::tap:: ::tap:: ::tap::
::cough::
"Is this thing on?"

So . . . yeah. I've been pretty quiet for a while.

Lots of reasons for that, and thankfully enough of them were good reasons that it has balanced the bad reasons. Iliana Wednesday Eliot Brown was born March 30th, having decided that another month wait was just not going to do. Dylan continues ( Read more... )

Mediation . . . went. Can't say it went well, but at least I've got some promises in writing that will (hopefully) make calling Dylan a little easier, and ensure I have contact with his counselor. Trying to sympathize and get through to someone throughly convinced that you're an evil bastard is draining. Thankfully, the mediator herself was quite ( Read more... )

For something neither Dylan nor I actually saw, the recent lunar eclipse provided a good fifteen minutes of excited, non-stressful conversation on astronomy. If his mother is forbidding Dylan to talk to me about his life, I can at least distract him from it a bit; not ideal, but a better holding pattern than the prior one. I've just gotta prepare ( Read more... )

Just finished a really tense phone call with Dylan. At some point, I asked him (as I have for many calls) how he and his sister were getting along; they sometimes fight (as siblings will), so I want to remind him to try to do better. This time, Charlott could clearly be heard in the background, telling Dylan he shouldn't talk about that with me ( Read more... )

Flight leaves for Logan airport in a little over two hours; putting final touches on packing and getting out the door, once this is posted. I'll be in Mass/N.H. area until Tuesday, though a good bunch of that will be tied up in Dylan-related drama ( Read more... )

Target is like a hipster K-Mart: same sections, same slim selection, updated for the tragically pelvic Gen-X. Plus ca change . . . but holly_as_mom passed along a hundred dollar gift card that she got from her work, and free is free. I got Dylan a large Lego set, one of the few that still makes multiple models (a variety of medieval monsters, in this case): ( Read more... )

My most recent (and hopefully last, for a long time) interaction with my father:

You may have already heard some preliminary news about Harry's illness from Tim or your mother.

I have.

I hope you are doing OK.And I, frankly, don't give a fuck; you squandered your last chance with me when you played shuffleboard with Dylan. You're narcissistic ( Read more... )

I'm stuck in New Hampshire with nothing to do on Christmas day.  I've only interacted with one person so far: I told the hotel clerk (over the phone) that I would be staying another day ( Read more... )

Okay, so a lot of what fueled that earlier rant was a mental "clearing of the decks" before I talked to Dylan's counselor. All the battling has paid off; I had a long, if somewhat slow, conversation with her about how Dylan was doing and what I could do to help. About the only thing she told me that I didn't already know on some level was that ( Read more... )

It's been a continuing fight to rejoin Dylan's life. I now have court-ordered phone visitation, but there have been snags. After several attempts to work with his counselor, I was eventually told that they couldn't even tell me if Charlott had refused to let them speak to me. Recently, calls have started going through an intervention service; it ( Read more... )