From the beginning....

Well, I've been gone for a while, not able or just plain had no desire to log on. There have been a few days that it was just too much effort to even smile. Those of you with teen-agers will totally relate to that feeling at one time or another, however, this time it is more than I ever thought I would be dealing with in my life, and I hope you all don't mind my venting here. I feel that if I don't get it out, I may just snap and really lose my mind.... Here is the story behind my frustrating last few weeks. You all may or may not have seen my earlier posts about my step-son, who picked a fight with his dad on Father's Day in order to get sent back to his mom's so he didn't have to do any real school work here. Well this tops that story. How can that be you may be asking yourselves, well I have a daugther the same age as he, another mush brained, hormonal, teenager. She has changed, for she used to be a sweet and thoughtful girl, who I could always count on to make the right choices. She still is about certain things. But things have taken a wrong turn this summer, in a very big way. While we were busy being frustrated with our step-son's behavior and all that it encumpassed(spelling), there was something going on with our daughter that is taking us to court on Monday. Our daughter has been friends with a girl whose family has been going through a nasty divorce for the last 4 years. You know the type, the wife hates the husband and wants to punish him so she does everything she can to make him miserable and drags the children into her pettiness towards him. And the husband retaliates by doing more of the same stupid behavior that got him kicked out of the house in the first place, and then some more. Both of them using the kids as pawns against the other and therefore ruining them all. Still with me so far?? Suffice it to say that my daughter and their daughter became friends before I knew what was going on with the parents, well at least before I knew as much as I do now anyway. Our daughter was doing the usual sleep overs with her friend about twice a month, with me picking her up at the end of the weekend. Once at the beginning of June this summer, I went to get her and while I was sitting in the livingroom waiting for her to gather her things, I noticed a man(who I later found out is 22 and no relation to the father of my daughters friend)sitting in the darkened diningroom typing away on the PC in the corner. He was introduced to me by the father in the house as a friend who was just visiting. I didn't think anything of it at the time. A few weeks later, after school let out for the year(June 27 was the last day) I got a strange phone call from my daughters friend. She was asking me if I had any problems with my daughter hanging out with her at her fathers house with this man there. I asked why and she went on to say that her other friend had been banned from the house because he was there. When I asked why she would not say. I asked further, "is there anything that you aren't telling me that I should know?" and she quickly said no and ended the conversation. This left me with a nagging feeling, but nothing that I could really pin down. After that my daughter anounced that she and this girl were no longer friends, due to the fact that she was going around telling people stories about her, and saying nasty things that weren't true. She is known for this type of behavior in our church community, as well as her school, as I have now discovered from talking to other parents here. I told my daughter that this was for the best, and that I had hoped that she would have ended her friendship sooner than now. It is also something that we have fought about this last year. This was just the tip of the iceburg as it turns out. The next thing that happens is that on the second week of July, while my daughter is out washing the car(which I know now was a set up and she had it all planned out), even though I am severly sick with broncitis, I went out to check on her progress and found this man's motorcycle parked on the hidden side of our driveway, and as I came around the side of the house, he comes from around the corner of my house with my 16 year old daughter. She is in her bathing suit, and he is soaking wet from his shoulders to his crotch. He goes to leave and I step in front of him and stop him from leaving and order him into the house where my husband is sitting at the PC. I "direct" him into the room and tell my husband what I have just found. (My husband is a federal police officer, and we are both gun owners, matching glochs and various rifles, and my husband collects both guns and swords) My husband proceeds to read him the riot act and let him know what will be the concequences if he returns here or has any further contact with our daughter. He agrees to what he is told. Or so we thought. Of course our daughter thinks we are stupid and she is defiant and mad. The next few weeks she is secretly sneeking out of the house at night, and early in the morning, to meet with him, in the park at the bottom of our street, and possibly at the home of the former friends father. We may never know the full story there. I catch her not once, but 3 times at this park with him, each time warning him to stay away. In the meantime he has done his "homework" and has found out that he can legally have sex with our daughter at 16 in the state of WA without our consent, and he has arrogantly told our daughter this who of course relays the message for him to us. Essentially thumbing his nose at us, let alone my husband the cop! That was all during the month of July! Thankfully we left on vacation the first week of August. Stupidly I thought that we would have her away from him and we would have no problems on the trip, and maybe it would go away for when we came home. She seemed herself again anyway. That as it turns out was just what she wanted me to think. As it turns out, she was using the cell phone that my ex gave our son, to call him, text him, and he was calling her every single night at 3 am. That is until I confiscated the phone because the kids were fighting over it. The very day we got home she snuck(is that a word?) out of the house to meet him, before anyone else was up, and before her boss came to pick her up for work. The third day we were home I got up early for some reason, at 7:15am, and realized that the house was quiet, and she was not getting ready for work. I went down to wake her, so she would be ready for work on time, and realized that she was missing. I searched the entire house, including the yard. She was gone. None of her clothes were missin, not even her purse. This meant she was in her pajamas. I woke my husband, and called her boss, thinking that maybe she had picked her up early. When she told me she had not, and wasn't coming until 8am, I told her that my other daughter would babysit for her, while I dealt with her sister. She agreed. ( Later I also found out that this man was visiting my daughter at the house where she was babysitting nearly everyday, and was even showing up at the pool, and the mall when she sent my daughter there with her children. I wish I had known this much sooner.) Just as my husband was leaving the area of the park, and the "boss" was pulling up into my driveway, I spot my daughter running as fast as she can from the park, towards us. I motion for her to get into