Yes, ladies and gents, as I've come to notice, we "step-folk" must celebrate the small victories in a battle with so few "wins" on our side. Today I'm celebrating my small "disengaging" victory over BM. Usually DH will call her before he leaves for work to discuss any "issues" with her. She does not have his cell phone number because she will harass him, so he calls her from our home phone. She has taken to not answering his calls (her way to control him) and will call back when she KNOWS he isn't home and try to talk to me. Once I say something she doesn't like or want to hear, she'll start crying and throwing a fit and tell me "it's none of your business!" After too many episodes of this, I finally got wise and said "she's right! I'm not dealing with this anymore and refuse to talk to her about anything!"

Flash forward to today. DH has SD8 for summer through the end of June. He realized his "weekend" is the first weekend in July which butts up to the end of his summer visit. He originally planned to keep her through the weekend in July, but our plans have changed and we are going out of town and won't be back in time to have her home on Sunday. Her mother won't agree to her staying an extra day (so she could go with us), and DH doesn't want to cut our vacation short so the only option is that SD8 goes home early on our way out of town. Sucks for her but oh well. Life goes on. He called BM today during her usual "lunch hour" (as she requested) and she didn't answer, of course. An hour later after she knows he is long gone, she calls back. She starts the conversation off with "I know DH isn't home right now but he called me earlier, do you know what he wanted?" -- I had to really resist from telling her but instead I said "yes, he needs to talk to you and I'm sure he will try and call you tomorrow" (he can't call her once he's home from work because it's too late). She then tries to drag me in to a conversation asking all kinds of questions and I just kept saying "he has to call you" and after a while I finally said "look, I need to go. I guess you're just going to have to wait until DH calls you back" and I hung up the phone while she was still stammering and mumbling about "I guess I just have to wonder all day what he's up to and what he's trying to do!" -- yes, yes you do!

*happy dance commencing*