No More Dad Bashing

Time for a bit of a rant.

This year, while I was happily minding my own business and getting on with my life, both of my exes decided to trip off line, give in to their inner idiots and go stupid in the parent department. The upshot is that I have been left as the only functioning parent of any note for my three oldest kids...and my wife has been thrust into the role of primary female parent for all the kids.

So forgive me if I express more than a bit of disdain for those women who routinely bash fathers and their contributions, or somehow make mothers the saints in all situations.

It just is not true. Let me say for the record that parental jerkiness is an equal opportunity condition, and mothers can be just as crappy and dysfunctional. They may do it differently, but women too, can be real shits when it comes to caring for the kids.

Anyway, I now feel better.

Oldest went back to her mom's home for a few days last week to attend college orientation. Her mother was a manipulative witch and her step father has started transitioning into creepy phase.. my oldest is drop dead beautiful with a gymnasts body and apparently step dad was noticing and commenting. No action, or I would be talking to the Texas Dept of Safety. Needless to say, oldest is not going back there ever, and will be taking her to college when it starts.

More later, just wanted to rant.

Strains

Well, so far the ship of life is on an even keel, if a bit storm tossed. Oldest daughter is home with the baby today, baby still recuperating from a fairly nasty stomach bug. We all had it, starting with a panicked call from day care last Wednesday to come get baby. Middle daughter is off at a sleep away camp for two weeks, early reports are that it is a great place for an 11 year old that loves animals.

Things have been a bit strained at the ole Cataphract Barracks. We are all coping well, but having a somewhat lost and needy 18 year old underfoot while managing an 11 year old at the center of a mild disaster is not exactly conducive to a smooth first year with new mother and new infant. Fortunately, we have a lot of love to go around and wife and I have a very healthy relationship, so I predict no major damage. Still, it is crucial that we stay present with all that is happening.

One thought that continues to haunt me is the feeling that the proximate cause of this latest episode of the dark screwball comedy that is my second ex is the possibility that she was tired of not being the center of attention. I mean, really, everyone around her seemed to be doing fine. Her siblings are moving along quite well in life. My life is on a great track. My older kids are off doing their thing, even the daughter that was living with her was starting the age old process of moving away from parents into the world of adolescent peers.

All was well, no drama...which means that no one had time to pay attention to the second Ex.

Which means it was time for her to do something to bring the focus back on her.

She is quite happy now, the center of a storm of her own creation. I am talking to her every other day navigating the changes and pace of daughter's transfer to living in my home. Her family put their lives on hold to run to the rescue, spending hours each week managing the EX problem. She is in two types of therapy and already fired one of them. In the fall her husband is sending her to Paris.

Once again, it is all about her.

Oh yes, she is quite happy.

No strain there.

Black Swans

Well, I said I was done posting, figured there was nothing else to say worth saying.

I was wrong.

Nassim Taleb has written a very intriguing book called "The Black Swan". No, it is not about Pirate ships, it is about the impact of what we consider highly improbable events. He is mostly interested in stock markets and scalable phenomena, but the central thesis is applicable to a lot of life. In a nutshell, life is wayyy more random and unpredictable that we allow for or even imagine and the "improbable" is a lot more frequent than we account for in our thinking and in our planning for the comings and goings of our lives. Hence, the old adage, "life is what happens while we are making plans.."

So back in January, the Wife and I were making plans for this summer. We figured that we would have a visit from oldest daughter, frequent weekends with middle daughter, and basically a lot of time together with Wife, Baby and me. We planned a trip to Hawaii in July and I was heading to Yellowstone with my son, brother and nephew at the end of August, and all was well with the world.

Well

First, my first ex wife decided that she was not quite enough of a religious nut, and to up the ante declared that my oldest daughter was to stay home after graduation from HS, take care of Grandma and await an appropriate suitor to arrive, after which she would move into the shack next door and start popping out kids. Oldest had other plans, and in early May I went to Texas and "fetched" her. So plans changed a bit, while oldest moved in for the summer. Not a big deal, she is off to college in the fall and the plan was for her to get a job and a life in San Carlos as soon as she got back from a trip to China. I am paying for all of this, but I have the money, and frankly the first ex and her husband are a couple of broke losers. Ok, so we shift, but Hawaii is still on the map and all is on track.

Then

The crazy second ex decides to attempt suicide. I get a call one Tuesday afternoon at 5 pm from my former sister in law telling me that they just took the ex out in a gurney and that I needed to come get my daughter. Seems that this is not the first attempt, happened two years ago, but the family covered it up.

Yes, seems that she has been off her meds for the past two years, well at least the legal ones. She was on her drug of choice (codeine) right before the attempt. Fortunately, daughter was not at home and saw nothing, but she knows.

So I hired a lawyer and after a week of negotiation I have custody of my daughter and a lot of restrictions on her mom. Daughter will be living with us and going to school in SC. Plans are, obviously completely out the window.

And I will be writing some more. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

P.S.

So for any of you who miss Maurice..

This blog is over, but I did finally find something to write about..

Surf on over to http://moonlightinamountainstream.blogspot.com

Hope to see you there!

The Forest Moon Of Endor, and Time to Say Goodbye

Hi everyone.

Assuming there is anyone there.

Well, we bought the house, a nice one in the San Carlos hills. I get up every morning and it looks like I moved to the forest moon of Endor, just waiting for an ewok to pad by. This morning while working out with the swords, I was kept company by no end of birds, deer and other wildlife.

I have a wife that is happy, sane,..and loves me.

