Thank you! I will look into it immediately. DH and I are just "getting" that when we've been told, "Disengage from her!", "Ignore her!", "Don't respond to her!", it means just that. She sends these inflaming texts but we are still confused about when to respond and when it's just a game of hers. We are also kind of afraid of what she might try- if we don't respond to, say, a text she sent earlier about how awful I am because I expect her boys to eat what I serve here......can she then bring that up in court (assuming that someday it will eventually go to court, after years of threats and near-misses) as us not responding to something directly to do with the boys??? I think she just wants to engage us, and we've been feeding her fire. It's hard to stop getting pissed off at her every antic- it has become habitual.

Ok. Thank you all. Particularly poignant to me today are the "vomit on paper" correspondence and the advice from Distorted Reality about ignoring her baiting insults. She is full of them! But at what point do her insults about me (that she always sends in e-mails, texts, and voicemails) become harrassing behavior for DH and is there a necessity to put a stop to it? Last year, DH had an order of protection granted against her because she was sending obscenity-laced texts constantly, leaving awful vms, etc...which he very foolishly had lifted because he wanted to believe her when she said that she would stop the behavior. Maybe it was quantity, not content of the texts? What about if she is telling other people (attorneys, YMCA employees, doctor and his assistants) lies about me? Are there things that DH *should* get involved with? Or am I being dense as you tell me to really, just keep to things about the boys? For instance, last week my attorney sent hers a letter telling her to knock this stuff off (after she had accused me of overstepping my "stepmother's rights" (I know there are none) by trying to have the boys' medical records transferred- which I never did). Last night after getting her boys back after almost a week of DH's custody time, she sent two inflammatory texts to DH, calling me names and saying that the boys had told her that I say that they need to eat healthy (sic) before they go back to her house because all she feeds them is junk. I never said that! DH and I do frequently say, "Mom's house, Mom's rules" about food, as they are pretty picky eaters, and that they are permitted to eat a lot of junk at her house, but I never said that they need to eat healthfully here before they go back with her- stockpiling nutrition? And they may have told her such a thing but obviously that's something we need to address with them.

Please help me here regarding Steptalk etiquette- is it appropriate for me to keep responding or should I ask if I can send messages off-list from this point? I appreciate your help and want to be respectful. Thank you for the names of books. Cheesed, I am off to search for that Braiker book. What happened with your vacation? I've been curious!

Ok- just ordered the Braiker book at Borders. Got a great deal with my rewards card- am hoping to really be able to use it. I can't say too much about what has been happening the last couple days because we are definitely going to end up in court this time. This woman is so pathetic and scary all at the same time- she totally makes it up as she goes along, and this is where I get scared. DH and I have taken the high road and given in to her demands, and to no avail. We finally stood up last night and she is raging. The threats, the stuff she has said she's putting in her new petition- all untrue, with so much detail of what really happened left out. I am going to do my homework that you've all suggested, and combined with a lil bit of therapy, I should be able to keep it together through this in order to be a good wife to DH, a good mom to DS and DD, and a good stepmom to SSs....