the house as her sister gets into the car. Her boss, my friend, wishes me luck and pulls away. When I get into the house, I am met with a load of lies about meeting her friend Scotty(who I call "one of the girls") to give him his stuff. It's all a lie, and not a smart one at that, since he has only been to our house once, and that was about 5 minutes before we all got into the car and left to go to a halloween party, last fall. I tell her that this is the last straw and that she is banned from doing anything, and it's up to her boss wether she still has a job or not. No phone, no laptop, or other type of PC, and no going anywhere. It's almost impossible for me to hear if she is up at night, since I have medication for restless leg syndrome that makes me sleep, so of course she still is sneeking up, getting on her sisters PC and making arrangements to meet, via MSN messenger, and then sneeking out in the night to do so. What is wrong with this guy?????????? Also is the friend who lives down the street by the park, that is a girl that she has befriended. She is a clincially depressed, self-mutilator, loose with the boys, mess. I don't like my daughter hanging out with her either, and she is helping with these little meetings. She also has in the past, been a guest in our home until my other daughter heard her saying some really nasty things about me to her sister. Disrespectful on top of everything else. And this is who my daughter calls a friend....?? Anyway, once the last sneeking out took place, I called my ex, and he flew out to meet with me, her, and my husband. We all sat in a room and we talked to her for about 3 hours, and she told us everything we wanted to hear. Part of me knew that's what she was doing, but we were hoping that some of what we said would make some sense to her. Obviously we were wrong to think that at all. Things got worse over the next week, now 2 weeks ago. She was still determined to defy us and meet with him, and he would not let her be either. She told me that not only was she sneeking out to meet him, but he was sneeking over and sleeping under our deck!!! With my husband right above him in the familyroom!! We decided that we had to do something legally about this. I made a trip to the county courthouse that week(now two weeks ago), and filed for a protection order against him) Once I told the clerks what was going on, they hooked me up with court records too and gave me copies of his criminal record. This was an eye opener!!!!! Listen to this!! He was arrested for a felony possession with intent to distribute. And he beat up his former girlfriend! He was given a court appointed attorney, who plead the charges down and got him a reduced charge with a sentence of 30 days house arrest with and electronic ankle braclet, and 12 months probation after that. His sentencing period was, and get this: June 8, 2007 to July 8, 2007!! My daughter admitted that he had first slept under our deck on July 1st!!!! This is a violation of his sentencing agreement. We contacted the sheriff's and they gave us his PO's name and number and told us to contact him immediately. We did. He was very interested in this information and told us to also call the CCO(County Corrections Offices) and talk to the man in charge of this case. He would also want to know about this. After this, I went in front of a judge, that same day, and she granted it, the minute she saw what it was about. We were given a court date for this coming monday for the guy to come in and respond to the paperwork. He was suppose to be served this last Tuesday. We will see what takes place. In the meantime, once we told our daughter what was happening, she started packing and threatening to run off to this guy, or some other place, I don't know exactly what she was doing there... She was angry and said that she didn't care about me or anyone else in our house, and that I was just a "stupid old, grey-haired lady" that didn't know sh***! That hurt me most of all... I told her that was it, I wasn't putting up with this any longer, and she was on her way to her father's in Idaho for a while. We have other children in the house, who were present for this little tyraid of hers, and they didn't deserve this, nor would we let her subject them to the danger that she had brought into our household, any longer. I sent her up to her room and out of my site for the time being. I could hear her stomping around and banging things from all the way down in the kitchen....little brat. I got on the phone and called my ex and told him to come and get her. He almost dropped the phone. He knows that's the last thing I would ever do for any of our kids. I don't want them there. His mother and father are manipulative and contentious, and strive always to make me look like a horrible mother. But I can't have her here, dragging the rest of the family down, putting herself and us in danger, and setting such a bad example for her little sister. And the stress she has put me under has made me physically ill for weeks. Enough is enough. He was especially taken aback that I was in tears when I called. I don't cry normally. The "tough country girl" in me I guess. But my heart is broken and I can't help her anymore. Even as I was making arrangements to put her on a plane, she was saying she was "outta here", so I told my ex, that I had to hang up for a bit and call the police, and I would call him back. The sheriff deputy arrived and really read her the riot act. She was crying the whole time, but not because she had seen the error of her ways. She was mad, and she finally realized, after he told her so, that she had no rights. She is the child, and we are the parents. She has to do what we say. At least for the next 2 years anyway. Then she is free to screw up her life is that is what she chooses. Last Sunday we put her on a plane to Idaho. She went, with a fake smile on her face, and telling me she's not mad at me. I've called 4 times this week to see how things are going. She's staying with her grandmother 3 days a week, cuz dad is a trucker, and his wife is a school teacher and does extra work for the district that keeps her out till 2am most nights. I talked to the grandmother on tuesday and she basically told me that she is going to try and get her involved in so many things there that she won't want to come back here. This is exactly why I don't like to have my kids there!!!!! GRRR!!!! I have yet to speak to my ex about this. She gave her permission to go to a school dance tonight....another thing that I don't want her doing. She is not there to go to parties! School is something that she is doing there because she has to, for grades, not for fun. And she is to be "home" after that. She's there to face her choices, and make some changes, not to have "party time". I thought her father and I were clear on that subject. Apparently we have to talk about this again. Anyways, as you can see, my plate has been pretty full lately, and I am sure that it is not over yet. I can't believe that it's happening, and I wish it would just go away!!! I am praying that by the time October 13 rolls around(the date she says she wants to be home by), she will have pulled her head out, and she will realize how stupid she has been. I also expect to hear two little words from her, "I'm sorry"......but I'm not holding my breath for that one. Sorry this was soooo long.....thanks for letting me rant alittle.