I’m a New Mother

Oh, isn’t that a scary thought – “50-YEAR-OLD HAS BABY, READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE”.

No, I have not had a baby – well, yes I did have a baby, 14 years ago and 26 years ago, but the new mother thing is that my daughter has come to live with me again.

I think I mentioned previously that my ex was talking to her about moving out of province and I wasn’t having any of that, so I was looking at ways on how to go to court, vary the custody order, yada yada. I had planned on going tomorrow to see the guy who would start the paperwork for me… get it all legal.

However, today while I was out doing the dishes, after my daughter and ex had dropped by to pick up my daughter’s newly hemmed uniform pants and socks, I got a message from my daughter on my MSN, asking if she had to live there.

Unfortunately, at the time, I was not on my computer, I was in the kitchen doing dishes. At that same time I also got a phone call from my ex, asking me if I would take my daughter, to which I responded, “I will be, and it will be as soon as I get this paperwork done”.

He was all worried about having to pay a lawyer that he can’t afford. I told him no lawyer was needed, he’d just have to show up in court. We had quite the long discussion in which he asked, “when were you going to tell me about this?” and I said, “there’s no telling needed, you’d get the paperwork and go to court”. He also said, “what if I didn’t agree?” and I said, “there’s no agreement needed, you’ve proven what a bad parent you are by being drunk every night, and when you’re not drunk you’re out somewhere, you never have groceries in the house for her to eat, you have all sorts of people living at your house, you’ve been anything but a ‘parent’, too busy being a single guy and thinking of yourself”.

I didn’t quite expect to talk to my daughter a bit later and have the move turn into today with no notice to the ex, but I’m fine with it and so when she got home from her friend’s place, I went over to pick up her uniform for school and a few other things that she still had packed from her vacation to Newfoundland.

When we walked into her house, the couple that my ex has had camping out in the living room for the past week had just finished smoking some dope, the whole living room reeked of it. I said, “it smells like dope in here; you shouldn’t be smoking that in this house with a child living here”. They didn’t say much.

We got her stuff and I asked if they’d be there still when the ex got home and they said yes, so I asked them to pass on the message that my daughter had come with me.

I called the ex later to make sure he knew where she was and he told me he felt “betrayed” and he didn’t “like the way that this went down”. I said, “didn’t you call me a while ago and ask me to take her?” Oh yes, but he didn’t mean that very moment. I told him that she had also called me and asked me to come here so the decision was made. He said, “I thought you were having this paperwork done up” and I said that, yes, I was still going to have that done.

So tomorrow, boys and girls, on my extra vacation day, I will be off to see the guy who will do up the variance in custody order for $100. I did get the papers off the net myself, but they’re stinking government papers so they’re not too clear in what they’re asking for there – I’d better pay someone to do them so they’re done right.

In between doing that I will be driving my daughter to her new high school *woohoo, grade 9!* and picking her up. I was going to have her take the buses she’ll normally have to take just so she’d know the route and the timing, however, being a holiday over here there was absolutely no place to get tickets by the time we thought of it – at 5:00.

So that’s my life today. I’m a new mother again – new as in full-time over every other weekend. My daughter and I get along well (usually) and I think she’s mature enough now to understand that there are household rules and things to be done. Life is not all a bowl of cherries, but we’ll sneak a few in there every now and then, in between the work.