January to March 2008

As you might have heard, the Mannimals have suffered a terrible, critical blow... Our beautiful family unit has been broken despite all I could do to save us.  Somehow my gorgeous wife Athena has been put under some sort of black magic spell and is someone completely different around me is how it seems to me.  I can only guess at some parts and explain the parts I do know of how this debacle came to be.  Here is my best explanation of it all and I will be as brief as possible:

I think one of the most important things was homesickness.  Despite the fact that when we listed and weighed the pros and cons of living in CA vs. UT and CA seemed to be clearly the better choice for us, Athena was homesick.  Every 3 or 4 months living here Athena would have a homesick attack and we would rehash the pros and cons again and as always we would come up with CA being the best choice for us.  I should have been smarter than I was though.  It should have become clear to me that Athena needed to go home no matter what seemed to be the logical choice.  My pride and the fact that my desire was to NEVER move back to that craphole kept me arguing for the logical choice rather than giving in.  I despised the small-minded lifestyle in UT.  All there was to do there was get drunk and complain how shitty everything is just like most of the people I know who are stuck there.  And many of our friends had already managed to get out too.  Also I have to mention here too that Athena's best friend she wanted to get back to was someone she had told me many times was not a good friend at all.  I think that was proven when 2 or 3 times she travelled from UT to an hour away from Arcata and never even bothered to get together with Athena... :(  I felt we had so much more health and potential living somewhere like Arcata.  Here people are so much happier, healthier, more intelligent and advanced.  Arcata made Ogden seem like living with negative, cave people.  Another part was that when I did offer Athena a chance for us to move home, she never took any steps toward that becoming a reality.  There were a few minimum things we needed to do before going back and Athena never worked on any of them.  I couldn't figure out how she expected us to go back with no good plan, no money, no job, and an uncertain future that would be extremely difficult to do better than what we had going for us in Cali.  But what I should have done is forget all the considerable reasons for staying and gone back to support Athena's needs despite her lack of logic or effort to return.  I should have done whatever it took to show my love and support because other than the kids, Athena means the world to me.

Another problem was something stemming from my childhood that I was working to curb, but hadn't been successful enough, fast enough.  Whenever I felt like I was under attack I had a fight or flight natural response.  Athena could never understand that for some reason.  No matter how hard I tried to explain it and asked for special consideration, she didn't realize what she was doing.  And to be honest there were many times when she wasn't attacking me, but my subconscious assumed and reacted as if she were.  This problem stemmed from having parents who never had anything but negative to say to me about myself.  My parents were great in some ways, but they were definately not the type to offer praise or positive reinforcement in almost any circumstance.  This was the tail end of the time when kids were better seen not heard and that was the case at our house too.  So often the only attention we were given was negative.  And so whenever I felt Athena was doing the same, I responded by fight or flight and most often it was unfortunately the fight choice.  This ended up with us in battles that need not have been.  I think with just a little more time I would have eliminated this as a problem as I was working on that very thing once I became aware of it.  Unfortunately I wasn't given that extra time...

Another problem is something that I have seen happen to many males in long relationships. We get comfortable that our signifiant other would never break it off and start to act like kings in our castles.  For me this meant things like not pulling my full share of the weight of our day to day chores and efforts expended to keep things running smoothly.  Some examples are my lack of putting out the same effort as Athena in the departments of dishes, changing Mats diapers (I did learn that one and did my share with Avi, but not Mat), paying of the bills, and other dirty or bothersome chores.  Some of it was situational or things I felt Athena was simply better than me at.  But others were simple laziness and it was very unfair of me...

Also I made the mistake of not acting in public as I acted at home when it came to how I treated Athena.  At home there were so many compliments and kisses and lovey-dovey stuff that I felt embarrassed to express in public.  Out of the house I thought it would be too cheesy or P.D.A. and instead I guess I acted more like an alpha male than I would have had I realized what I was doing.

