Fun and Frolic With Long-Term Love

Ugh, how dare her birth father suddenly pop into your life and try to tell you how to parent her! She sounds like a great kid, without any of his input in all this time - what an ass!

About the house-hunting:
There's a very informative website for researching any area of the US. I highly recommend their forum where you can ask a gazillion questions about every city, town, and village in a particular area you're interested in. they have a forum for each state, and most of those have sub-forums for counties and/or major cities. People will ask about crime rates, schools, housing costs, local laws, commuting, jobs, shopping, entertainment, conservative vs liberal values, demographics, attitudes toward alternative lifestyles, curb appeal, gasoline prices, and any other thing you can think of. You can even ask about specific neighborhoods. And you get some colorful and opinionated responses!

Their forum is here (you need to join/login to post): http://www.city-data.com/forum/ and the main site is here: http://www.city-data.com/. The main site is where they have gathered demographic information, but the forums are where all the members let their opinions fly!
 
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I actually used that website when we relocated from New York to Maryland! Thanks for the reminder!

Birthdad messaged me the next morning, saying he felt he owed me an apology, that he felt that I had obviously done a wonderful job raising his daughter. I think he was a bit flabbergasted that I had two husbands. Honestly, I didn't really take it personally, and I saw his remarks more along the lines of being confused about how that might work. I still have him framed as a racist and a homophobe, however, and I have no problem telling him to cut that shit out if he spouts off about it at all. From my experience with my older two children though, it always is best for me to let birthfamily comments slide off and let the kids decide how to proceed. I share all information with the kids, and they can do with it as they want. I trust that I raised them right, and that they will make good decisions. Complaining about their biological people can make them feel like they need to choose sides, or worse, feel bad about themselves, for being genetically linked to a jerkface. So far, things have worked themselves out, so I figure I will handle this situation the same way.
 
That sounds like a good way to handle the situation to me.
 
I did a LOT of reading and research today about fornication, bigamy, cohabitation and adultery laws in the US. Honestly, I am left with just a handful of states that I feel comfortable setting up my household in, long term.

These states are: Arizona, California, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, Washington DC.

This morning I was very excited about Ohio, but further reading shows that both Ohio has a bigamy cohabitation law. We could live there, but we'd have to have separate residences to stay 100% free from legal issues. I suppose we could look at buying a duplex and each of my husbands could live in half. I talked about why I wasn't excited about that in an earlier post. I am not ready to break up my home to do that.

Pennsylvania is also out - they have a "purported" clause in their bigamy law. If you seem or appear to be bigamous, you can be prosecuted. So we'd have to be on the down low, and that is not something I want to be. I have worked too hard to be up front about my loves, and trying to be secretive is not what I want to go back to doing.

None of the states I listed are ones that I am particularly enthusiastic about staying in permanently. We looked at New Mexico previously, but that was when we were discussing a move of a year or so, not purchasing to put down roots.

This is me whining about how laws for poly people suck ass!!!!!! Still, I suppose 11 options are better than no options.

Here are a couple of the websites I used to research:

http://non-monodiscourse.blogspot.com/2011/09/non-monogamous-families-and-law-part-1.html

http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/polygamy/

Note that the second is out-of-date on several entries, so researching thoroughly is important. The first website is more recent, but I did look up a lot of the state statutes myself, to make sure things hadn't changed, or to get more clarity.
 
I've broken this up into a second post now, because the rest of what I want to type is all speculation and more stream-of-consciousness stuff that I am trying to sort in my own mind so I can share it later with my guys.

I've done a lot of budgeting today and future planning of what income we will need to make our dreams come true...whatever those dreams end up being! When my son and daughter move out over the next few years, we will see a significant drop in income, as my son pays rent and we are still receiving my daughter's adoption subsidy. Obviously my son will be paying rent elsewhere, and we plan to forward my daughter her subsidy so she can rent her own apartment while in college. She'll still be a dependent, coming home on breaks and such, but that subsidy is going to be spent on her college costs, so I am not including it in the budget once that happens. And, as it so happens, the current annual cost of paying rent is $300 different from those two income sources. They are both right around $20,000 a year.

So, yeah. We're going to take a hit when that changes! Still, it isn't as bad as it could be - DarkKnight's student loan payment will be completed by then, and obviously we will have lower utility bills - including cell phones. The other thing too is that I spend a ton of money on homeschooling and educational trips for my daughter, and that will all go away too. When I do a rough run of the numbers, we will have to drop rent/mortgage cost by $500 to keep all things equal - meaning DarkKnight and PunkRock keep working and contributing to the household at the current rate. I had anticipated dropping it by $500, so that looks good. We knew we would be moving from this rental house because of the drop in income, plus of course, we won't need such a large house anymore.

