Life with three babies

I stayed home and took care of the kids and house. The twins were actually quite easy to care for. They were happy just being together. They could sit on the floor together and be happy without demanding all my attention like a single baby demands. True there were a lot of diapers and baths and things like that. My nipples got a bit sore since I didn't have any milk. No, Sue nursed them for well over a year. I still ran the word processing business while Sue did the keying in of data.

My basic philosophy of raising kids was to talk to them a lot, read a lot, play a lot with them, stimulate them with music and new experiences and get them outdoors playing and exercising as much as possible in a healthy social environment. We got along fine. I even started to watch other babies with mine. I ended up with six babies and got a daycare license. We moved the word processing business to an office and I did daycare out of the house. Sue ran the word processing business herself now. Her and I were not getting along.

When Sue hit bottom using her drugs and alcohol I separated from her. I wanted to share living arrangements so that the kids could still have both parents closely involved in their lives. I thought we could still be friends and parents but have our own separate personal lives. It did not work out that way. One day I came into the bedroom and I found the twins playing with a big bag of drugs. I realized then that having Sue around the house was actually a danger to the kids. We needed to split up. I tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement but Sue turned to dirty tricks. She actually told me what she was going to do and that there was nothing I could do to stop her or defend myself. She told me the courts would totally back her up and fuck me over. She was right.

Sue charged me with sexually abusing my kids. I was arrested and thrown in jail. She was awarded custody of the kids. She pulled a whole lot of other dirty lies out of a hat and filed court papers that made me look like I was a monster of some sort. She claimed I beat her and the kids and sexually abused them and lots of others too. I don't know how she came up with her dirty tricks but she came up with a long list. I had to have three trials to defend myself against just the sexual abuse charges. Here's the kicker, Sue had me taking the kids while I was in trial because she didn't want them. My attorney would not allow this information into court. She told me it was best for the kids if we just kept quiet about the fact that I had the kids. If the court found out they would put the kids in foster care and that would be worse for them. So during the day Sue testified in court about how terrible I was and then after court she delivered the kids to me with an evil grin. I eventually won all three court cases but then I still lost my kids on paper because to disrupt their current care schedule would be too hard on the kids according to the court. I could not point out that I had the kids the whole time and Sue was given custody with me having fifty percent visitation rights. All I can say is the family law courts in this country are so screwed up that everybody involved with them loses. My kids were the biggest losers here. The old saying "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" sure seemed to fit this case.

I was never able to regain my good name after being accused of being a child molester. All my friends were afraid to let me watch their kids after this "just in case" they said even though they "knew" I was innocent as charged. Even my family still thinks I am a child molester. Sue has never apologized for being so evil. Now as adults my kids know the whole story and they resent her abuse but such is life. It is over for everybody but me. I will always be the child molester in people's minds. I will never forgive her for that. I don't dwell on it but it still affects my life every day. I died during this period of my life. I have never recovered. Life ever since has been just going through the motions for me. I have never been able to love anything or anyone ever since. This is merely a short synopsis of the whole event. It was way worse than this short blurb could ever describe. I just don't want to relive the whole thing by putting it all down on paper.

In the end I had a house a half a block away from Sue and the kids spent about half the time at each house for the rest of their childhoods. I had a court fight and regained my childcare license and did childcare again. I found some great kids in my group and some great parents. I did not have the same love to share that I had before all the court drama but I managed to fake it pretty well.

I also had another baby. I started to go out with another childcare provider that I met at the park while I was watching my kids there. She got pregnant and we had the baby who was born at home during all my trials. So I now had four kids. The trip to South America would have to wait a bit longer now.

Australia

When I first arrived in Australia I weighed in at only 125 pounds. I was very thin but very fit. I got a lot of exercise because I was very active. Every chance I got I went swimming or skin diving. I played football, rugby and cricket but could not get into the pace or lack there of for cricket. I walked a lot and ran for exercise. I have always loved just running. Some of my friends and I had regular wrestling matches which I still loved to do. I also got lots of sexercise.

I wanted to gain weight so I started to eat. Breakfast was always huge. Steak and eggs with potatoes and toast with promite on it was a typical daily meal. I threw in some bacon or sausages sometimes along with french toast or four egg omelets with the kitchen sink thrown in them. For lunch I ate sandwiches stacked up with lots of meats and cheeses from a nearby deli most days or Chinese food. I baked bread often, usually whole wheat using Adelle Davis's recipe. Dinner was my favorite meal of the day. I cooked Mexican food like chili and burritos or some other taco or enchilada dish a couple times a week but we went out for dinner more often then we ate in. I also snacked relentlessly. I drank a lot of beer and hard cider too. My caloric intake must have been close to 8000 a day and it still took me a year to get my weight up to a trim 140 pounds. After almost two years of eating like this I approached 160 pounds and I slowed down my eating. I was still very thin and fit at 160 pounds.

Men seem to lose weight when they travel and women seem to gain weight. I don't know why that is but it sure seems to be the case from everybody I knew that did a lot of traveling. I tried to maintain my weight as I traveled but after my fifty pound drop in weight when I got so sick from malaria in Ethiopia it was very tough for me to just maintain to say nothing about gaining weight. I did not get back up to the weight I was before I got sick in Ethiopia until over six years later. Today I am a tad overweight but only about 10 pounds. Compared to most Americans I am down right skinny.

I did have a malaria relapse when I was living in Sydney. I just suddenly got a very high fever and started to shake and sweat with diarrhea to make sure I really felt like crap. I went to the hospital and they told me I had malaria. I did not know that malaria stays in your system for around five years and can relapse anytime your general health gets weak. They gave me chloroquine or some other antimalaria drug and I recovered in a few days. I was always careful to stay healthy after that attack.

After we sold the bikini business we went back up to Sydney for a short while. I had to finish my divorce with Kirsten before I left. That went without a hitch. The only problem was that Kirsten turned against me big time as we were splitting up. I did not understand her animosity. I wanted to be friends with her and she just wanted to hate me for some reason. When she burned up all my pictures of our travels I was extremely depressed by her behavior. I just don't get why people can't split up and still be friends. I know the system forces animosity the way it is so cold but people should be able to get over that. I ended up losing contact with her over the years which still disappoints me. I would still like to find her again and see if we could be friends again. We were best friends for so long I still miss her.

Finally all the loose ends were cleared up, like a visa to the U.S. for Sue, and we bought tickets from Sydney to San Francisco via New Zealand. We were going to stop off in New Zealand and see Sue's family and travel around the country for a bit before flying on to the States.