Beyond these things I honestly don't know for sure what happened.  I can only surmise that these things were enough to push Athena just over the edge and she began to act out rather than act or even react.  Suddenly nothing I did was good enough.  Athena would refuse to accept any responsibility for things, to appreciate any of the good and wonderful things she both had and potentially could get, and to try and make consistent effort to be positive.  When Athena became unhappy she decided for some reason that if we dropped everything and ran back to Ogden that all her, and our, problems would be solved.  And when it became clear I wasn't being supportive as I should have, she decided that leaving me was the magical answer.  After that everything was negative and wrong and was ENTIRELY my fault.  Anything Athena could even think to blame me for, she did.  And when that wasn't enough to break us up, she started exaggerating and then even inventing negative things and problems that were of course blamed on me (a few months down the road Athena finally admitted to doing that intentionally to try and break us up).  It got so bad that every day I started to dread Athena coming home from work.  Instead of being happy at having such a great career instead of crappy job and coming home happy and wanting to do anything positive, she would upon first entering the house look around the room for anything she could find to start a fight about.  And if there wasn't anything she would invent something.  It was awful.  The kids and I could have, and nearly always did, spent a perfect and wonderful day together only to have Athena come home and mistreat me by inventing accusations that were totally unfounded.  She would yell at me for my schedule, or playing video games all day, or this or that that was only slightly true to completely fabricated. Instead of appreciating that her husband loved their kids with ALL his heart and had spent a day of fun and positivity and proactivity while awaiting her return she would make up insults and project negativity as soon as she walked thru the front door...

This was all followed by the worst thing of all.  Athena somehow forgot she was doing this to break us up and actually started to believe all the nonsense she accused me of!  As I have stated, there were things that were true and I am of course human and imperfect but she started to believe that somehow I was some abusive monster.  Athena began to twist everything I said or did and everything in our past to fit some mold that I wanted to isolate her and abuse her and that is why we were in Cali.  Instead of remembering how I had left the decision of our moving here to her and all of the many, many positive things I/we had done over the years and the progress we had made she could only see her accusations and lies as the whole truth.  In her mind (and this is all based on what I have been able to infer from the things she told me at one time or another) we now had none of the positive elements of our past and only the new twisted versions of events.  So now our past was all negative, our present supposedly even worse, and our future as bleak as could be in her mind.  And there was nothing I could say to reach her any more.  She started assuming everything I said had all these hidden meanings and agendas which were all dark, if not abusive.  And it seemed like the harder I tried to show how positive everything was and especially could be, the harder she tried to make everything negative and problematic.

Unfortunately when I couldn't get her to see the truth of what was happening, she did the worst thing of all.  She kidnapped the kids and left for UT.  Now this had happened once before as some of you will know.  And the first time she did it she stole the kids and took off and kept them from me for a week or more.  I was stuck holding the bag here in CA with nothing to do but to keep trying to figure out what had happened and to repair the damage by phone.  Luckily within a couple weeks Athena agreed to return with the kids for Father's day.  And that is another hard part for me.  After she returned I really started working on making changes to the problems I listed above and a few others to assure her of how much I loved her and wanted to work things out.  And despite all the considerable progress I made, she still managed to not appreciate what we had or how much her husband loved and cared.  Anyway when Athena returned with the kids and during a great Father's Day and wonderful first several weeks back of positive growth, Athena promised me she would NEVER abduct the kids again.  She saw how much it destroyed me to have them taken in such a manner and admitted it was uncool to have used the kids like that.  And here we were, less than a year later and she did it again.  Athena took some of her extra money (I had done well to start the year and had started paying most of the bills and picking up the slack where Athena had started to not perform at her job and taken many days off including the vacations back to UT I took us on) and said she was taking the kids shopping.  I had some work to do to make a little extra money and to help out a friend and so I said I would go do that while she and the kids went out for a fun day of shopping together.  It was only a few hours when I got a phone call interupting my work and it was Athena telling me she was breaking her promise and stealing the kids all over again.  Nothing I could say would change her mind.  She didn't care that she was pulling Mat out of his routine and his school that he loved going to or that she was stealing my Little Angel.  Nor did she care about breaking her promise. Nor did she care she was abusing the kids by using them to hurt me again.  And this all happened after I had explained to Athena that if she or I ever decided that we couldn't make our relationship work and one of us decided to leave, that the person who bailed needed to do so without the kids.  I explained that neither of us had the right to decide to crap out on our marriage oaths and then to take the kids with us.  Of course at the time Athena used all her twistings of reality to try and say that she was taking the kids because she had to leave the abusive situation and wasn't going to leave the kids to be abused too, but she knew under all the nonsense that that was horse crap.  There is NO way I would EVER abuse my kids.  I love them more than life and I would sacrifice everyone on this planet for even one of them if I thought it necessary!  It is my opinion that Athena actually took them both to hurt me and because she was paranoid as always what people might think about her.  I think that it galled her to think that people might think she was a bad mom or something if she had left me and not taken the kids since usually the dad doesn't want or end up with the kids.  But whatever the reason (she did later admit that stealing them was wrong) she had taken all our money, our car, and our kids away to UT without my knowledge (at the beginning) and against my wishes and despite the logic of our conversations about the one of us leaving not having the right to take the kids.

