Saturday morning I woke Miss Addie and told her she needed to get her bath and wash her hair.

"You have an hour and a half until you have to be at Sylvan", I said.

"What time is it Dandy?", she asked.

"Eight o'clock", I replied.

"I can't believe I slept to eight", she exclaimed.

As I walked from her room I told her, "Get going, you need to eat some breakfast too!"

While she was bathing, I hopped in my truck and made a quick run to the golden arches breakfast club and picked up breakfast for the whole house. Of course I have learned that Miss Addie will eat about twice as much as I do, so the bulk of it was hers.

When I walked in the house she was getting dressed and I put her breakfast on a plate and put it at her place at the dining table. I went to the back of the house to get ready to take her to school. When I emerged from my room, Meme had brushed Addie's hair and Addie was working on her last sausage biscuit.

Addie and I loaded up in Meme's SUV and headed for Sylvan.

When we arrived there, we joined six other students and their parents in the waiting room. After a brief wait, a young man came in and began calling names and giving table assignments. Addie was the third name called and assigned to table #9. After Addie went back, I talked briefly with Johanna and gave her a check for the first month. I left and returned to the house. Meme was getting ready because we had planned a brief list of "things to do" once we retrieved Addison from school at eleven-thirty.

When we drove up at Sylvan, Meme went up to get Addie. When Addison came down the stairs, she was beaming! I think this has been one of my biggest thrills, watching her "feel good" about herself.

We left Sylvan and went to a swimming pool supply. Krl has had a zodiac vacuum and while it was good in the beginning, it has been fading fast. We walked in and she told the salesman exactly what she wanted. "Give me a Lady Bug auto vac". Addie was very excited as she inspected the picture on the box.

From there we headed to Wal Mart. We had a short list of what we needed, but ended up splitting up with two baskets. Meme went to the pharmaceutical section while Addie and I went looking for fish sticks and some lunch pack burritos. By the time Meme found us we had expanded our list several times over. Addie and I had also decided we would have chili dogs for supper (more common ground).

Meme wasn't feeling too well and Addie had bought ice cream for "Coke floats", so we made our way home to put up groceries.

Addie and I hauled them in, Meme put them up. When we were through Meme laid down while Addie and I began assembling the new lady bug! When we were done, Addie and I went into our office to try to get a website she wanted on my computer. My desktop computer is very sensitive. It really has some issues, but for what I use it for, it usually does o.k., however if you pull a website up that has a lot of animation, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is going to give you an error message and close the program. Time after time, it would close. So, being the good Dandy I am, I decided to hook Meme's computer to the internet. We have a wireless router, but since we have been home I have not been able to find the power supply cord for it. I know it will surface. I made the decision to hard wire Meme's computer in with network cable. For some reason, I could never make it complete the connection. I pulled out my new laptop and the same thing occurred. I don't know who was more frustrated, Addie or me. During our work in the office she made the deal with me that we would go to the park when we finished in the office.

In a freak deal, when I was looking for different network cable with RJ45 cable ends, I opened my carrying case for my old laptop. What should I find in there but the missing passports and birth certificates. Five weeks and three hundred thirty dollars too late! This case had probably not been opened since December of 2006, although it did make our last out of country trip.

After I took the rogue passports and certificates to Meme, Addison and I returned to the office to make one last attempt to connect another computer to the internet. While we we in the office, the doorbell rang. "Who is that Dandy?", Addison asked. "I'll bet you $5 that it is your mother", I replied. Don't ask me, I just had a feeling.

Sure enough when I opened the door, there was Makai with an Abilene Police Officer. For a very brief moment I was hoping she had a new boy friend although I knew a leap to the law enforcement side would be a huge jump from the law breaker side. Hey, I can hope can't I. It would be a definite improvement. After that brief moment of hope, I knew that Makai was here to pick up Addison.

