He's been pushing for me to drive more and more with regards to his visitation.  Our parenting agreement says that he does pick ups, and I do retrieval.  And we did - in the beginning.  But then he started offering to do both.  I have never known why, but I have always thought it was so that he could pick the kids up later and drop them off earlier.  He has more control over his time this way.  Okay - whatever - so be it.  The kids are teenagers now, so even if there's no one home when they are returned, they just use their key and let us know they're home.  We plan on them being there for dinner.  Everything else we can just work out.

Anyway, ex has been pushing for me to drive more.  He hasn't come and SAID he wants me to take on more driving, or why.  He just started saying, "You can drop the kids off at X time" type of thing.  That hasn't been customary in about 5 years now, so no - I'm not just going to start jumping because he's *telling* me to.  I have pushed back - "No,... you can PICK THEM UP at X time."  They are teenagers - I drive CONSTANTLY right now.  I tracked last week's time in the car taking them to and fro, and it was almost 5 hours.  I work full time.  That's a LOT of driving.  My ex does NONE of the driving - never takes them to a doctor's appointment, a job interview, a friend's house, or driving practice for our newest driver.  I of course spend time at the doctor's office with them, too - not just the driving.  Ex chose to move 45 minutes away.  He can't just reduce his driving time down to an hour and a half of driving a month and have me add another hour and a half to the 20-ish hours I'm already shuttling the kids around.  He'll say, "Well, YOU wanted the kids".  Yeah - YOU don't make enough to raise them.  What did you expect was going to happen?  So the dude is paying $600 in child support a month for the two kids, and he drives 45 minutes each way every other weekend.  THAT'S.IT.  We pay for all their food, their clothes, their schooling, their outfits for special occasions, toiletries, EVERYthing.  He likes to think that he pays TONS of child support.  It's the same percentage that every other non-residential parent in IL with two kids pays.  It's not MY fault that he's decided he wants to be a waiter forever rather than utilize his culinary degree.  If he made more, he'd have enough to live off of after child support.  But I digress.  My point here is that I don't need more driving or work of ANY kind added.  I'm f'ing FULL UP.  And he does NOTHING but visit with them for 1.5 days, twice a month.  He takes them nowhere.  They sit around his house, BORED.

Let me go a bit further here and tell you that he has options to visitations that he's never taken advantage of.  He is entitled to have them for a week over winter break, and for two weeks in the summer, and always on his birthday and Father's Day.  And he has entitlement to see them on the Wednesday evenings that he doesn't have them that weekend.  He's never used that ONCE.  Last year he blew them off for both his birthday AND Father's Day.  It's apparently easier and more fun to spend all that time with his childless lover, who finds children in general annoying.  My daughter in particular has been increasingly more annoyed and disenchanted with her father - purely from her own experiences with him.  She knows he's been pushing the driving thing.  I told her that I don't like being taken advantage of, but I WILL make sure she gets out there to see her dad.  I don't ever want to make her or her brother feel like no one can even be bothered with driving them.  She told me no - that he does so little already that if he can't come get her, then she doesn't even want to bother going.  I said, "but then you won't see him."  She's like, "Mom, I barely want to see him now anyway.  Just let him fall down so I can see who he is."  Oooooh-kaaaaay, 13 year-old going on 25.

My ex has made it known to the kids that any time they want to skip a weekend or spend more time at home to be with friends and such, all they have to do is ask. Because it doesn't matter to him if he spends time with them.  Asswipe.  And they do ask every few months.  If they ask for time to go out with friends after school until around 7 on a Friday, he'll tell them he'll pick them up the next morning.  Which turns into early afternoon.  Which turns into only a 24-hour visit with them.  But lately he's been saying, "Surrrre - just have your mom drop you off when you're ready."  As if it's my responsibility to figure out the weekend plans when it's HIM who's allowing them to go.  I've put my foot down about this repeatedly.  If Iiiii am asking for them to stay extra time for a family event or something, then I will get them out there - or I will pick them up early if that's how it plays out.  If HE wants them at a different day/time (including them asking and him okay-ing), then HE has to figure it out.  Two weeks ago for Mother's Day, he called me the week before and asked if I wanted the kids for that Sunday (on what would be his weekend).  I said yes, please.  He told me when I could come get them.  Happy Mother's Day, Kel.

Last week I texted my ex and asked if he minded if I kept the kids until Sat. morning; my sister owns a dance school and they were having their performance showcase (which is all amazing numbers they take to competitions), and my sister had provided us with free tickets.  He said sure - just drop them on Sat. morning.  THEN my sister asked my son if he wanted to work sound at the shows - she needed him on Thurs. from 3-10, then on Fri. from noon-9, and Sat. from 6-9.  She was paying him $20/hour to do this.  Well of COURSE he wanted to do it.  So he called and asked his dad if he could come on Sat. night.  His dad said, "Sure - have your mom drop you off afterward."  I was p.o.'d - WHY am I dropping the kid off when I'm a) already dropping my daughter off in the morning, b) I'm running my son back and forth to the dance shows on what's supposed to be my weekend to not be tied to their schedule, and c) this is his father allowing him to do this on HIS time - figure it out yourself, douchbag.  A day or so later, my ex texted me saying exactly what I anticipated that he would: "Just bring both kids out on Sat. evening."  He could have had his daughter alone for the day, but nope!  He saw his out.  So I asked him if he was working that evening.  He said no.  So I said, "Then you can come pick them up."  No response (not responding is his favorite now).  So I waited until my son was ready to be picked up from the dance thing, and texted their father to say they'd be ready to be picked up in 45 minutes.  He said okay, and 45 minutes later, both he and his partner pulled up while dh and I were doing yard work.  I kissed the kids goodbye but didn't make so much as any eye contact with ex.