This time she went too far so I found a way to get to UT (with no money or vehicle) as fast as possible to get the kids back. And this is where things went so far that I couldn't even recognize Athena in the monster who had gone from love of my life to enemy.  When I tried to go back to Cali with the kids Athena actually went to the court, and I have documents attesting to the fact, that she claimed to a UT judge (who should have had no authority in our case) that she was afraid that I would not only neglect and not feed the kids but that I would take my supposed anger with her out on the kids and beat them.  She did that because it was the ONLY way the UT courts could get involved and the only way she could retain the control over me that she was enjoying while withholding my kids from me (she told me directly that she was excited to "hold all the cards" and have power over me).  And based on ZERO evidence, the judge overstepped his bounderies and signed temporary custody of both kids over to her.  So later that day while I was getting Mat fed (I didn't want to withhold the kids from her if I could trust her at all and had let her take Avi) there was a knock at the door.  I opened it up and was surprised to see a cop at the door.  He showed me the order and claimed that for Mat's protection, he was to take him to Athena.  So Mat had to endure a police officer forcing him away from his Dad and Grandma's house because Athena had been awful enough and uncaring about anyone but herself enough to lie to the court.  And the best part is yet to come if you can believe it.  The very next day she brought Mat back to me because he told her he wanted to go back with me and finish his school year with his class/friends.  So I am supposedly dangerous enough for cops to have to come abduct my son yet the very next day she gives him back to me to take home.  Unfortunately though since she could still hide behind that court bull shit she withheld Avi from us and effectively broke up the Mannimals.  I was forced to return with just Mat (she threatened to keep Mat too despite admitting it was the wrong thing to have taken him when I tried to explain that we needed to keep the kids together).