I opened the door, and Addison went to hug the female that gave birth to her (I won't call her Addie's Mom because she doesn't qualify as a mother). "I'm here to pick up Addison", she said. You have to know Makai, but Makai is a drama queen. Her whole world turns around her. No one has ever gone through what she has, or had it as bad. It is really very sad. The policeman was a prop. I am sure this is all too common for Addison. Thing is I didn't and wouldn't make a scene because of Addison, and on top of that, my attorney and I had talked about this particular scenario playing out. Makai wanted to come in the house to get Addison's things, but I told her no, we would gather her things and I asked the officer to escort her off our property and back to the street. Scott tried to get out of the car but the officer put him back in it in quick order. Makai told me it was hard not having Addison. I'm sure the first of the month approaching and child support on its way made Makai feel guilty. You can bet it isn't about Addison. I asked Makai if this was for the weekend or was she bailing on the Sylvan program. Makai told me she is being pulled in all directions. Her mother, Doug, Garry, Birdie, they all wanted her to get Addison. I told Makai I could not believe she would deny Addison the opportunity to catch up at Sylvan. She told me that we mis-represented our offer, it was only supposed to be for three weeks. Duh, when we picked Addison up we had no idea what the testing would reveal. We had told everyone that this was an open ended offer, for as long as it took or for as long as Sylvan was beneficial.

I guess it is to bad we couldn't get Addison a "catch up vaccination".

While Addie, Meme and I packed her up, we talked about Sylvan. Addison is very disappointed about not getting to go. It is a shame. The pre-paid tuition is not transferable between Sylvan centers because they are independently owned franchises.

Makai's whole life is just a series of bailing out. I don't know that she has ever seen anything to the end. Most parents want their children to have it better than they did. Obviously Makai does not. Makai began telling me how we don't have a relationship (she and I), and how I only have a relationship with one child out of the three. I asked her which child that would be and she said Trc. Excuse me, but if you include Trc, that would be out of the four children. Kind of like her three week visit for Addison was only eighteen days.

I told Makai how disappointed I was, that this is one more bad decision in a life filled with bad decisions. I can think back to the one year she lived with Krl and I, and a talk I had with Makai about values and morals and how people from different social, economic backgrounds have different values and morals and how you can help someone up, but more times than not, they drag you down. She has made poor life decisions, with men and money.

Makai told me how I hadn't been there for her. Excuse me, but I refuse to enable her in her bad decisions. Of course I feel that she is probably referring to giving her monetary aid. I learned early on from making apartment deposits and buying garage sale stuff for her and Garry, that they never honored an obligation. When they were struggling so hard, I got both of them on at the family business. When she lost her job due to downsizing, we had her come to Abilene to stay with us as she searched for a job, and Krl kept Addison. Later, Garry quit the family business to go to work for a competitor for less money.

I'll never forget when she became pregnant and she ran off to live with Garry's family on the base and she tried to steal Krl's car. We should have filed on her then.

Addison is the only good thing Makai has ever done, and since Addison's birth her mother has tried to bring her down.

Makai has made a conscious decision that she wants to be white trash. This just proves the old adage that you can't wrestle a pig without getting it on you. When you are a twenty-eight year old mother of a nine year old, you don't parade around with hickeys. You don't parade around your "live in" in front of your child, you don't actively shop for another boy friend while your current one is in the joint because his parole was revoked. You don't let "your live in" walk naked around the house in front of your child and her friend. If there is a court order preventing him from seeing his kids you can bet there is a good reason. (I just hope the July Tom Green Grand jury is presented this case).

I have made the decision that Addison would be better off in foster care or any where, than she is with her mother. So that being said, I am going to devote all my efforts to breaking Makai financially, mentally and emotionally. If she wants to live like a street walker slut, she can live on the street. I'll be very surprised if she and Scott both don't end up in the joint. She is under investigation for bankruptcy fraud, and he is probably going to be indicted for indecency with a child, multiple counts.

I am not giving up on Addison. I think she is rescue-able, but she needs to be out of where she is at, quickly.

When Addison was in their car, I went back into the house. This was not a pleasant occurence. After a short while, the doorbell rang. I went to the door and it was Officer Farmer, the policeman. He thanked me for the way I handled the situation and asked me about Makai and Scott. He told me he didn't like Scott at all and he was looking for some reason to lock him up. He said Scott was a smart alec, and he had just hoped he would do something stupid because he wouldn't have filed a misdemeanor, he would have filed felony charges. Officer Farmer continued, telling me that he couldn't believe Makai would deny her child an opportunity like we were offering her. He wanted a little information about them for his report, and he was putting their license plate number and car description on a watch list should it enter Abilene again. He also told me if they showed back up, to not interact with them, just call the PD.

I had a day!

FATHER, strike down the infidels. Watch over and keep Addison. Help us to find the best solution to her situation.