A Chain Letter from Nx

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1. WHAT IS YOUR MIDDLE NAME? LeAnn

2. WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING? I'm actually not wearing any pants at this time...please try back later

3. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Barney (I actually feel really sorry for the kids on that show)

4. DEAD OR ALIVE, NAME THREE PEOPLE YOU WOULD LOVE TO MEET: Liam Neeson (dressed as Quai Gon Jin, of course), Bill Maher, Bill Clinton

5. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? a pot of coffee (it was thick enough to chew)

6. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Pine Green

7. HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW? cold and windy, but dry at least

8. LAST PERSON YOU TALKED WITH ON THE PHONE? Erikka

9. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX? hands

10. SHOES YOU LOVE TO WEAR: leather, anything leather

11. HOW ARE YOU TODAY? better than yesterday, but nowhere near as good as tomarrow???

12. FAVORITE DRINK? coffee

13. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK? gin and tonic

14. FAVORITE SPORTS? boxing, and only because of the sweaty men beating on eachother

15. HAIR COLOR? I can't remember....just joking...that actually would have been true, but I shaved my head last winter, so now I know it's really brown

17. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? no, they get too dried out when I get stoned

18. TYPE OF VEHICLE YOU DRIVE: Chrysler Town & Country minivan...it's really quite nice, and no one thinks I can race them, but little do they know I have a V-6...hahaha

19. TOP 5 FAVORITE FOODS: egg foo young, spring rolls, flied lice, BBQ Pork, and Cream of Sum Yung Guy...ha ha , if you know anything about me, you know that's a joke!!!

20. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Napoleon Dynamite

21. TOP 3 PET PEEVES: Letting someone into traffic only to see they're sportin' the George Bush bumper sticker, pee on the seat, my daughter jumping off of every piece of furnature we own.

22. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT? hell, no..I actually prefer it that way because if I'm interested I'll let you know...I hate being put in the position where I have to reject someone's amorous feelings....and this would be past tense, btw, as I am now happily stuck with the same one now FOREVER....

23. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS BETTER? I like it if both can be melded together, but I really prefer scary movies

24. WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL? summer and fall (yes, fall...the British are so odd...)

25. HUGS OR KISSES?oooh, hugs, baby, but I mean like all out hugging, with the legs and the fingers and the toes

26. RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE NIGHT STANDS? relationships, obviously

27. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? Chocolate, the darker the better ( I always hoped I'd have an encounter with a big dark black stallion, but those days are over now, so I'll just have to imagine....)

28. THREE ANIMALS YOU WANT TO OWN. I want a hairless kitty that must wear clothes so it doesn't freeze, I want a dog that doesn't eat, drink, piss, or shit, and a saltwater fish tank

29. NAME 4 PLACES YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO VISIT: Pompeii, Italy...Gay Paree, India, and Las Vegas

30. FIRST CONCERT YOU EVER WENT TO? The Grateful Dead...(mom didn't trust me to be left home alone when I was thirteen, so that's how that happened...woo, that's a good story, too....sometime I'll tell ya

31. LIVING ARRANGEMENTS? a small house on the outskirts of town with me, honey, Hazel, shitty kitty, and Jacob every other weekend

32. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? ??school books...microbiology, at this moment, and you know, you're never really safe....they're everywhere....

33. WHAT IS ON YOUR SCREEN SAVER AT HOME? photo album

34. FAVORITE CARTOON? simpsons...hell yes, but Futurama runs a close second

35. FAVORITE SMELLS: my honey's personal odor, nag champa, fresh cut grass, wet dirt

36. SMELLS YOU HATE: diesel trucks, bad breath, fish, dirtweed

37. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? Bollocks! better get some coffee (thanks, Nx, btw, what does bullocks mean?)

38. FAVORITE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT THE SINGLE LIFE: ??? no one eating the food out of the fridge but me

39. HOW DO YOU EAT AN OREO? the whole package at once

40. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG? nobody...boo hoo...sooooobbb

Mother-in-Laws are from the pits of Hell

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I really am done dwelling. I don't have that desire to analyze it anymore, and honestly, the more I think about it the more shit I remember.....and I think some memories are not worthy of remembering. Best to leave them way in the back, collecting dust. I have about four more posts to this fucking depressing crap, so I'm just going to post them all right now and get it over with. Sorry if I brought ya down...I'm really not a negative creep.