And to sum up what happened from last April to this April it has been a long and terrible ordeal that has been more battle than anything ever in my life.  I had to spend hours and hours and thousands of dollars on the battle to have the kids back together and to get joint custody with the kids spending the school year with me and the summer back in UT with her.  I was able to get the UT judges ruling thrown out eventually and have the case moved back to CA where jurisdiction lied since we had all been CA citizens for years.  And once back in CA the courts awarded me custody while we figured out what to do since she had abducted them across state lines.  I have spent the year from last April to now trying my very best to take the high road in EVERY decision and action I have taken, to at least try and keep things real and positive if not to try and fix things somehow to give it one good and real try to make it all work out and keep our family whole.  Despite leaving me with nothing, the thousands of dollars spent while Athena pretended we were giving our relationship a fair try to succeed, and the thousands of dollars spent battling, I never tried to get a dime from her.  Under CA law Athena being the primary bread winner in our family is actually due to send me enough Alimony money to maintain the standard of living I was used to during our marriage.  She is responsible for sending me Child Support as well should I apply for it (the state of CA ended up going after her for child support when I had to sign up for state aid like food stamps and Medi-Cal).  Instead I have tried to display how the money means nothing to me.  All I care about is the kids first and foremost and trying to take the high road with Athena secondly.  So trying to be as nice as possible I not only didn't take any money from her, I even offered to take the car and it's payment off her hands so that I would have a vehicle and because I knew on UT wages she couldn't afford it.  She of course refused and got it reposessed en route to what she at one time planned on declaring bankruptcy.  (Keep in mind too that Athena also not only had a great career started with a company from the ground floor but that right before breaking up our family they offered her a chance to be given a laptop and a fax machine and the opportunity to work from home!  This meant we would now be able to visit UT or anywhere else we could afford to travel as long as Mat didn't miss too much school.  And here in CA the school year is longer because they give the kids a ton of holidays which we could have used to work our trips around.  This company also had residual income, which you almost never get, and Athena was up to around $2000 a month before ever working a day that month!  And this awesome job was one of the major pros for staying in CA and cons for moving to UT in our decision making).  Anyway, she gave up her career and took everything she could with her and told me that it was to make me have to move back to UT.  I hope that part was actually for the kids and having it be easier to have us both in one state rather than to ruin my life here.  And it seems like no matter how nice I am or how hard I try to do the right thing for us all it keeps coming back to dealing with Athena's twisted reality of who I am and my motives and actions being something she seems to need to fight against.

So instead of going to court our last time we were there, I decided to relent on trying to battle for the bigger share of the joint custody and to simply save us time and energy and split everything 50/50, no matter how I felt it was unfair and not the best thing for the kids and I. It seemed to be a good decision in some ways though because Athena was actually appreciative of something for the first time in ages and said that it was a good idea.  Being the quality parents we usually were, our kids are totally awesome.  I knew that Mat would be able to handle splitting the school year fairly well and with little repercussion where many kids wouldn't take it nearly so well.  And while Avi is more sensitive, she is also capable of making the split work as long as Mat is there and Athena and I are working together to make the split ok and to keep the kids accessible to the parent who is off duty.  Unfortunately now that it is getting close to Athena's turn getting over she is suddenly not the appreciative Mom she momentarily showed when I handed her a half year turn.  Now I am getting the impression given to me that she is going to pretend it would be better to go back to battle and try to keep the kids past her turn and into what would be my summer in the scenario that she was awarded the bigger joint custody.  (Oh and I forgot to mention that Athena tried to come to CA to steal Mat back when his kindergarden ended and she still refused to give us Avi and kept her during most of the summer despite having signed custody papers that said if she had custody, which she at the moment still did, she would give me the kids for the summer.  She even tried calling the police here in CA to abuse them and their power as she had in UT.  Fortunately they called her on it and refused to intercede into our case).  Oh and one last thing about the money issue that is related to last years custody is that because Athena stole Avi and refused to let her come home with Mat and I for a few months during the summer, she took that to mean that she had custody of Avi for the bulk of the year last year.  So come time to do our tax return this year, I asked Athena if we shouldn't file together since we are still married and then we could split our return and each get more than if we filed seperately.  I asked her nicely about it 3 different times and I only got the quick response that no she wanted to file alone (I am always sending her messages that are kind or proactive or about serious matters to which I get little or no response if not some offensive or far out rant of twisted facts).  I should have known something was up, but I had to find out the hard way.  So I go to file my taxes in the beginning of March.  And my return gets rejected and sent back to me because Athena cheated on her taxes and claimed Avi!  I couldn't believe it!  Instead of work together and each get a good return, she hurried and lied on hers so she could steal the money I was supposed to get for Avi.  The way it works on the tax return worksheet is they ask how much time Avi spent in whose house and care and whoever had more time gets to claim her.  And that's where Athena decided that she was going to claim the first 3 months of the year while we were still together as time that counted for her because she forgot that she wasn't paying all our bills any longer (which doesn't matter anyway because its only based on who had Avi more after we seperated).  Then she added those 3 months that she pretended was 4 instead of 3 to the couple months she kept Avi abducted and tried to say it was 8 months out of the year she had her for.  This is just another one of the ways Athena twists facts and reality to fit what she wants no matter how untrue any more.  I had Avi back from abduction and she was with me for the end of the summer and the first half of the Mat's first grade school year.  And as I get caught up on this blog you will see the dates and the pictures that prove I clearly had Avi more, yet Athena thinks this is all some more of my supposed trying to abuse her and make her admit she is wrong and I am right rather than it being about what it really is: that she lied and stole money and cheated on her taxes and screwed me rather than facts being facts and giving me what I was entitled to, and despite that I have never tried to get money from her even though she should owe me thousands if I pursued getting what I legally could.  And also despite the fact that if she didn't get $2200 for having Avi then she screwed us both and if she didn't get $1100 then she screwed herself since I was going to split the return.  And that is just for having Avi on her return not for her whole return that I am referring to when I mention the $2200 and $1100.  Because that is the difference in my return for having to take Avi off of it to get it to go through.  Now had i been able to afford to wait for a paper return instead of filing electronic and had I been wanting to make sure to get my money owed back from Athena, I simply had to file a paper return and send in a document explaining who had Avi when, and the IRS would have given me my full return amount and made Athena pay them back plus penalties.  But as always I have tried to take the high road and to show that money doesnt mean shit to me compared to love and having my kids.