Pregnancy is coming along nicely, in about a month there will be daughter number 3. Son, daughter 1 and 2 are doing fine, growing and learning and becoming whomever they are destined to become. I now have kids ranging in age from 20 to not quite 0, who would have believed it?

I get along with the ex well enough. She is still a nut, but a benign nut. I think she has finally come to grips with the fact that there was nothing really wrong with us, and just a whole lot wrong with her at that point, along with a therapist in rehab that had a huge ax to grind against the men of this world. Sounds like a cliche, doesn't it? Most of life is a cliche, we just need to get used to it.

And I have run out of reasons to post. It is five years later, and like Job, all has been put back as it was, only better. Perhaps in all of it, I am wiser.

What now? I haven't quite started asking that question yet, it is about four months premature. The time to start planning the next 40 years of your life is not one month before your baby is due.

I really do not consider the daily comings and goings of my life to be sufficiently interesting enough to post for review. This has been a useful journal to me, and perhaps to others. But clearly, it is done.

Good luck to all, may life continue to surprise you, and may you find joy.

Buying a House in La La Land

A decade ago the ex and I bought a beautiful little ranch house in a million dollar location up in the Oakland hills. It was small, but location to die for, and over time we made it very cute. It was a casualty of the divorce and a serious sore spot for me. California Real Estate is always a trip through a Tim Burtonesque fantasy land, something I do not love. We sold that house and I used much of my half to buy off the ex. Good news is that I do not pay her alimony.

Since then I have rented, mostly because I really have not known where I wanted to settle. Until the Wife came along my plan was to get the son off to college, get a small Bay Area rental apartment and then buy something big in the Sierras or up in the Trinity Alps, long term it was to be my family retreat in the boonies.

The arrival of wife changed that plan.

We are now in the hunt for a house in San Mateo. Actually wrote an offer on a place last night. The market is softer and frankly we have enough options that we will find a place, but we are trying to find a place that will work for some time. I for one expect the housing market to stay soft for years and do not agree with the buy now and move up in a few years theory, at least not now. So the parameters are something that works in our budget and something that we can lock in and live in for the next ten years.

Conservative, but in general a pretty good plan.

Of course, the biggest hitch in that plan is the current state of denial in the seller/real estate groups. They just seem to be unable to give up on the games, and I know we are in store for some silliness. The offer we put in last night was a solid offer at asking price, mainly because the place has been sitting for some time and it already has come down in price. I am pretty sure that the other Real Estate agent is going to try to jerk us around and get some kind of bidding war going, but what my real estate agent knows and what I know is that I am not playing. If she pulls in someone else and they offer higher, I will walk. Frankly, though the Wife wants something now, time is on my side.

You see, I watch the numbers. San Diego is dropping, Boston is tanking and Florida is in flames. Sacramento, Tracy, Pleasanton are all dropping and properties are sitting for months. It will not get any better, not with interest rates climbing. No, the fed has two choices, fight inflation or re-inflate the housing bubble, and it is pretty clear that they will pop the bubble in housing and put the country into a recession in order to kill inflation.

The San Mateo Real Estate people do not want to believe this, and they are all working overtime telling everyone that San Mateo is Different, that it does not follow the Laws of Economics, that here it is different. This is the same bull crap that gets told to everyone, it was the crap they said in Boston, Florida and San Diego before the rout began, it was the same BS that was peddled right before the NASDAQ took a dive.

The other unfortunate fact is that 60% of the mortgages in the Bay were option ARM or interest only, and most of those have quick resets. 2007 is the banner year for resets, it is only beginning to happen now. It does not take a genius to figure out what will happen when all those ARMS start resetting into a Fed induced recession.

Housing will suck, and suck everywhere.

So the offer I did last night was one that I can live with for the next 10 years comfortably, and that is plenty of time for the end of the world to happen and recover. If that is not good enough, they can find a greater fool. Maybe they will.

Then again, maybe the greater fool will not be able to complete escrow, and by then I will be on to the next place, further down the road into the housing black hole that I know is out there, with a better deal for me.

What they are not seeing is that there is a wave effect... downturns start somewhere and over time migrate, San Mateo is not immune, it is just at the end of the wave. Time is truly on my side.

We will see.

As you can guess, I am not a big fan of real estate agents, mort. brokers and the like. I deal with them, and use them, but in the end I see them mostly as un ethical, greedy parasites. They do not make anything, do not innovate anything, they simply play middle man to a badly distorted market, one they help to distort.

More on that tomorrow.

Update

Long time, no post.

All is well, Wife is progressing well down the road of pregnancy, going to be a little girl. Son is out of the house and getting some life lessons, the kind that will not really hurt him but will make him start to think and take some better decisions. Work is fine, I am keeping the weight off and we are house hunting in a down market, which is a lot more fun than doing it in an up market.

So, not much reason to blog..Hence the long hiatus.

I did get a nasty email from my Ex's Fiance. That was mostly amusing. His soon to be wife likes sexual banter, tosses it at everyone..And of course she has poor impulse control. Usually I just let it pass, but in an email three weeks ago I pitched it back at her, not really even thinking about it much.

Then I get this very nasty and somewhat threatening email from him, followed by a frantic call from the ex pleading tolerance from me and describing somewhat the drama occurring as a result of said banter. Seems that the fiance has some real trust and abandonment issues. Suprising, since he has been billed to me as this evolved, liberal, compassionate type. Silly, since in reality his actions were very schoolgirlish... In tone and approach, something I would expect from my 17 year old daughter. I let it drop and have not seen or heard from the guy since, he seems to be going out of his way to avoid me.

More later.