The real reason I want to leave the island is...

[OldRover]

...this.

http://www.gofundme.com/atixqs

Work is impossible to come by here in PR for someone like me, and my kids need help. I need to go stateside to find meaningful employment to support my children. I already have leads and one of them is practically a shoe-in. I have also already secured a place to live and transportation. Now, I just need to get there. That is why I'm selling off a lot of my stuff, and why I have set up a gofundme listing. I am not normally one for charity or handouts but things have become quite grim and I see no other way at this point.

[Dicer]

Sorry to hear about your situation, I'm stuck in a bit of a pinch myself, trying my best to pull out on my own until it sorts itself out.

If I manage to wriggle my way out I'll pitch something your way, nothing wrong with a little help now and again.


Best of luck to you.

[OldRover]

I hear ya... I've been trying to make it on my own for years now but it's come to the point where it's just not enough, and this island is a prison. The only way for me to help my kids is to leave and find work. Thanks for the consideration.

[PCEngineHell]

Admittedly, you will have to forgive me here, but I thought you were divorcing your wife and were in the transition of changing your gender, unless all of that was just some forum joke I misunderstood. Because of that this is just kinda catching me off guard...

 Anyway, given that you can get the kids better care and financial aid for their disabilities stateside, it just seems kinda bad that it is just you that would be wanting to head back here, with the intent of leaving your kids behind. It would be more beneficial for them to keep their father in their life, let alone less stressful for their mother to be stuck with the kids all alone considering their needs, and also to be moved to an area where they can get better care and assistance.

I think you should rethink your plan some.  There are alternatives, even if it means having to move everyone and live in a shelter for a few months. In many cities they have Hud or similar programs that allow you to get assistance for rent/housing after you have lived in the city for a few months, plus food stamps and other programs to help get you situated, let alone child care assistance for children with special needs. For the short term it would suck, but the long term benefits would outweigh that once you got on your feet.

Also, does your wife have any formal training of any kind that she could use to obtain work here also? Even little things like being bilingual and having basic computer skills can get you a data entry job these days at a call center.

This is all I mean if you and your wife are still together. If you are separated then I could somewhat understand the want to move and try to start anew, and being able to find new sources of income would be beneficial for your kids and for child support and all. Just sucks that you'd have to move so far away from your kids to do so. Visitation and what not will be hard to maintain given the distance involved.

[OldRover]

This has been thought out very thoroughly for a very long time and this is the conclusion we have reached and we both agree on. Yes, my wife and I did get divorced; that was March of 2013. She moved out, and I have had sole de facto custody since late May 2013. Over the past few months, she has been trying to be more present in their lives, including having the girls stay over a few nights at a time every other week or so.

It does suck a huge one that I will not be able to be with my children anymore. However, my ex has proven that she is more than capable of caring for them, and her gf can help as well. If anything, it is actually a better arrangement, since there will be two capable adults rather than just one ADHD-stricken adult (that would be me). I think something about her moving out made her grow up a lot and become more responsible. I have handled all of their needs up to this point almost entirely by myself; two people who are better at it than me will be able to provide a better emotional life for them, and with me in the states, I will be able to provide for them better financially. Their treatments have already started and it would be illogical to pull them away from them now.

My ex wife is also going to be looking for work and would have a much better chance of finding it than me on the island. There is a job fair coming up on July 2nd that she will be going to. We have both tried to make our respective businesses work but they just aren't working.

I decided against transition quite some time ago. No, it was not a joke... yes, I am transgender, but no, I don't need to go through surgery or even HRT to "prove it". I'm quite happy with myself the way I am.

Despite being divorced, I still maintain a very civil relationship with my ex wife and her gf. It is better for the kids that way. In fact, Lucas and I just got home from a visit to their house; left the girls there for the rest of the weekend and will pick them up when it's time for Lucas' next therapy session on Monday afternoon.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Damn, yeah, this is all catching me offguard!  Nod, I knew you were going thru hell, but now knowing more about it hits me hard.

[esteban]

I wish you the best, nod. The heart-wrenching part, of course, is the situation with the children. Godspeed. Godspeed. Now, I say that as an atheist, but with the purest of motives. 

[OldRover]

I normally do not talk much about the hardships of my own life because society expects me to just keep it bottled up inside, being technically male. That's why I generally only talk about the positive, or about external ills. Even though I am normally very discreet about these things, there comes a point where it has to come out. You can only wear the happy mask for so long before the ugly underneath pokes its way through. Even as such, this is only a single hole in that mask... there's way more beneath that I still won't talk about, as it's not relevant to the immediate issue at hand and would be perceived as 'whining' by society anyway.

