Frustrations

It's been a big week, but I don't know how to summarize it all up in one nice neat package like I want to.

The biggest thing this week was the completion of the bonding assessment that the judge suggested WAY back in the beginning of June. I'm not going to go over the process of it, although I know several of you are curious..ask me in person or via email, I'll fill you in. I want to make sure that when Bella goes in with her Dad it's an even playing field and he doesn't know what to expect anymore than I did. I will say that it was a really positive experience and I was told by a professional that I'm being the mom Bella needs me to be, so THAT was great news! I actually walked out of there fairly excited about the whole process. She also said she thought she would be able to get Tim in fairly quickly to complete his as well.

The whole process has been so frustrating from the start. I walked out of court in June not really understanding what was said, but KNOWING that the judge highly recommended a bonding assessment be completed and that once it was, he would re-address the parenting plan. He said that he didn't like 50/50 for a child Bella's age and I agreed! My thought was "Great! We'll get that done and by next month we'll be back in court." WRONG!

I called the local bonding "guru," and it took me three days to be able to just talk to someone to make an appointment. And she told me her next available one wasn't until August 14th. So I informed my lawyer, who had it written up that because we were completing one, so the ex had to do one as well because of the way the judge ordered it. She sent over the order to his lawyer to be signed and we waited, and waited and waited.

Normally she said, this kind of thing takes a few days. When we hadn't gotten a response by July, she started getting frustrated. So she wrote a letter to the judge asking for a presentment hearing, which is where the judge (commissioner in our case) hears what the orders were, discusses whether or not they are what he ordered and you sign papers that day. And then we waited, and waited, and waited more. Meanwhile, she was running into the other lawyer here and there and he was saying, I'll get this to you by... and it never happened. All this was just to sign that we agreed that the judge ordered if one completed the bonding assessment, the other had to as well, AND that we would go to a 2-2-3 day parenting plan for now. NOT a hard thing to agree on. This whole time Bella's schedule was in disarry because we had no agreement over which schedule to follow.

Finally the last week of July, over six weeks out from the original court date, my lawyer contacts the court administrator to complain. The administrator gets the ball rolling and court was set for August 7th. JUST TO AGREE ON THE ORDERS OF JUNE 6th! So there I was on August 7th, in a two minute long hearing listening to the judge say YES, Mr. Sjolund needs to complete the bonding assessment as well. His lawyer said nothing but, ok, well he needs ample time to make an appointment and complete it. The judge agreed.

I walked out thinking..AMPLE TIME! Are you freakin' kidding me? He's had two months! And my biggest frustration is that it's all a stall tactic. And I KNOW it's happening but I can't do anything about it. I can hear his lawyer saying "I'll stall, but you be on your best behavior so we can slide the DUI under the table, and the Mother's Day incident will seem like no big deal by then. I'll stall and YOU do everything you can to build your relationship with your daughter. I'll stall and so by the time we meet again we can show that 50/50 is just fine for her." NOW I have no problem with the relationship part. I WANT Bella to have a great relationship with her Dad, but I dream that it will be a sincere honest relationship, not one that is here today, gone tomorrow.

So you can imagine how frustrated I was when the ex called today and let me know that his appointment is set for October 24th. OCTOBER 24th! 4 months after the original hearing. It takes up to 3 weeks to get the reports, so that puts us into Thanksgiving. THEN we'll have to schedule a new hearing, around Oh, CHRISTMAS? In 4 MORE MONTHS! How can a judge say that he doesn't agree with 50/50 for a child this young and then put us through a process that takes 6 months to complete. I don't get it. I'm overwhelmingly frustrated and furious about the whole thing.