02 Oct 2006
Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Ranting

Well, I suppose a bit of a report is due for the lack of activity here last week. Things went from bad to worse last Tuesday, unbelievable as that seems.

Basically, my daughter (Hilary) now has total joint custody of her children with her estranged husband - or perhaps I should say her mother-in-law, which is where the kids mysteriously end up when they are in his custody. They have been ordered to remain in the State of Minnesota and not to leave for any reason. Draconian doesn't begin to describe this: apparently it is the deeming of the Minnesota judiciary that I will never see my grandchildren without a trip to the north. And it effectively insures that my mother - their great-grandmother, will not see them again. Not even at her funeral.

Furthermore, said mother-in-law has filed a petition to get visitation on her own and separate from her son's time - that is, she wants her grandparent visitation rights enforced on my daughter's time with the children!

We've filed counter-claims and motions and petitions of our own, of course, and Hilary has paid for every one. While they get their legal counsel for free. I'm beginning to get the distinct impression that the proverbial deck is stacked against her.

"Outrageous" doesn't begin to describe this fiasco, but it'll have to do for the time being. At least in public. Because "cluster-fuck" just isn't an appropriate thing to say in many circumstances.

That will be my last trip for a while: we're broke, I'm a really and truly a full time farmer, and it'll be struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. We'll do it, but we can forget any extras for the time being.

The way I'm set up here is such that farming doesn't have to be full time: I have many hours I could be doing something else ("You want fries with that?"). There's not a lot of coding work about, and I'd hate to put myself back into that pressure cooker anyway, if I can avoid it. So I'm going to be cogitating the possibilities: one suggestion was to find a radio gig as a talk show host! I can rant, no doubt, but would anyone want to hear my screeds? Perhaps we'll find out...

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