The Easter Bunny Rears His Ugly Head

So it's August and you may be wondering why I'm writing about the Easter Bunny -- believe me, I wish I wasn't.

With the start of this new school year, little step-monkey (Mojo) is starting the first grade! While it's true that for the past four years she has attended a variety of combinations of full day day care, Montessori and public school, this will be her first year of all day school in the same place. With that in mind, her parents set out to revamp the visitation schedule to avoid an excess of travel during the school week. Currently Mojo alternates between spending two school nights at Dad's house every other week and one school night and a weekend. The change was to increase the weekend time to include Sunday night and now a Wednesday night (that's only one school night -- see?)

When we contacted our lawyer, she told us that if the parties agree on the changes, then there's no need for a lawyer to get involved (thankfully!) so my hubby discussed the changes with the Harpy, came to an agreement, typed it up, and gave her a copy for her perusal. The idea being that the sooner we can get this thing signed, the sooner we can implement the changes so that step-monkey is used to the new schedule before school starts.

*Insert deep breath here*

Well, of course the Harpy takes forever with the damn thing, then agrees to the changes.

Then she changes her mind.

Sunday night, she calls and says that she wants to change the agreement so that long weekends like Easter and Thanksgiving are split between the two households (currently the agreement says that whoever has Mojo on the long weekend keeps her). We think that this is a stupid idea -- why? Well, because the whole point of the new arrangement is to cut down on travel -- not increase it! Besides which, the whole reason her nose is out of joint on the long weekend thing is because they've happened to fall on our weekends in recent years (which, by the way, has not stopped her from asking us to give up our time with the child so that she can drag her up to Belleville -- which, oddly we usually agree to). Would she give a crap if the weekends had been hers? Would she consider giving up some of her time and inconveniencing herself so that the child could spend some extra time with her dad?

I think we all know the answer to that.

I'll abbreviate the story somewhat, since I've gone on too long already. Harpy basically jeopardizes a summer's worth of negotiations and some expensive gymnastics lessons for some loose wording about splitting the Easter weekend. She is, in every aspect, totally unreasonable.

In the end, I suggest to my husband that we just give her what she wants. Easter is clearly a big deal to her (her family exchanges gifts as though it's Christmas -- they do not, however, attend church and couldn't care less about the resurrection of Jesus -- a capitalist family to the core!) and for us it's really about getting to spend the extra time with step-monkey. So in our efforts to keep the peace, we are forced to agree to the following:

Mojo will spend the weekend preceding Easter with her dad. She will spend Easter weekend with her mother and when she returns from Belleville, she will spend whatever is left of the holiday Monday with her dad. Every year from now till eternity.

I had no idea that the Easter Bunny was into sodomy.

I think what bugs me the most about the big stink she made is that she was willing to make things worse for her own child in order to get what she wanted. I don't know exactly how these changes are supposed to benefit step-monkey, but I hope that at least in the Harpy's mind they do somehow do just that.

One thing's for sure -- I'll never see Easter the same way again. It never ceases to amaze me how that woman can suck the joy out of everything that crosses her path -- even a long weekend!