Janet had to pass a federal and state background check to be approved, and it normally takes a few weeks to get the federal one done but her niece owned a background check business so it took only a week. We were very excited for Janet to come from Florida because we felt like at least we would be able to have some kind of normalcy in the visits and maybe it would just be easier all the way around. I had called Janet the night that Michael flipped out, after the police left, and told her the whole story. She urged me to leave him, and that was not a comforting thought. His own mother was saying that? She was convinced from the beginning that Michael had hurt Hazel, and the more I thought about it I wondered if she might just not give Hazel back. I told Michael what I was thinking and he actually asked her what her intentions were, which took me by surprise. She said she had no desire to steal our baby and that put me at ease for a while. But the moment she got actual control of Hazel, her attitude changed.

DHS had said that they would leave the visitation schedule up to Janet. She was staying with a friend with Hazel, and when we heard that we were overjoyed at the thought of being in a house with her instead of the nasty visitation room at the state office, and we thought that Janet would see the need for Hazel to spend as much time as allowed with her parents. That is not how it happened, though.

Janet had a serious power trip. She was just like one of them. She made the schedule to match DHS’s schedule almost exactly, only giving us one more hour a week than we already had. I would come over on my scheduled day early in the morning so as to bathe her and feed her myself, and Janet would stand over me, criticizing the way I washed her, or how big of a bite I gave her. I was steaming hot. This woman (who may be Michael’s mom, but is still a complete stranger to me) has had Hazel for two days and feels like she has the right to criticize how I rock her to sleep? I desperately wanted just to hold her, and rock her to sleep like I always had, but Janet wouldn’t have it. “She needs to learn how to go to sleep by herself” she would say. I thought she was being so cruel. I had three hours a week to spend with my infant daughter, and she wouldn’t let me rock her to sleep. I was so afraid that Hazel would forget me. She was only six months old. She did forget her song. I used to sing ’LaLaLa Means I Love You’ and she would laugh and stretch out her neck, but she didn’t do that anymore. I couldn’t understand how Janet could be so mean. But that wasn’t even the beginning.

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There's always more than one slice in a Shit Pie...

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My honey has a long criminal record. A couple D.U.I.’s driving suspended/uninsured, a burglary when he was 18. A lot of the stuff was in the past, but he had a reputation. He was not a violent offender, he never hurt anyone, it wasn’t that he had never been caught or something. Aside from his drunken episodes every couple months, he had stayed out of trouble for a couple years. With the exception of the windshield incident, his drunken bullshit pretty much consisted of us arguing back and forth…me being disgusted, him being retarded and making no sense. While it was fucked up, I knew it didn’t make him capable of child beating.

His mom, though, asked me if I was covering up for him. Of course not was my reply, but I thought it was weird that his own mom wondered. She turned out to be the least emotionally supporting woman I have ever met.

So our lawyers were trying to find us a doctor who could agree with the panic stop scenario, and we tried to just go on normally. A couple months had gone by and New Years was upon us. We had been told to get into treatment programs for our terrible marijuana habits, but couldn’t get drug evaluations until after the new year.

Michael had been going to Jaycees meetings. It’s a community service organization that does all kinds of good stuff. It was giving him some new confidence as he was ready to grow up and be a quality person, putting his criminal past in the past. He wanted to be respected and valued by other people in the community. I thought it was good for him, but I didn’t realize how much drinking went on over there. He got elected to the Community Development chair on the Board of Directors. He called to let me know. I was proud and excited for him. He said that he and some guys were going to sit behind and play some cards at the hall. He got home at two thirty in the morning, as drunk as I’ve ever seen someone who is still walking around. I was instantly irritated and on guard. I was pissed off as all hell and I don’t remember a lot of the verbalization that went on but I can guess-timate the approximate line of questioning: What the fuck are you doing? With all of this bullshit going on with Hazel what gives you the right to get all fucked up, or even be drinking at all? You disgust me. Get the fuck out of my house.He went downstairs at one point and came back up with some Zippo lighter fluid. He had a lighter in one hand and was motioning like he was going to light me on fire. I remember asking him, ‘Hello, drunk Mike. Is the real Mike in there? I need to talk to him please.’ He continued to act like a freak, he eventually put the lighter fluid down and we continued to argue for a couple hours. I secretly recorded our whole conversation. Not to use against him, but to make him listen to it tomorrow, after the damage was done. He was always genuinely sorry in the morning. They always are. We ended up going to bed and continued arguing.