If we buy a bottom-basement super-cheap foreclosure (around $10,000 cash) then our housing cost becomes zero. (Obviously we would have taxes and insurance, etc. I am guessing that would be around $300 a month, but I think I can offset that by changes elsewhere in our budget, so I am using zero here for simplicity's sake. I've owned a house before, so I feel safe at the moment using these hypothetical numbers.) The amount then we would have put toward rent/mortgage becomes our renovation budget.

However, if we want PunkRock to quit his job and stay at home to do repairs on a foreclosed house that we purchase together, this reno budget shrinks too much. It does no help at all for him to stay home to work on the house if we can't afford to buy the materials to fix it. If he works part time, the reno budget is a bit better.

All of this is numbers run without me working. That's because I have no idea what I will be doing in two years. That's something we've barely talked about. If I were to get a minimum wage job full time, then we're ok with PunkRock staying home. We'd both be just flip-flopping our current earning roles. If we both work part-time, then we're still ok. However, I am not going to be happy in a minimum wage role. I have too much education to punch a clock at a dead end job. However, it might make sense to do that, if we are just trying to get the house in order first. If I get involved full time with something I am passionate about, then I will have too much stress with the household too. I know this about myself!

We still all have the desire to open a cat sanctuary. We talk about that often. Before we were discussing buying a foreclosure, we were going to go rent a house in a shitty area and bank every dollar I made at a dead end job for two years, to further that goal, while DarkKnight and PunkRock kept the same wages they have now. Now I am wondering if that was ever feasible. I mean, the banking the income was, but the amount I wanted to save to get a good down payment on property was never really figured out on paper.

Right now the plan is to take a loan from DarkKnight's 401k to buy the foreclosed house. If we can get some land and an old farmhouse, that would be perfect. Inner city, not so much. I could then work fulltime to support the reno and PunkRock fixing the house, and/or PunkRock and I could both work part time to support the reno. After the reno is done, PunkRock would return to working full time, and I could then run the cat sanctuary full time at an estimated somewhat loss and be ok.

Lots of things to think about. Lots of things to do to get these estimates down into hard numbers. I think we'll have a family meeting tonight to discuss locations, foreclosures, budgets, dreams and plans.
 
I consulted my lawyer today....Bigamy is illegal in every state in the US. A lot of states have a anti cohabitation laws also.

The only time people get prosecuted is when a spouse gets duped. You are accepting welfare benefits. Commit financial fraud. Or you piss off someone with a vendetta.
For example you go on national TV like the sister wives and throw your lifestyle out there to be judged.

The justice system has bigger fish to fry than us.

We are out to the world here in PA. Have been for years. No one gives a crap. The local government could care less. My neighbor is a cop and knows. Murfs childhood friend is a state trooper. He is poly and out.
 
This is true. A lot depends on how the states define bigamy. Most consider it the LEGAL taking of multiple spouses - claiming benefits, etc. They don't give a shit about what you do otherwise. However, I am not willing to take the risk. In Maryland, having just a ceremony - without the legal paperwork - meets the definition of bigamy. So PunkRock and I went and had a ceremony elsewhere. In states we would consider moving in to, we would be guilty of bigamy for cohabitating. There are too many assholes in the world. I want to be without even the threat of drama. I don't intend to be on TV, or in any more tabloids. Dr. Phil's people keep emailing us but we are done. It is bullshit, regardless of how minuscule the threat is. The threat is still there. You annoy someone, they complain, stuff escalates. I am not going to spend my life worrying about if the life I am building is going to come crashing down someday because of a random jerkface. If those states don't want to update their laws, then we will avoid them and build our lives elsewhere.

I am not a legal bigamist, and that is what would matter in the places we will consider. Other people's risk points are not the same as mine. I wish I was braver, but this is where I have to make a choice.

PunkRock, DarkKnight and I spent an hour after dinner discussing our options. We agreed to move our timeline forward. We are going to research now, the 11 states where we can legally not be threatened by the law. Actually, we each chose 1 to cut - DarkKnight chose South Dakota, I chose California and PunkRock chose DC. So those have been eliminated from consideration. We also each chose 3 as first rate favorites - we have a lot to read up on, so these 3 states will be the first ones to get attention - Indiana, Louisiana and Iowa.

