It was a Wednesday…

THE SPRING OF 2003

We had a woodworking shop, about a 1000 sq ft., at the back of our property. One of our sub-contractors, Mark, had been working out there for a long time on something for a customer (probably cabinets). I realized that he never came in the house to use the restroom…days on end, he never came in.

So, one morning I called Mark into the house. I reminded him that he was welcome to come in to use the restroom, or get water…whatever he needed. He said he knew he could come in, but that Kenny had given all the guys “Big Gulp” cups and had told them to use the cups to pee in and then to throw their urine into the sawdust pile in the yard!

Now, let me back up about this sawdust pile.

For some reason, Kenny got the bright idea that it would be better to just dump the sawdust from the woodworking into a pile in the middle of the backyard, rather than collect it and put it in the dumpster. Because there was so much sap in it, there was a constant swarm of bees all over it. It was particularly bad because we had a bee keeper across the street and another HUGE one down the road from us.

I told Mark NOT to throw his urine in the saw dust, but to come into the house!!

That night I brought it up to Kenny and told him that he needed to tell the guys to come inside and use the restroom…that it was disgusting and unsanitary to have them pouring urine all over the yard!

That was Wednesday.

Two days later…on Friday…

The girls were out playing in the backyard. I had the windows open in the dining room, so that I could hear them. I wasn’t too concerned about the “pile of pee” because the girls were very much aware of the bees swarming the saw dust and they stayed clear of it.

All of the sudden, I heard this loud squealing and laughing from the girls. I went to the window to see what all the excitement was about.

Kenny was standing at the edge of that saw dust pile, watching and laughing with the girls…but what he was laughing at was unbelievable!!

My little girls were standing smack in the middle of that pile of urine soaked saw dust and throwing it up into the air, and over their little heads like confetti!

And there stood their father, on the edge, enjoying the view!

I was out that back door before I even realized I had left the window. I yelled to the girls to get out of the saw dust, and asked Kenny what he was thinking!!

He followed the girls into the house, asking me what the problem was? Did I really need to remind him of our conversation two days earlier? I doubt he forgot, but I “explained” it to him, anyway.

I told him that I couldn’t believe he would stand out there laughing while our little girls (3 and 7 years old), threw sawdust over their heads… sawdust that was soaked in the urine of a multitude of men!!!

His response was, “What’s the big deal, they’ll wash!”

“…they’ll wash…”

The truth is that this is what Kenny did all through our marriage. This was just another one of his messages to me…”Don’t confront me about anything or I’ll go after the girls.”

Because I had gotten on him about the men pouring their urine in the yard, he was going to get me back…and he was going to use the children to do it.

There was NO WAY those girls would have walked up to that saw dust pile on their own…it was always covered in bees and they were afraid of it!! (The urine must have chased the bees off by that point).

Knowing the bees were always swarming the sap, what would have prompted the children to approach that pile of sawdust?

Who assured them that the bees were gone?

What man would stand by and watch as his little girls reach into the urine infested sawdust with their little hands?

Certainly, not a man, but a vengeful boy…and one who would put his babies at risk, to scare his wife.

As I share more of these stories with you, you’ll begin to see the pattern of threat.

By the time of this incident, I was fairly aware of his agenda…but it took a while to get there.

The emotional abuse and manipulation this kind of person engages in is very subtle…and you don’t want to believe it, at first. You don’t want to believe that this is the person you married!

Finally acknowledging the truth, was one of my greatest disappointments…but that came long before this incident…

negligence…

On Sunday, April 6, 2008, my oldest – she’s eleven – called me at about 2:45pm. She said that her dad and his new wife had gone to the mall at noon and had locked them out of the house. They had told the girls they would be back at 5:30. Evidently, they gave her a cell phone to use and I guess that was supposed to be their “supervision”. 5 1/2 hours, the girls – 11 and 7 years old – were supposed to just run around and do whatever they wanted. My daughter said that her dad told them, “go have fun!”

What was so amazing is that when my daughter called me, she was about two blocks from my house!! One of the women who work at the clubhouse where Kenny lives was bringing them to ME!

Gee, I guess that cell phone really doesn’t have much of a use, because my children were no longer on the property where Kenny lives and he has no idea!

This is the same problem we had to endure last summer. The girls on their own, in the pool alone, begging people for food, hiding food, being locked out of the house all day…now that it’s getting warm, it’s going to start again.

But this summer, things are going to be different from my end. I’m not going to ask people to document their experiences (like management at Kenny’s complex), I’ll report it all myself.