[420GOAT]

I HAD NO FUCKEN IDEA AS TO WHAT GO FUND ME WAS, ROVER, i hope it gets better, but damn some of the fuckers on there want 28k for a wedding., really? like 3-5-or even 10k was not enough? fuck! fuck that!

[OldRover]

Figured I'd drop an update on what's going on.

The plan has changed since I started the gofundme campaign. I am taking Lucas with me to the states. There is a good school for him called Forestbrook Elementary that has an excellent program for autistic children. Also, I've already found work for when I get up there. The girls are still going to stay here with their mother and Luna will still be in therapy down here.

Thanks to some outside contributions, I almost have enough to make the move. Taking Lucas with me has introduced some additional expenses, the least of which being his travel cost (which isn't much, but it isn't free). Also, because I will be taking him, I will need full legal authority for him since his mother is staying here, so we will be visiting an attorney to work all that out. Again, not free, but not much either. Fortunately, the additional expenses of taking Lucas with me are not all that much higher than what I originally calculated.

I will gladly pay back any contributions. It won't happen right away but it will happen. I already have a job waiting for me and will be getting Lucas set up with some assistance as soon as we get there. We just need to get there.

Thank you very much to everyone who's helped so far and thank you in advance to anyone else who can help.

[bob]

Good luck. Im sure this whole process is stressful enough, aside from the $$$

[JoshTurboTrollX]

Good luck sir!  I hope to meet you guys in the not-too-distant future!!

[bob]

Check the bills with a marker, rover. That gala dude operates a counterfeit operation with some pretty convincing plates.

He terrorized the whole planet of Idea, for fucks sake... I wouldn't put anything past him.
..

I did it so your backdoor, paypal gift looked "cheap".
 

[OldRover]

Ugh... ok... so I go to set up the bank transfer and get all that ironed out, and they say that it will commence on August 6th. Perfect! So then I check the status, and I get this:

Scheduled: $966.15
$91.80 has been scheduled to withdraw on August 23, 2014.
$45.75 has been scheduled to withdraw on September 30, 2014.
$828.60 has been scheduled to withdraw on October 1, 2014.

Motherfucker says WHAT?! This was NOT mentioned ANYWHERE in the documentation! It VERY clearly states 2-5 days, NOT 2-5 MONTHS!

Anyway, I am trying to get this resolved with gofundmeeventually and wepaywhenwefeellikeit. I thought I had prepared for every possible contingency, but I guess I forgot all about the one that was supposed to be iron-clad. If I had known that this kind of bullshit would happen, I wouldn't have bothered with gofundme at all.

[Bernie]

They must earn interest.

[OldRover]

Well, I'll never use them again, that's for damn sure.

[bob]

i wonder if i can get the 900 back and resend as gift. but prob not.  i can check paypal this weekend when i get home.

[OldRover]

I have been in contact with gofundme and wepay and they have stated that the case is in review and the funds should become available shortly. We'll see.

[OldRover]

Just heard back from them again... they say that the case has been reviewed and the funds have been made available and will be auto-transferred. Fingers crossed.

[NightWolve]

In other news: this is exactly the kind of bullshit situation I hypothesized might happen with one of these "sure brah, we'll hold your money" type kickstarter spinoffs. Who actually browses those sites looking for something to donate to? Today's Internet makes it easy enough to set up a site with a PayPal link and float it out on the social medias.

I've wondered about the effectiveness of these Kickstarter spin-offs myself as well. That Kurt Kalata from HardcoreGaming 101 is making use of this rather new one, Patreon and seems to have gotten otherwise more funding than what PayPal alone could bring in... I guess it doesn't hurt to try, make a profile once, and whatever further marketing it can do for you and translate that into more donations, so be it, might as well...

[NightWolve]

I guess there is no risk to making a kickstarter/misc funding site campaign... but I'd promote them only as a footnote to the main social media marketing push.

Yeah, no risk or harm in doing it, so it just seems like why the hell not...

Likes like GameSack Joe knew about Patreon too: http://www.patreon.com/user?u=180904

[OldRover]

They pushed it back another day, so I wrote to ask wtf once again. They claim that it was because they had to investigate one of the donations to make sure it was "real".

Hi David,

Thank you for your follow-up and I apologize for the confusion or inconvenience. There was a donation that our team was reviewing to ensure was in fact a genuine donation that is safe for you to withdraw.

Your funds will process as scheduled for this evening to your bank account. Since the one donation that was being reviewed would have been part of the withdrawal, they needed to complete the review before allowing it to withdraw.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this e-mail and we would be happy to assist you!

Sincerely,

Christopher

[bob]

Jesus Christ, you try and help somebody...

[bob]

Paypal fraud dept. called me 5 mins later to confirm it was real.