The plan now is to cut back our budget tighter to throw an additional $100 a pay period toward the existing 401(k) loan. That way we can borrow a larger amount when it comes time to purchase our home. We decided to not find a rental when my son and daughter move out, but to definitely purchase a foreclosed home then. So, this Summer and Fall, we will narrow down the states, and the areas within those states to concentrate on to see which ones gain our interest. Beginning in the Spring, we will visit some of those areas, and see how they are in person. When we get it narrowed down, we will try to get a real estate agent from that area to help us purchase a property. Because buying a foreclosure can be nerve wracking, we will have to have some money for visiting and vetting some of the homes, and we hope to start trying next Fall - 2016 - in case it takes a while to find one that meets our specifications.

It's exciting and scary all at the same time.

I wish I had more resources to throw at this right now, but I have a trip to Nepal to plan for my youngest, and classes to prep for when I start back teaching later this month. I hope to spend a chunk of time tomorrow reading about cities we might consider though. When I say "we" are researching, I mean me. :) I will put together a report to share with my guys again and we will make a group decision. So far we have all been on the same page and we trust each other to make good choices, and I hope this continues!
 
This morning I spent time working on the move research. The first thing I did was to start a spreadsheet with the 8 states we are considering on it, and created a table to compare the cost of living index, median household income, median home price, the percentage of people living below the poverty level, the median age, and the unemployment rate. Oh, and the median rental price. Maryland came up looking like butt - seriously high in all the columns we didn't want high. Oh course, we knew that! I realize that all of this information can vary greatly by county, but this is my starting point.

I printed out maps for each state - one showing counties, the other showing major cities, roadways and water features. I also did a search on Zillow.com and got a listing total for houses that are at auction or for sale in our price range, with more than 3 bedrooms. For some states - like Indiana - the number is in 3 figures, but in quite a few, it is only 10 or 30 properties. Of course, these numbers will change when we are seriously looking to buy, but right now I wanted to get a number of what to expect as options. I like Zillow because it gives an estimate of how much they think the auction property will actually sell for, so we will know whether it is actually worth paying attention to or not.
 
How does New Mexico fare in your spreadsheet? Just curious, 'cause I spent a week's vacay there (northern part of state); it's beautiful and people I met seemed pretty open-minded. I was mostly in Abiquiu, and briefly in Santa Fe, but I know I want to go back again sometime and check out Taos.
 
I just have a basic list.

New Mexico -

Cost of living index 87.9
Median Household Income $41,963
Median House value $159,000
Median Rent $618
Residents below poverty level 22%
Unemployment 6.8%
Median Age 36.6

Today I hope to have time to flush out the state of Indiana - identify cities of interest, their crime rates and housing stats, similar to above. The state numbers gave me a starting point, but what is going to matter to me is specific areas.

My brother and his girlfriend are at the hospital, about to have a baby! I wish I were in NY right now, but I am going to have to settle to traveling there later in the month. It's a bummer, but I am looking forward to meeting my new niece!

My best friend in NY is back on OKCupid, so I am about to reactivate my account there this morning. I'm not looking to date anyone, just to help her out. She wants my opinion. I'm GreenPepper77 there.
 
Bluebird, I live in one of the states you're researching... and my partner, Blue, is from another one. We've both lived in multiple counties within the two states. If you want any information from people who've lived in those states, pm me. I prefer not to post which ones here.
 
For sure! Right now I am researching Indiana like crazy, so if anyone reading this has insight on that state, please message me!
 
Things have been up and down around here.

I was way, way down a few days ago. I had spent some time out and about with a friend, and when I returned home, I found I had a text message from the head of my homeschool group asking me if I had seen the email. I was like, what email?! Apparently, one of the members - the mother of my son's best friend - had gone off the deep end and completely and totally trash talked me on the email group. So around 100 people saw this message she had written, slamming me as a mother. I was confused, horrified and humiliated, all at once.

Basically, her son has the same disability as my son. They are basically each other's only friend. Her son is around 19, and my son is 26. Anyway, he comes over to hang out once or twice a week, and he's attended my son's birthday parties the last 3 years. The email was written about my son's birthday party a week or so ago.

She said I should be ashamed of myself, that we didn't even buy my son a birthday card, and that I had told him that maybe next year we could afford candles for his cupcake. And that I had invited my own friends to his party, and my son didn't even know them. Oh, and that she wanted everyone to know that my son had to walk home from work everyday at 10 pm, because I didn't want to pick him up.

This left me flabbergasted, because absolutely none of it was true. The fact that she should have called me before posting such a tirade notwithstanding, I feel if you are going to flip out, at least verify what you are flipping out about!

Several people had responded saying basically, WTF why am I getting this kind of trash in my inbox? The homeschool leader had deleted it back at the root source, but everyone who had opened it already, had it.

