Carol believed that Daphne was abused.

That was when we cut off phone contact with Jade.

Fast forward two months to an arbitration hearing in which our arbitrator explained that he had received a phone call from a “Concerned Party” identifying herself only as “Carol” (no last name), stating that she had serious concerns about the safety and welfare of the children in My Hubby’s care. Since the arbitrator is a mandatory reporter, he had no choice but to call Social Services as the things described by Carol were serious enough to be considered abuse.

We endured the investigation (again) by Social Services and the report was closed, unfounded… again. But the scars from things like that will never heal. ED weasled her way into Carol’s good graces and filled her mind with poison. That poison destroyed a wonderful friendship between two little girls that will never understand what happened. That poison caused yet another person to look at My Hubby and me with suspicion. That poison put words in Daphne’s head that will never be erased. That poison caused another visit to our home by Social Services, one more time we we were forced to lay bare our entire lives.

My guess is that ED had planned this kind of thing from the start. Whether she thought she would derail the court process or the arbitration process, I don’t know. But I think she knowingly and masterfully wove a tale about My Hubby to Carol, just to get another person on her side, paying no heed to the irreparable damage her lies would cause.