[roflmao]

glad to hear that they made it right when called out on the bullshit!
looking forward to your arrival in the mainland, man! I may not be there to have a beer with you in person, but I'll gladly do it over Skype when all your carolinians have your meetup.

Me too!

[OldRover]

Okay... the transfer nonsense is over... the money's coming down teh pipe. This bank has a 3 business day policy, so it should be here Tuesday. The trip will be planned and tickets will be purchased as soon as the money appears in the account.

What's left after that is mostly the affidavit for Lucas' care. She wants to do it through the court, but the lawyer said that it will cost even more and isn't really necessary. I've already shipped almost all of my stuff up to SC... just got a box of books and one more standard post package to send and that's the end of it.

Thanks again to all those who made this happen. I really appreciate it. We're definitely gonna do some obey get-togethers.

[SuperPlay]

Great to hear,  it sounds like your luck is changing for the better :-)

[tggodfrey]

Good To hear Rov.  I hope things keep moving in a positive direction for you.

[OldRover]

The bank transfer went through on schedule, but it took a couple of days to finish putting all the ducks in a row. All taken care of now though. We officially leave September 12th. We leave Aguadilla at 3:16 in the afternoon and land in Ft Lauderdale at 5:46PM, then take off from there at 8:10PM to arrive in Myrtle Beach at 9:51PM.

[esteban]

The bank transfer went through on schedule, but it took a couple of days to finish putting all the ducks in a row. All taken care of now though. We officially leave September 12th. We leave Aguadilla at 3:16 in the afternoon and land in Ft Lauderdale at 5:46PM, then take off from there at 8:10PM to arrive in Myrtle Beach at 9:51PM.

Congrats! 

STAGE ONE CLEARED. 88% HIT RATE.

 

[OldRover]

Three weeks to go. It's mostly just waiting around now.

[OldRover]

Two weeks to go and still smooth sailing. I'm still a bit upset over the fact that I will not see my daughters again for quite some time, but at least we will be able to Skype so that's better than nothing. Still have a couple of loose ends to tie up here, but there will be no issues with that.

I will be able to resume work on TEH OBEYBREW after getting settled. Nando's issues seem to have been resolved as well, so him and I can both get back to work on Lucretia very soon.

Thanks again to everyone who helped. Actually, I can't say thank you enough times for this.

[OldRover]

Less than 24 hours to go before departure. Everything is in order. Got our boarding passes as soon as check-in became available online. Finishing packing now. Shit got real.

[OldRover]

Been on the mainland a week now. On Tuesday, my gf went to court for a scheduled hearing... and was jailed. She failed a drug test. Wonderful. Then, I get a cascade of information that reveals that she was nothing what she said she was. Turns out I got together with a fucking crackhead. Needless to say, I broke up with her. Lucas and I are staying at her father's house for now; he said we can stay here for as long as we need to while we get shit sorted out.

I'm attempting to look for work but since she lied about having access to a vehicle, that's been more difficult than it was supposed to be. I had a job lined up but can't take it now since it requires travel and someone to watch after my son while I work... both of which are now unavailable due to her lies. So, I am looking for something I can do during the hours Lucas is at school.

I spent months planning all of this out, going on information she had given me, and it all fell to pieces. So, I'm doing my best to pick up the pieces and move on. I plan on staying here in SC though, so if anyone close by ever wants to hang out or whatnot, feel free to shoot me a text or a phone call or such. My cell # is 787-223-3374... I kept a PR number.

[esteban]

Been on the mainland a week now. On Tuesday, my gf went to court for a scheduled hearing... and was jailed. She failed a drug test. Wonderful. Then, I get a cascade of information that reveals that she was nothing what she said she was. Turns out I got together with a fucking crackhead. Needless to say, I broke up with her. Lucas and I are staying at her father's house for now; he said we can stay here for as long as we need to while we get shit sorted out.

I'm attempting to look for work but since she lied about having access to a vehicle, that's been more difficult than it was supposed to be. I had a job lined up but can't take it now since it requires travel and someone to watch after my son while I work... both of which are now unavailable due to her lies. So, I am looking for something I can do during the hours Lucas is at school.

I spent months planning all of this out, going on information she had given me, and it all fell to pieces. So, I'm doing my best to pick up the pieces and move on. I plan on staying here in SC though, so if anyone close by ever wants to hang out or whatnot, feel free to shoot me a text or a phone call or such. My cell # is 787-223-3374... I kept a PR number.

Dude, you are in SC...I may get down there in the Spring. Anyway, hooefully,  by then, your luck will have changed. ACTUALLY, you are lucky to have discovered these things about your partner sooner rather than later.

Still, that's heartbreaking. Any way you look at it.

Good luck, comrade. 

[ParanoiaDragon]

Ugh, sorry Nod, wish I had some words of wisdom to brighten your day!