So to finish and now I think I will have recounted and caught this blog up on the important events of the past year plus, I am hoping as fervently as I have this whole last year that Athena and I can get to working together to see to splitting things fairly and to the best interest of both our beautiful children.  I even went so far as to try to tell Athena that I can forgive and forget everything negative that has happened, give up on all my life and future in Cali, and swallow any pride required and would move back to UT if she would simply agree to give it one REAL try to realize our family's potential together.  I offered to start slow and live separated if we would agree that we were giving it a try to make things ok and work together to raise our kids.  I explained how I meant it when I married her and took the vows we took to love and honor her forever thru bad times and good and that I still held a love for her that was stronger than any of the negative things that have happened between us.  I tried explaining that I am so different after all the growth I have had and all the changes I have made in every facet of my life that I think we could really make a good go of it. And I explained that if we removed or fixed all the even semi legitimate reasons Athena had for leaving me, and if I moved back to UT, and I let her make all the important decisions and that she could lead and I would follow that I don't understand how we couldnt then enjoy our potential.  But all for naught.  Not for me, the kids, our families, or for us would she give it a try.  I am heart broke!!  I don't think anyone will ever understand how much I love my wife and how hard I wish things were more like the movie I always pictured my life to be a part of and that I could win her back and we could try again because I am the good guy who made some mistakes but worked hard to fix them to earn another shot!

