So we had a couple weeks off of insane drama. Or maybe it was one week. But back to the regularly scheduled program. BM insists that if DH cannot make one of his weekends for any reason, he is not allowed to reschedule with her, he must just skip and not see the kids for four weeks. Ok. We try to work within these demands, even when it is hard. Sometimes his job abruptly changes his schedule, and in the current situation, he is not comfortable or even ABLE to flip his work schedule around to accommodate biweekly visits. Once in a while he has to miss a weekend. This weekend was one of those we had to miss. We told her with months to spare, because we knew it would be an issue, we gave literally months of lead time on how this weekend was impossible. This was not his usual job, but it was an event we knew would be a conflict. He was scheduled to give a presentation and meet with people who could advance his career, at a conference that BOTH of us were attending, as part of both of our careers! Ok. So the next weekend he was to see the kids was the weekend after thanksgiving.

Now BM already made a stink about that weekend, because a month ago, it looked like DH's wealthy aunt might be in town to meet ME. I have never met this aunt, but she married a wealthy fellow and BM just sees dollar signs when her name comes up. The aunt was coming to meet me, as DH's soon to be second wife, and future part of her family. This entire scenario has absolutely nothing to do with BM, and BM did NOT like it. She planned to come down with the kids, stay with DH's estranged brother and bitchy SIL who have become bffs with BM (these women thrive on drama! SIL is estranged from her own parents AND sister, and just LIVES to be at the center of nasty interpersonal dramas!) well, whatever, we can't stop her driving down, but if you're bringing the kids within ten minutes of their dad's house on the weekend he's supposed to have them anyway, why not just let him take the kids and spend your nasty little catty bitch weekend without the kids at SIL's house? Oh NO, that would be too much like doing something nice. Besides which, wealthy aunt had to change plans, and wouldn't be in town. Instead BM said, she was not coming down at all, and had other plans and that THANKSGIVING WAS HERS NOW, DH has Xmas, so he will have to wait six weeks without seeing the kids. Note: we never said we would take them for thanksgiving, just for the sat/sun afterwards, which is not a holiday, and is his regularly scheduled visitation weekend.

No, no, she insisted he could not have the kids that weekend. No way, no how. He offered to bring them to meet her family and drop them off if she had relatives in town and wanted the kids to meet them. No no no. He offered to pick up and drop off at her parent's house if she had plans or something. No no no. She refused to tell him what she was doing and refused to work with him on any plan that involved him seeing the kids that weekend. She "graciously" offered the weekend before and the weekend after, OR, he could drop all his plans to attend the conference this weekend that might further his career and mine, and see them this weekend. (She told him this on thursday evening, before we were supposed to leave for the conference friday morning). She had sussed out that the conference was not mandatory through his regular job, because she stalks me on facebook, and decided to see if she could force him to dump his plans and drive 7 hours to see the kids on 24 hrs notice. Also, she could give a rats ass about his career, she really wanted him to stop taking classes or trying to advance and just take on a second dead-end job to pay her more CS. Almost worked, but I managed to remind him that missing opportunities is pretty poor planning in the current economy.

So despite her blowing up his phone, trying to ORDER HIM to come up and change plans last minute, we went to the conference, and made valuable contacts and gave our lectures, etc. It was a successful weekend. But we still could not get an answer on the weekend after thanksgiving. She just refused to tell him why she couldn't let him see the kids. Finally he said he would be at the house to pick them up as usual saturday morning, and if she wasn't there or wouldn't let him see the kids he would call the cops and tell them she was interfering in his visitation. Ah-ha! The magic words!

So it turns out, she still had every intention of driving seven hours down here to stay with SIL, ten minutes away from us, and had no intention of telling DH about it. She was going to sneak the kids here, see his brother and that evil witch of an SIL and never even let the kids see their father. Even after being forced to admit this to DH, she told him they have "too many plans" for him to see the kids! And that if he wanted to say goodnight to them or something, like spend five minutes with them, he would have to call ahead and deal with the estranged brother and SIL and of course bM herself, in a "supervised" visit!

So... Currently this is going back and forth between our lawyers. She has demanded a bunch of "discovery" questions for our next court date at this time, too, including a bunch of shit about how much DH makes in "side income" from lectures and conferences (uhm, nothing). But we are not doing a cS adjustment in court! Not even on the docket! We are going to court to change the visitation schedule. She also wants to know if DH can list every doctor's appt. and test the kids have had(date, time, location) even though he was never even informed of half of the visits. (No the kids are not sickly, one has had some dental work, one had a skin rash. The one significant medical episode was a tonsil-ectomy-- which she informed DH about via text message at 3am, and then turned her phone off. He was up all night calling hospitals and trying to cover his work shift to drive seven hours to try to locate the hospital, because she wasn't returning his desperate calls). She is trying, clearly, to make some kind of case about him not knowing enough about the kids, when she refuses to tell him anything, and you can't really get clear answers from a six year old about everything.

I didn't used to believe people were just plain evil for no reason.