It's not 10 minutes later and dd is texting me, saying that ex and his bf are bashing me - and lying while doing do.  They are saying that I told them I couldn't drop the kids off because Iiiii had to work the dance show too, and there I was, puttering around the yard.  I NEVER said ANYthing about working.  And dd knows that.  Now, I couldn't care less what my ex says about me - his opinion means less than nothing to me.  But my daughter is highly uncomfortable with her mother being bashed.  She says that my ex's bf literally called me a bitch in the car.  Then dd changes the subject - tells her father that her graduation present is tickets to a concert with her 22 year-old step-sister.  He says NO WAY he's allowing her to go to that.  Now she's losing it.  Tells him that she wants to go back home.  Nope!  "You don't have that option."  I text her not to freak out - just let him drive her all the way home and I'll come get her.  She's most worried about telling him; she's afraid he'll pull his normal routine and start crying.  I tell her not to tell him until I text to say I'm very close.  That way she doesn't have to deal with it.  Meanwhile, I have to break it to my current dh that no, we're not going out for a romantic sushi dinner.  He had talked to dd just the day before, and he told me he felt like it was going to be their last weekend with their father - dd was getting progressively fed up, and ds was likely to get a job that will keep him busy with weekends.  So he's billing this as our "goodbye kidless weekend" last meal.  So much for that.

I'm on my way out there when dd texts to say that her brother is coming home, too.  Huh?  Why?  She says "Because he doesn't want to leave me alone."  Something's wrong - these two are like oil and water.  They relish being apart, and will argue over the color of the sky.  She texts, "Hurry, Momma.  It got ugly."  Turns out that she couldn't wait to tell her father that she was leaving - blurted it out.  I'm not sure what her father did.  But his boyfriend comes down the stairs and gets into her face and yells, "Your mother's a fucking bitch!"  She looks at her father, and says, "Are you going to let him talk to me that way?", and her father says, "It's not me, it's him.  And it's his house."  Way to protect your kids, DAD.  My ds becomes enraged and starts crying.  The kind of crying a grown man does when he's going to lose it and fuck somebody up.  That's when he says he's leaving, too.  That boyfriend can't talk about his mom that way.

I did call ex when I was on my way there.  He wouldn't answer.  I left him a message saying, "What's going on over there?  The kids want to come home?  Give me a call."  Nope.  We get home mostly in silence except for the radio.  When we get home, ds goes to his room and dd starts crying while telling us what went down.  We were getting out of the car and my dh got to her first.  I had to try to weasel in for a hug because they were all wrapped up together.  I think I got to touch a thigh.  Ha ha.  The kid is graduating this Tues.  She doesn't want her dad to come.  She only gets two tix, and she wants dh and I to come, but is afraid to disappoint her father.  This is what I have now - a girl who is afraid to make her daddy upset.  Ugh.

A little later, I got a text from my ex, stating that from now on, we will be adhering to the parenting agreement, and I will be picking them up.  We won't be doing "makeup" weekends if there's a reason they need to skip a weekend (like for a wedding or vacation with extended family) - he'll just forfeit the weekend.  He tells me that if I want to change things, I can talk to him like an adult.  Now, this is a man who can't spell an entire sentence without a grammatical or spelling error.  There were no such mistakes in his text.  His boyfriend wrote this damned thing.  HE controls their relationship (because my ex brings nothing to the relationship except for a decent ass), so the boyfriend dictates everything down to how much money the kids are "allowed" to receive for their birthdays and Christmas.  Their dad sneaks them more money the next time on the sly.  It's a very lopsided relationship - both in their home, and the one their father has with me.  I refuse to let my ex's boyfriend run ANY of how I raise my kids.  Go fuck yourself (pardon my effing French).

I wrote an email back to my ex a few days later, telling him a) how much he was overdue for child support, b) how much he owes me for recent medical expenses for the kids, and c) that if anyone ever gets in my kid's faces like that again, I'm calling the cops on them.  That it's Dad Job 1 to protect his kids, and he's failing miserably at his job.  TStop worry about driving and start worrying about parenting.  And if he doesn't think I'm following the spirit of the parenting agreement, he can take me to court for a judge to make the decision (any time we've gone to court he's lost ground).  And that he's letting his boyfriend decide what kind of relationship he's having with his kids. I told him that his (now dead) mother would be ashamed of him, as am I.  I haven't heard a word from him since.

Ah, the fun of it all!

Kel