Chalk up a win in my column

Friday night, on the way to my book club meeting, the following text message arrived from my daughter:

So apparently im supposed to go to dads sunday night and spend the night till monday for some retard reason and hes gonna talk to you about it. MAKE UP A REASON WHY WE WOULD BE BUSY. Plleeeasssee im so tired of him and i dont wnna wake up at 5:30 am on monday if I dont have to and i dont want to deal with him any more.

I get to hear her vent every time I pick her up. It gets old, but really, what else can I do? I can't fix everything. I can't change him. I can't even say much without badmouthing him... which is definitely not productive. So I let her vent, and when she finishes I ask her, "So do you feel better since you got that out?"

And she always sighs deeply, and replies, "Yes!!" But this time she had a very valid point.

Sunday was when I was supposed to get the kids, but he had emailed me about a week before, asking if I would pick them up at noon Saturday or if he should drop them off. I agreed to pick them up since I would be in the area anyway.

But there was no mention that he expected this to be a trade of time... that I would have to bring them back when it was normally to be their time with me. I had emailed him over a month earlier asking about his plans that weekend. I knew he was leaving town for a marathon, and I pointed out that it was Doober's midterm break weekend. I asked how he wanted to split the time with Doober home, but he never acknowledged that email at all.

Given this text message from the Pumpkin, I expected him to call, which he did, halfway through book club, so I didn't answer. But his voice mail message made no reference to getting the kids back on Sunday either. He never brought it up at all until I picked them up on Saturday. So I decided it was ok to stand my ground.

This is the same guy who always preached, "It's called cah-mew-ni-KAY-shun," in that obnoxious tone of voice every time he didn't think we verbalized enough and assumed too much. So I simply told him that he was welcome to come get the kids for some additional visitation time but it made no sense for them to move their stuff back and forth between houses multiple times, just to sleep in a different place, so I expected him to bring them back at bedtime. It wasn't my fault he left town this weekend, and if he wanted to swap time rather than ask me to take them early, he should have replied to my email ahead of time to make those arrangements.

He never came to get them last night, and when he called this morning, he simply asked me to bring Doober over tonight for a bit to discuss the situation with his grades (which aren't doing so hot). He agreed that since he hadn't replied to my email, it was his fault and he forfeited his time with them. I felt a lot of passive-aggression in his tone, but the words were ok, so I'm trying to listen to what he said and ignore how he said it.

Finding your victories when you can is just as important as picking your fights.