Brain Guts EVERYWHERE!!

So I logged in this morning, and checked my stats, still not 100% sure of what I would be writing about today, but knowing that I need to anyways when BOOM! My little blog that averages approximately 100 or so views a month had over 800 views last month. I don't know why, or how, for all I know I got hit by a bunch of bots, but man did it do something for my ego! (Honestly, it looks like one of my first articles as an adult to get published online is making the rounds through some circles again, but I still think bots have at least a little to do with it...)

Anywho, now that I've cleaned the brain matter off of my screen, time to write!

In Arizona, when you file for divorce and have children, and if you want the courts to listen to anything you have to say about said divorce, you are required to take a 4 hour class on parenting. Let me repeat the important part. 4 hour class. I recently went to it, and much like every other government mandated class I've attended, I paid some of my hard earned money to get chastised for hours on end.

 The packet we were handed at the beginning of class fascinated me and looked like I was going to be in for an actually entertaining and informative class. What I read in class while the teacher was shaming us was REALLY good stuff. What the teacher was talking about also was important, but more along the lines of what I needed to hear 2 years ago when this first started. Our teacher was a divorcee when he was 26 and now he's old enough to have his youngest be older than that, and from what I could gather he was some sort of psychologist.

What he was talking about was very important, and I could tell by the fidgeting of my classmates that a lot of them needed to hear what he was saying. The majority of the class needed the full 4 hours of examples of how not to treat the other parent of your child. There was a small handful of us though, who have been living this reality for a while. We had already learned the ropes of splitting a household, we just are starting the legalities now, and for that, I felt like there was nothing presented for us.

What I've learned the last couple of months is that when you get the courts involved people change their behaviors since they're being watched. So now, it's a whole new ballgame. In the past if something happened and we needed to switch schedules as soon as we knew it we would get it figured out, even if it was just a couple of days in advance. Now, if my ex wants to take my son out of town he makes sure he's not taking him more than half the week because that's all he's allotted. I'm afraid to offer to take my son extra days when he asks to come home, because now there's a scale attached to things.

I'm relieved to be moving towards the finish line and closing the book on the marriage, but I really don't like a lot of the changes being made. Part of why the last 2 years have worked so well is our flexibility, but now things are so rigid, it's beyond normal structure. AND we changed the structure. So not only are we having to adjust to a different time schedule than we have been using, we also have a whole new set of rules to adjust to.

I'm hoping we all adjust to this new schedule, or if it's not a good fit we have the courage to say something about it, but for the time being this is it. School is back in session, work is starting to pick back up, and the world keeps on spinning.

Until next time!