This is a long overdue update of my journal. I had thought about keeping this private but I know that so many of you who do still read my journal actually care and I need a little contact with others right now. This post may ramble quite a bit.. I apologize for that in advance.There is so much happening and nothing at all at the same time. I am stressed to my limits. I need grounding. I need centering. I need a healthy outlet for my stress.

My daughter came out for her summer visit in June. It didn't take long for her to decide that she wants to stay here for the school year. Some of you will remember what happened two years ago. Those that do know that it wasn't pretty at all. My daughter is two years older now and feels able to stand up to her dad. She told my sister that, looking back, she can now see how he manipulated her two years ago into staying.She's told her dad several times she wants to stay here. He's being completely and totally unreasonable. He's SO not listening to her and completely disregarding her feelings. It's pissing me off that he's treating her like this and it's really starting to piss her off too. A lawyer has been put on retainer. This time I'm NOT backing down from the bastard.

Add to that her ex-boyfriend in Texas has gone psycho on us... it's not been fun. When she first came down here to visit this summer, his possessive behavior was very apparent. He was calling (what seemed like) every five minutes. He wanted to know what she was doing at all times of the day and expected her to call him when she left the house and when she came home, etc. etc. She told me he had been acting really possessively and said she had been thinking about breaking up with him. The impetus to break up finally came when she reconnected with the boy next door (okay, he lives three houses down from us but still). Well, things went from bad to worse. The phone calls got even more frequent and then his mother called my ex mother-in-law (who is the REAL person who's been raising my daughter not her damn father and she and I have become pretty close over the past couple years) and told her that my daughter was killing her son because he's depressed, he won't eat, etc. etc. Because, you know, my sixteen year old is responsible for this boy's happiness and well-being ::dramatic roll of the eyes here:: His mother even called me... at 1:00 in the freaking morning. You can imagine my reaction to her. We finally had to threaten to press charges for telephone harassment with him to get it to stop.It's not like I didn't feel for the kid. They'd been dating two years and I know what it's like to be 18 and in luuv. But he went from heartbroken to out and out psycho. Things had calmed down. He stopped calling all the time. They stopped fighting. Things seemed to be okay and they had begun talking again.

Wednesday I received a call from the ex MIL and said that he had left a bag of Shyanne's clothes on their front porch. Things she had left over at his house, including the dress she wore in my wedding two years ago (she had also worn it to homecoming this past school year). If all he had done was leave the clothes in the trash bag, that wouldn't have been a problem. But he didn't. Every piece of clothing in that bag was shredded. How scary is that?

Ex MIL is trying to get a restraining order against the kid (who is 18 now). Meanwhile she tells me that she believes Shyanne NEEDS to stay here because she's afraid of what this kid might do to her and, I can't say I disagree. You can guess what her father had to say to this. "I'll protect her. She'll be taken care of." I'm so enraged by this, I can't even see straight.

My daughter has been begging me to enroll her in school here. I can't without his permission and he won't give it. He says he wants to talk to her face to face. This sound fishy to anyone else here? What this tells me is that he can't wait to get his hands on her so he can try to guilt trip her and basically talk her into staying there.

My sister came up with the idea of having my daughter go out to visit her in Austin (just a couple hours from where he lives, even closer to where he works) and see if they can't get him to meet with my daughter so he CAN talk to her face to face. The idea was that if he does and sees she really IS serious about staying here, he'll finally listen to her and back off. My lawyer seemed to think this was a good idea. So, Shyanne is going on a plane in a few hours back to Texas.

My ex-husband went ballistic when my sister talked to him. Completely and totally irrationally ballistic. My daughter knows and I asked her what she felt about it. She said "he's being retarded". He's going to call her later this afternoon at my sister's. I hope she can be strong. She admitted this will truly be her first time to stand up to him. All I can say is I am scared to death of what he's going to do. Two years ago he ran off with her and hid her from me (my daughter told me his lawyer suggested he do that). I don't know what I'll do if he does that again...

So, that's it.. now you guys know why I'm being silent and why I'm so stressed out.