Today is our day to pick SD6 up from school, so BM texts DH saying she's wearing our skirt but she's not sure if the shirt is ours or not; she's lost track. After claiming she only had a pair of our Capri's, I sent her a text (from DH's phone of course) on Friday listing the clothing and shoes she has that belong to us and asked her to send them back as well as making sure SD6 goes to school in our clothes on our days. We're not talking one or two things here, either, we send SD6 to school looking nice, in clean name brand clothes and clean shoes. We pick her up and she's wearing a mismatched, stained up Walmart special with filthy shoes that usually have holes worn into the toes.

We're not rich by any means but we like for our kids to look nice, so we often frequent thrift stores in order to get them clothing that we otherwise couldn't afford. That would obviously require too much effort for BM so she purchases all of SD6's clothes at Walmart and K-mart. Everything SD6 owns that BM has purchased has a label of Arizona Jeans, Faded Glory, Circo and Route 66 so to say I'm not sure what's yours is the biggest load of crap ever. I've even gone so far so as to start writing SD's initials on the tags of the clothes that we buy and keeping a record of what we send her to school in so we can ask (repeatedly) for it back later. There's also the huge difference in style that makes it obvious who purchased the clothes; DH and I have a spunky sort of rock style so we buy SD6 flare jeans, cute flashy skirts and shirts that say things like 'Girls Rock' and dresses, we've bought her a ton of dresses which means we send her to school in nice slightly dressy shoes. BM buys her spandex skinny 'jeans' and covers spandex leggings with inappropriate lengthed mini skirts, knee high boots and t-shirts that are usually a size too small.

SD6 is 4'2 and 66lbs so dressing her appropriately is important in our book and the kicker is that SD KNOWS whose house the clothes are supposed to be at so if there was anything even remotely genuine about BM's "I've lost track" statement, she has a list as well as the option of asking SD. To make matters worse, last time I rounded up her cheap crap asking that she kindly do the same, she handed over things we hadn't seen in months, that SD said she forgot she even had because she hasn't worn and not only wasn't it washed, but some of the shirts were so stained we had to throw them away. We've tried talking to BM about this, who insists she dresses SD6 nicely and is offended-because everything offends her. We even tried just sending her back in the crap we picked her up in but since we take her to school, we can't bring ourselves to make her wear these things. The hag has no bills because her dad pays for everything and DH pays her child support so there's no reason we should have to buy all of her clothes too, especially when the C U Next Tuesday buys her more walmart crap to send her to school in!

I know it's a losing battle and that you can't reason with someone like this but I'm so damn tired of picking SD up and seeing how badly she looks when she has nice things-OUR nice things-sitting around. Oh and it's not just our days, we've picked up her with no notice before and she's dressed the same way. There have even been a few instances that we've asked SD what happened to such and such an outfit and she's told us that BM gave it to her douche boyfriend's kid. There really should be a law that allows you to work out issues with BM in a boxing ring. I'd be fine with wearing gloves and headgear, I'd just really like to be able to punch her.