By this time he was completely blacked out because he doesn’t remember the events of the rest of the night. He was lying in bed next to me and he just kept saying, “fuckin bitch, you fuckin bitch” over and over. It was weird cause I never felt like he was talking to me in particular, but nevertheless I popped right back off with a: “your mom”. That was when he snapped. He grabbed me by the hair and drug me up the stairs by my throat, stopping a couple times on the way upstairs to strangle me. That was the only time I have ever feared for my life, and even at this point, I knew he would feel so sorry in the morning, whether he killed me or not. He wasn’t a violent person until he was drunk. That was the hardest thing. He was perfect when he was sober. I was happy. Was it worth this? I thought he would kill me. I didn’t want to call the police because I was afraid of what would happen to my daughter, who was still sleeping peacefully downstairs (the ground level was upstairs). He dragged me into the living room and I grabbed for my cell phone. I held it up in front of him and told him he had better back off. That’s when he ran downstairs. Was he going out the sliding glass door? Sounded good to me. I was starting to think that he may be gone when he came walking up the stairs with Hazel in his arms. “You put her down RIGHT NOW” I screamed, over and over again. Then I dialed the phone. I told the operator that he was drunk and throwing pots and pans and wouldn’t hand over the baby. As soon as I said that, he put Hazel gently down on the couch, and jumped barefoot off of the back deck. The cops came right over and found him across the street just sitting on the curb. They put him in a car. He didn’t give them any trouble. I made them take him away to a friends house. He stayed gone for three days.

He came home, he was going to Quit Drinking. Everything would be Different Now.Two days after that, Mary Moller showed up with two police officers and took my baby away.

the usual suspect

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When I first met my lawyer I was not impressed. Greg Perez-Selsky’s office was teeny tiny in a rundown building right behind my work that I thought was abandoned or condemned or something. He sure looked like an overworked public defender.

I waited out in the hall while he discussed a D.U.I. case with another client who sounded like a serious conspiracy theorist. He was rambling on about how the D.A. had it out for him for seven years. If my own business hadn’t been so grim I may have cracked a smile listening to him.

Greg’s first order of business was to either include or exclude Michael as part of my defense. Will we be blaming this on your boyfriend? No, we will not. I knew all the way through me that Michael had not abused my daughter. He had about 50% more patience per square inch of his person that me. When Hazel woke up some nights, I would cry because I was so exhausted. Without him I would be freaked out. He was always there to take her when I needed him to. He was the most involved and attentive daddy I knew. So, that out of the way, we needed to find a doctor who would agree that Hazel could have been hurt during the panic stop we had the day before we went to the emergency room. Greg said he would get started on that and call me next week. It was a short meeting, and not very gratifying.

The next contact we had with D.H.S. was their request that we both go to the hospital to take u.a.’s. We both had been smoking pot and were terrified to go. I called a couple people, to try to hunt down a clean sample, but was not able to find one. We called our lawyers, who told us that it was up to us to go or not at this point, and we did have the right to wait for them to get a court order for the tests. But we were so worried about looking guilty that we went the next day.

So after that, we were marijuana addicted child beaters. There was no other answer for Mary Moller and her holier-than-thou bureaucratic henchmen. They tried so hard to trick us into saying things that they could twist around. I can completely understand the instances of false, coerced confessions. They made us feel like even if we didn’t beat her it was never going to stop until we confessed. It was torture.

We went to the first court hearing. It was a hearing where the State of Oregon was requesting that Hazel be made a ward of the state and that our legal parental rights be suspended. It was like being in a car with no brakes. We went before the judge that I Hadn’t Voted For in the last election, and weren’t even given the opportunity to speak. It was just a done deal. A formality was what our attorneys called it. It made me want to puke. While Hazel would still be coming home with us, it meant that they could come and take her anytime they pleased. They had all the power in the world. My parents were devastated. They wanted to protect me, and were powerless. Through it all they believed me, though. When I said that I knew that Michael hadn’t hurt her, they believed me one hundred percent, which is more than I can say for Michael’s mother.

don't give me an automatic weapon, or a big rock

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They showed up about a week later. The lady, Mary Moller, was a complete bitch. Her tone of voice, the way she put things….looking back I realize that her comments were designed to send one of us into a rage. I think they were expecting Michael to get angry, but I did. That bitch and her supervisor, Roberta, kept saying that we knew how Hazel got hurt and it was only a matter of time until the truth came out. They didn’t believe that we really didn’t know what happened.

