After that disastrous episode of not picking the little guy up on time, TB, the dad and I had it out with Mega Mooch. There was a lot of yelling, crying, and "from now on everything is different, I'm changing" but I am not going to hold my breath. The big confrontation occurred on Saturday. We'd arranged to have my two daughters watch the little guy away from us so that we could be open and honest with each other.

It all had to come to a head eventually. MM was lying to everyone about everything. She'd told us all kinds of horror stories about the little guy's dad, that he was neglectful and abusive, that his family was the same way and on and on. Meanwhile, she was tell him basically the same things about us! She lies about where she's going, whether she's paid her bills, whether she has any money, you name it, she lies about it. If the sky was blue and she told me so I'd still have to look.

Once before I offered a four-way talk so we could get all the stories out on the table. Why? To clear the air so that we could start clean, treat each other respectfully and communicate...for the little guy's sake. MM didn't want to do that at first but when the little guy's dad insisted, I guess she saw it was inevitable.

As usual, MM took the view that poor her, the whole world is against her and nothing is her fault. Even afterwardws, I think she still feels that way. She was saying whatever we wanted to hear to get us to shut up. It was clear all she wanted to do was run to Chuck E. Cheese and meet up with some low life friend of hers, although she denied it. So why did the low life friend keep texting her? Hmpf.

She wanted to know what she could do to show that she was really changing and we had several ways to measure.

First, she claimed the little guy as an exemption for the year even though she only had custody of him for half and even though she didn't contribute any support at all during the whole year. All the support either came from the dad or from TB & me. Not that TB and I want to claim the little guy or even get our money back. We just feel that the dad should get all or at least half the exemption. Now, since MM has already been flaunting her return money this would mean she'd have to go back to the IRS and re-file, returning the refund. I won't hold my breath for that.

Another thing she could do is show us her bills and show us that the amount is going down. We don't want her paycheck and we're not going to tell her how to pay these bills off but we do want to see evidence she's caught up on her car payment, the credit cards, the phone, and the banks (she owes two banks around $900 each for bouncing checks! Didn't they used to put you in jail for that????)

Another thing she could do is get counseling, although with the type of personality order I think she has it's just about an exercise in futility. I don't think she will ever admit or own responsibility for anything she does. Even being so late to pick up Tomas...it was no "big deal". There were "no broken bones". The boy was even sleeping. Yeah...cried himself to sleep!

Let's stop there with just those three although I wanted to add communication--stop the lying and keeping information from all of us. She already blew that one.

On Sunday night, the little guy began to get sick. Monday morning when I got up, MM and the little guy were gone. I looked around for a note...there was none. I wondered if she'd gone to the emergency room or to the doctor. It was still pretty early in the morning for a doctor's appointment (around 8) and so I called her cell phone. No answer...but she'll do that if she doesn't want to talk to you. So I waited, worried and wondered.

Meantime I talked with the dad. He hadn't heard from MM either. He'd asked how the little guy was doing and she'd texted back fine, sleeping. ???? The little guy was sick, how is that fine? Anyway, eventually we both managed to contact her. She told me she was at the doctor's office; she told him she was still enroute because the appointment was at 9:30. Meanwhile, neither of us could get through to the doctor.

The dad asked why did you leave so early with him if the appointment wasn't until 9:30? And she answered she wasn't paying attention to the time when she left.

All these conflicting statements did not inspire confidence in us.

She's backtracked on the getting counseling thing already. Instead of calling a counseling center for an appointment, she says she's going to talk to the family doctor and "see what he says". Meanwhile, it's been several days and she hasn't done that yet either. And this is after telling us she was considering suicide Saturday night. Yeah right. That's part of the personality disorder I think she has.

As for refiling her income tax, I think that won't happen unless she's audited.

But at least we got our say, and none of us held back. She knows exactly what we think even if she wants to justify and rationalize it all away.