So that is where we are to date.  I am going to offer to let Athena have the first half of the summer and I take the last because I think that would be best for the kids.  That way they stay where they already are to get in summer in UT, then they come back to me for the second half of summer giving them time to get resettled before school.  Then when I take them back to UT for Christmas break they can settle back in to Athena's and get ready for the second half of the year.  Also the end of summer is soccer time and Mat is super excited to play again.  Last year in all the confusion of not knowing if I would have the kids we couldn't get Mat signed up in time for me to coach.  This year I am hoping to get to be his coach.  (I was to be his coach in basketball early this year, but that was before the decision to let Athena take half the year and so I had to cancel it.)  Mat was one of only 2 or 3 kids off his team to make the All-Star games last year!! I call the kids nearly every day and talk for as long as Mat is comfortable on the phone and as long as Avi will talk (which isn't long since she is only 3).  It's very hard though because I miss them so much and phone calls aren't satisfying enough not to mention that nearly every time Mat and I talk he tells me something along the lines of wishing he was still in CA, or with me, or that I was there, or that Athena and I were still together, or that our family was together.  I wish Athena would listen to him like she did last year when she let him do his school year back here, because he truly wishes to spend the bulk of his time in CA.  But she has trouble not seeing it all as a contest with me about everything (which I understand because this whole thing isn't easy, especially if you have to hear your child would prefer to be with the other parent).  But it isn't a contest and it isn't that Mat or Avi likes me better.  Its just that they both liked their lives in CA and don't want to needlessly interrupt or change what already works well.  And being that I can work at night, when the kids are with me they have a parent there 24/7 and a parent who has nothing better and wants nothing more than to spend as much fun, loving, and quality time with them.  I seriously spend a good portion of my day working at making sure they both know just how special, cool, fun, smart, talented, good looking, awesome they are and how important they are to me and how proud I am of them in so many ways!  And while Athena is a good mom and takes good care and treats them similarly, it is hard to match my intensity and nearly impossible to match my schedule.  That is why I think they prefer CA and miss me as much as they do.  And they miss Athena when with me too, but as my mom pointed out to me: They seem a little better with me and I do such a good job these days trying to be Dad and Mom that it takes some of the missing Athena out of the equation.  (Not to add to the feeling it's a contest, but in reality what my mom actually pointed out was that they didn't seem to miss her much at all when with me because of the quality job I was doing playing both roles)...  Oh and speaking of family (I don't know and can't speak for Athena's family since they hate me now and I imagine they would probably disagree) but my whole family has voiced that they think it best and would prefer I have the bulk of the custody despite it meaning the kids would reside in CA, two states away, because they have seen how much I love the kids and how well I do with them and that I will be visiting to get them as much quality time with the kids as I can.

OK.  So now that we have finally gotten down to the nitty gritty of getting all that spewed out and caught up, I will return to keeping this blog more current for all the original reasons I started it: For a family journal firstly and to share with family and friends to stay caught up on Mannimal life here in good ole Arcata, CA.  :)

Here's one of Athena rockin' her new pajamas she got for Christmas and looking mighty fine as always!!  I have always thought she was the hottest Mama to grace this planet with her fineness!  Those of you who know us well, know that I love my Bubby very, very much and that I find her irreplaceable!

These next couple were pics I took after looking in on Avi while doing chores and noticing how cute she was with Mats hat on and playing Mommy to her baby!

Man, o man!  There aren't words in our language to express how adorable Aviendha is.  She smites me with every look, word, gesture, etc.  It is going to be damn hard to refuse her anything she asks of me.  I already told her she could have a pony if she asked when she wasn't even 1 yet, she was such a cute baby (and cute isn't nearly a strong enough word to do her justice!)

Hahaha... It's been over a year since I took this one.  I believe I was playing a joke and took a pic for evidence. I love watching Athena and the kids when they are sleeping (as you can probably tell by the hundreds of pics I have taken of them sleeping).  They are all so peaceful and beautiful.  It's one of the things I miss a lot with Athena gone.

Oh yeah.  I forgot about this one.  I took this because that cheese that looks like I just melted it in the microwave melted on its own!  This was just sitting on the counter over night and look what happened!  YUCK!

I enjoyed holding Avi too much to put her to bed this night.  I was holding her and doing some reading until she passed out on my lap and in my arms.  I love her SO much!!

Another of my many sleeping pics.  :)

Athena is good at doing crafts with the kids.  Its something I always liked and appreciated.

The kids love it too.

Here is Mat doing his science fair project.  Athena did a great job helping him get it ready.

These next 2 are of the kids playing together.  Mat is such a great big brother and Avi makes a great little sister!

Avi got stalled with all the coming moving and drama and on Athena's watch, but I had her peeing and pooping in her potty like a big girl! She was so cute and proud of doing a good job!

Adorable even when taking a crap.  :)

What great kids!

Too cute!!

Haha.  These next ones are pictures of the haircut I gave Mat for Crazy Hair Day at school.  I had threatened Athena for a long time about Mat or I having a Bi-Hawk and now was our perfect chance since we could just shave it off when we were ready.  :)

If I remember right it was Athena who dyed his hawks blue.

Athena is gorgeous in every light!  Here is a heavily red tinted pic, but she's as fine as always! ;)