Otter had her first professionally taught driving lesson today. And she did wonderfully! The instructor said that she did everything very well. She drove into the downtown area of our small city, but that's not saying a lot because it's pretty small. But she did have to deal with some traffic, changing lanes and parking. She drove past her school, also. He sounded like he was very impressed. She has another lesson tomorrow, then two next week. Then it's up to us to get her the rest of the required hours for the final license. I've already told her that once she's finished with the lessons next week, she's going to start driving more when we go places like church, the grocery store or to take her to school. I think she's going to be a very good driver. Let's just hope that she can learn to parellel park!
Virginia's custody hearing went pretty good. Her lawyer advised her before anything really got started that there was probably going to be visitation by the kid's father. Virginia's son and daughter-in-law are both child abuse investigators and they had all the ammunition that they needed, both on the father and on most of his family having either prison records (bad ones, records that really matter in this case) or more than one sister having had children removed because of abuse and/or neglect. So the visitation would have been set up to be supervised & limited - and he would have had to pay for it. As a condition of the visitation, the lawyer suggested that they have a drug test run on him. Which was voluntary and he agreed to do. While they were waiting for the results, the kid's father stated that he wanted a delay because he hadn't had time to get an attorney - he's had over 2 weeks. But that's beside the point now. Because he wasn't smart enough to stay away from certain "banned substances" and now he gets NO visitation. The hearing has been postponed or continued until the 30th, and the protective order is still in force. At that point, anything could happen. There will be another drug test, that much is certain. If he gets an attorney and has a clean test, the most likely scenario is that the children will stay with Virginia and David but that he'll have visitation. Again, it will be supervised & limited and he'll have to pay for it. But a lot of that depends on what kind of attorney he gets, he is probably going to try to get a "public defender" type, where he won't have to pay or will have to pay a reduced fee. Or he might do what he usually does - expect that the rules will be bent for him and he is not a very truthful person, either. So everything is still up in the air, and prayers will still be needed. Nobody thinks that he really wants the kids, but that it's just spite on his part. All of this could have been avoided if he'd just grown up and taken responsibility. But that probably won't happen, if it hasn't by now.
Happy late Birthday, Scott! And Happy Birthday today, Pippin!
Maggie beagle managed to get herself into a little trouble this morning. Someone got into the trash in the night, it was still in the trash can this time and not just in a bag on the floor. Since Maggie was extremely interested in the can last night and I had to get her away from it more than once, I'm thinking that she was probably the culprit. If it had been Frasier, there would have been more taken out of the can because the only stuff that was pulled out was right at the opening and about all she could reach. She's kind of a short dog, after all. She was acting guilty this morning, too.
It was a very pleasant day today, it was in the 70's. We needed jackets this morning. It was cloudy and overcast at first, but then the sun came out and it turned out to be very nice. Partly cloudy and not too warm at all. Tomorrow should be back into the low 80's, and the next few days will probably also be in that range. But we might get rain, and if Hurricane Ike hits far enough north in Texas we could get rain out of it early next week. But who knows, this morning Ike was supposed to go up the east coast!
I still have hummingbirds, but I don't expect them to stay around much longer. I think that some of them have already started migrating south. I have really enjoyed them this year. I'm also starting to think about the tulip bed and planting some bluebonnet seeds in the whisky barrel. I've planted seeds before, but always at the wrong time. They need to be planted in the fall, so I'm going to try seeds again and see what happens. I am not counting on being able to find them at the garden stores next year, this year was a bad one for them. I'm also planning on moving a few more iris bulbs in about 2 months. I'll find a place for them somewhere!
No comments:
Post a Comment