They found out that Michael was facing a layoff, and said that maybe he had lost his temper and done something he wouldn’t normally do. Every word from their mouths was an attempt at getting a confession. It was a very draining meeting. It was about this time that my tears started flowing, and they didn’t stop for a whole year.

We took the advice of an attorney friend and each got our own public defenders. Before we got a chance to meet with either of them we were given an evaluation at the local child abuse agency, Julliette’s House. The doctor, whose name escapes me now, was very nice at first. He examined Hazel, took pictures of her arms and legs, then of her genitals and the inside of her mouth. My skin started to crawl. The doctor commented how it looked like she must have fallen at some point because there were no bruises to accompany the broken bone. There were no finger marks or anything else to indicate that someone had handled her roughly. Michael and I had already pointed this out to one another so it was a relief to hear the doctor say it. Would this be the end of this? No.

We were then separated for interviews. They asked me if Hazel had been a planned pregnancy and I said she was. They asked me basically all of the same questions that everyone had. I could tell by the questions that they thought that Michael had hurt her. We thought that the lack of bruises said so much, but it was not an explanation, so they were not going to stop. The doctor did not see the panic stop as a possibility. He asked if anything else out of the ordinary had happened that day. That’s when Michael mentioned that Hazel had awoken in the early morning after the whole panic stop thing and that when he was trying to prop her bottle she arched her back and that he had heard and felt a ‘pop’ when he rolled her over. Any new parent knows that when the baby wakes, no matter who gets up with her, everyone is half awake. I remembered hearing her fuss for a minute, and then quiet right away. He said that once he got the bottle in her mouth that she went back to sleep. That was pretty much what I had heard, and her crib was still in our room at that point, so I had been right there. The doctor started suggesting that perhaps he had been frustrated or tired and been too rough with the baby. We both insisted that was not the case. They weren’t buying it. We didn’t have any other explanations. We had no idea why this was happening. That meeting was another nightmare. There would be many more to come.

life goes on to fucked up places

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After two years we decided to make a baby. We were so happy together that it seemed easy to dismiss the drunken episodes since they only came every other month or so. The times in between were bliss. I never once thought about leaving him when he was sober. It was literally like living with two completely different people.

When our daughter, Hazel was only four months old, she got a broken collarbone. I was dressing her in the morning and noticed a bright red bump on her shoulder. She was unusually fussy, but only when I moved her a certain way. Michael came home for lunch and we took her to the hospital.

When the E.R. doctor told us it was broken we were shocked and horrified and we had absolutely no idea how it happened.The doctor spent about an hour and a half talking with us. He was trying to get an idea how dangerous we were, I think. He asked us over and over if she had fallen or been dropped. We told him that she had never been dropped, or rolled off of anything. The only thing we could think of was that I’d had to slam on my brakes the day before going about 35 mph. She was still in a rear facing car seat at that time. He believed us, I think, but had to defer to a pediatrician. He called his pediatric colleague who said that there was no way she could have suffered a broken bone from a panic stop. We were terrified and confused. We needed an answer. The doctor explained that he was required by law to contact the police since Hazel had an unexplained fracture. It was like being in a movie. I was still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that she actually, really-for-reals had a broken bone.

We remained calm and worried….the officer showed up about 20 minutes later. I told both the cop and the doctor that I understood that they were obligated to report it, but it was all I could do to keep my cool. I felt like screaming. The nurses had started looking at us funny. I just wanted to take my baby home and call my mom. The cop asked to speak to us separately. We were very cooperative. Michael went outside of the room first. They were gone for about 20 minutes. When it was my turn, I handed the baby to Michael and the look on his face gave me goosebumps. The cop asked me if Michael or I used drugs. He asked me if Michael was violent or ever made me afraid. The tone of his questions were designed, I think, to make me believe that he had gathered something in his conversation with Michael. It was weird. I told him no,no,no. The cop was really quite nice. He was a rookie- his badge said he’d only been doing this for a year. He told us a couple of related stories- one about a similar case to ours where the babysitter had dropped the baby. Well, no one had watched her so that was out of the question.

The doctor and the cop went outside the room for a minute. When they came back in the doctor told us that neither one of them felt like Hazel was in any danger and that she would be safe to go home with us. I hadn’t even considered that they were considering whether to send us home without our baby. The cop told us we could go home but that D.H.S. would be contacting us. D.H.S. (Department of Human Services) was formerly C.S.D. (Child Services Division) was formerly C.P.S. (Child Protective Services). Why they keep changing their name….what they are running from….who knows. But there was probably a few broken families left behind.