Sigh. I immediately wrote a rebuttal. My son didn't get a card because we gave him a laptop with a case for his birthday. He can't read cursive handwriting and cards end up in the trash the next day anyway. He had candles on his birthday cupcakes - which were ice cream cupcakes from Cold Stone Creamery, that I spent $20 on alone. The way we do candles for birthdays is that we have a drawer full of the big number candles, and the celebrated person picks what age they want to be that year. My son chose to be 21. I was 4 last year on my birthday. So yeah, he had candles. The only people at his party were my daughter, both my husbands, me, my son, this one friend he invited and two members of his trivia team that he invited. I had to ask him the day of his party who was even coming - I hadn't invited anyone at all. Actually, 3 people were more than I expected, and I had to go out and buy more food. I paid around $100 for a BBQ - we had hamburgers, hot dogs, shrimp, beans, and a few different salads that I made at home.

So yeah, it wasn't like we didn't celebrate. Also, my son is 26. TWENTY SIX. I don't know many moms that still buy all this crap for their grown children! So I really resented that this lady was telling me I didn't do anything at all, when I think I do more than most.

Oh, and I made sure to say that my son actually has his own car, and a driver's license, and his work schedule is always 9 am to 2 pm, so he doesn't walk home at 10 pm. That actually did happen a year ago, because he didn't have a car then. He had picked up an extra shift and didn't tell anyone, and we were out that night. So when he called, no one was there, and he walked. We told him to knock that shit off.

So yeah. Everything she said was completely untrue and her words were over the top. After her initial email was deleted, she wrote another one, saying she wasn't really sorry, because she felt everyone had the right to know how I treat my "kids."

Yeah, she added parentheses around the word kids. My children are all adopted. That was pretty fucking terrible, in my opinion.

Of course, my response email was also deleted, but everyone who had actually opened and read the first, received mine. And the response privately was overwhelmingly positive. Everyone thinks the lady is completely off her rocker. Which she is. Holy crap. I really have no idea what prompted this. Her son must have told her things, but none of them were true. Part of the disability is misreading social situations, but damn.

Apparently she is now on moderated status and if it happens again, they will block her. I guess she has done this on two different other occasions in the past, to different people.

I am sad though, because a simple phone call would have cleared this up really quick. Now she looks crazy. It made me so upset and I didn't sleep at all that night, because I was so out of sorts. I am better now, and I am sure that the more time passes, I will laugh at this. But she has definitely lost all respect from me, and from most people in the group. She came off looking unhinged.

So anyway, I had that drama going on, and I really didn't even have any clue why!

At the same time, my brother's baby was born. She is fucking gorgeous and I am so sad that I am probably not going to be able to go up to NY to see her anytime soon. The best thing is that she was born on our other brother's birthday, and he passed away a few decades ago. It feels like cosmic karmic balancing, if that makes sense.

I have felt lots of love from both my husbands, and both were supportive when I was having difficulties from the drama. DarkKnight took me out to lunch, and bought me flowers, and then the 3 of us went out for ice cream. Tonight, the 3 of us went to dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. (My youngest daughter went to the One Direction concert yesterday and won't be home until tomorrow.)

The relocation research is slowly moving forward. I spent half a day reading about Evansville, Indiana, and we figure now that we won't be moving there. We are living the Columbus, Indiana area better, but we need more information. I think the rest of that state is going to have too much snow for me to consider anyplace else. We will see, I guess.
 
I am curious why the west coast did not make your cut. I have the impression CA, OR and WA are all pretty poly friendly, at least the urban areas, and the climates are mostly mild.

Leetah
 
Ah, the West Coast. :)

As far as poly laws go, both Oregon and Washington are great if you and everyone in your poly network are unmarried - there are no fornication laws, cohabitation restrictions or common law marriage. Oregon was scratched out however, because it has a purportation clause with their bigamy law - there's a whole list of things that can get you in big trouble, just for being rumored a bigamist: solicitation, conspiracy, attempt. They can hit you with a few different charges, if they wanted to do so. Of course, if you aren't married to anyone, this isn't an issue. It's not very likely you'd be charged anyway, but the laws exist and if you were out and open, they could do it if they wished. And it's both a lengthy jail sentence and over $100,000 in fines. For Washington state, the law also has a purportation clause - "A person is guilty of bigamy if he or she intentionally marries or purports to marry another person when either person has a living spouse." It's a class C felony.

