a long morning.

Another court hearing yesterday! Good times, good times.

After June's Crabby Judge Adventure, I was expecting Crabby Judge 2.0, and my own hope was to direct her crabbiness where it belongs, at Angry Biodad (ABD), who keeps pulling fun stunts that dodge her orders. Crabbiness levels were surprisingly low, though, and I think were helped by a couple of attorney appearances: one new associate, who came charging hard at the judge out of the gate, and immediately wished he hadn't, turning red with embarrassment as his aggressive claims fell apart like wet tissue paper. This was followed by a guy who:

• looks like he's in his mid-70s,
• talks like an immigrant from some long-ago part of the Northeast,
• seems like maybe he focuses on jury trials, because he was standing up and gesticulating and emphasizing a lot, and
• wore a bright emerald green blazer, and the biggest cuff links I have ever seen: disks over an inch across.

Hard not for him to be the highlight of everyone's day.

From the sanity-preserving low expectations of this just being a continuous holding action until J turns 18, the outcome of yesterday was A+: the previous interim order continues (J chooses where he lives and who he talks to) and ABD's primary shenanigans for dodging previous orders are kneecapped. He can now see the harbingers of doom on the horizon, which he's worked so hard to avoid:

• The many medical and psychological professionals who have gotten to know J, and, to their misfortune, ABD, will be interviewed and their opinions collated for the judge.
• He has to keep payments current with the court-appointed medical arbitrator who isn't allowed to work unless both parents are paid up (thus letting him continue to veto medical care simply by declining to write a check).

While it's not always a comfort, I am always grateful that he's not intelligent, focused, or wealthy; he's sort of the Ford Pinto of narcissists. His contribution to the world has been purely genetic, and whatever his own original potential, he now lives in that far realm of fantasy where he reads things on the Internet and uses that lofty education to assess the medical expertise of people who teach in multiple departments at Stanford Medical School while running world-class clinics.

The closest he comes to personal growth is learning from an occasional support group that in repairing his relationship with J, spending months telling J he should feel bad for how much he's been hurting ABD's feelings may have been counter-productive. I'm quite sure he doesn't understand why that should be the case. He's a simulacrum, the most shallow imitation of an adult human; a little like Pinocchio, if Pinocchio told the Blue Fairy to fuck off because he was already a real boy, thank you very much, and God, if it isn't just like a fucking fairy to try and tell you who you are.

(You may think I'm exaggerating, but one of the final straws for J was ABD going on a bender of anti-feminist ranting; a standard feature of Men's Rights Activism, which I promise is far worse than you're imagining, and probably gave him the referral to his scumbag lawyer who specializes in representing domestic abusers.)

Onward to the next seven weeks, then. It goes how it goes.