California is the most friendly, and it did make our final list of 11 states to consider. It has no fornication laws, no cohabitation restriction or common law marriage. It's bigamy statute is only applicable if you legally marry more than one person. So, everything is great there. We decided against California for different reasons. I used my preemptive strike against it because 1-it is very far away from our extended family, 2-the cost of living is not cheaper than any of the other locations we are considering, in fact it is much, much higher, 3-the drought, 4-proximity and possibility of natural disasters including mudslides, earthquakes and fires, 5-the time zone, as DarkKnight would have to shift his current schedule to local time there and in that case, he would be working 4 am until noon! He couldn't function that way. Truly though, I would love to live in the nicer sections, but it really is just unaffordable, and we are looking to lower costs significantly across the board.
 
We have all agreed to nix everything north of Indianapolis, in Indiana, due to the weather. So my research on that state is coming to a close, but things are looking good for the Columbus, IN area. Next I am going to concentrate on Iowa.

Today though, for the most part, I am going to be working on printing and finishing up curriculum for my Biology class that starts in a couple of weeks. Tons of fun here folks. :)
 
I had a few minutes tonight to look more at Iowa, and I am put off that so much of it is way North of where we are now in Maryland. Lots of my friends who live there are telling me the winters are harsh. That is a big HELL NO. I am still willing to look at Fort Madison, which is the dangly bit. That is just about an hour north. Still, I need to do some reading and looking closely at the climate. I am afraid Nebraska may end up getting cut due to snowfall too, but I have looked at that even less so far.

I am going tomorrow to buy my daughter's plane ticket to Nepal. We met with a travel agent on Tuesday, and it looks as if it'll cost around $1200 round trip. I will pay that tomorrow, and then I have to pay the actual program fee to the volunteer agency in September, and that's another $1000. Goodbye money, but I think it is SOOOOO very worth it for my daughter to have this experience.

What else? There is so much going on, it is hard to focus. Earlier this week was crazy because we found out it would be possible for my daughter to start trade school a year early, so she had to decide whether to start now, at the same time finishing up her senior year, or skip out and keep things as planned. If she started school, she'd miss her trip to Nepal. She decided to continue as planned and go to Nepal.

OH! The cool thing about her plane ticket is that I did not need to purchase travel insurance - we can cancel up to 3 hours before the flight leaves with only a $100 fee, and everything else is refunded. After that window, it's a $200 fee for no shows. So, I am really psyched about that, just in case.
 
My bestie in NY asked me to reopen my OKCupid account recently to help her with opinions on guys. I've done this before, so no worries. I updated my profile and the first sentences say that I am on hold until October for dating and that I am online now to only help a friend. The last sentence of my profile still says that I don't ever like one word responses and they'll be ignored.

You know without me saying that I am not happy with the number of "hi" and "hello" emails I've received since then!

Sigh.

Besides that, there have been some rather intelligent openers, but I have ignored them all since I am not freaking dating right now.

Anyway, that said, someone I had been hitting it off with in February messaged me, saying he understands I am on hold but that he really liked our conversations previously, so to think of him if I wouldn't mind, in October. I went back and read all of our old correspondence and it made me feel pretty shitty. We had hit it off really well and we seemed to match up awesome. He lives like 20 minutes away. I stopped talking to him when my father passed, and he was really respectful of my space. Anyway, I have messaged back and forth with him a bit now, and he still seems really awesome. I told both DarkKnight and PunkRock that we were messaging, so no worries there. Anyway, he sent me his phone number and email this morning, so we could text elsewhere than OKC. I messaged him back, again saying I was not looking to date, but if I were, he'd be first in line. I also told him I wasn't comfortable with texting right now because of that.

I am going to talk to both of my guys tonight about it.

I am also not sure if I posted about this, but a guy I used to date responded to a post on Facebook about OKC emails. He is still interested in me. I feel really bad about this, because I was seeing him often back when I met PunkRock, but then PunkRock was it for me. I liked the guy just fine, we had tons in common, but it was just no comparison. I can't say I wouldn't be interested in dating him again. Even if we weren't sexual, he's pretty great and I honestly think he's looking more for affectionate cuddles and an activity partner.

I am not dating right now though. I actually kind of resent my friend for getting me back on OKC. My life is crazy busy. I don't have time to date anyone new.

When I write that, it seems like I am trying to convince myself. sigh.
 
After I wrote my previous entry, I suddenly got super sick. I was pukey feeling, I had a headache, felt achy, warm, everything was awful. I had one of those poops that feel like everything that is evil is leaving your body in an agonizing toxic river.

DarkKnight took the rest of the day off of work and went with my daughter to purchase her plane ticket to Nepal, and ran some other errands. First he made me tea, hooked me up with some medicine and told me to turn on the cat purring white noise app.

I was still miserable when PunkRock came home an hour or so later, so he stripped down and snuggled me, bringing our cat Gus in to the bedroom too.

I felt so very lucky to have such wonderful guys to take care of me when I was feeling so shitty.
 
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