Wow, two months without getting a newsletter out and people come looking for me! I'd like to thank everyone who checked in to see if everything was all right. It was and is, it's just been a crazy few months.

This month I'm proud to present an article on "Rewards Foundation". It's an amazing stop smoking initiative for young children and its president is someone that I went to highschool with. It is a Canadian program but it is worth looking at for all nations. Our children are indeed our future.

We've also got a great article by a former single mom who created a wonderful computer program to track shared custody, visitation, and percentages. Well worth a look if you've ever found yourself planning anything around "where the kids are" at the time of the event.

As usual, I'd like to take this moment to welcome all of our new subscribers and bid a 'welcome back' to our returning ones.

• March's Recipes
  • Italian Coq au Vin
  • Best Banana Bread
    
• Kidmate Custody Sharing Calendar
• Rewards Foundation
  
• Ramblings
  • whoops!

Who's counting custody?
By Maralyn Facey

Do you know what percentage of time you have your children? Have you been one of those parents counting off "have the kids" days with different colored pencils and adding them up on a calculator? Been busy trying to figure out when Easter falls in the year 2004 and if Christmas and Hannukah will overlap? Been there, done that, fixed it!

I am the single mom who wrote Kidmate a Joint Custody Program for Family Law Specialists www.kidmate.com. Kidmate is now the program many courts rely on to accurately and clearly represent custody schedules. Kidmate automatically shows percentages of time that each parent spends with their children. It shows you a calendar, you click on the desired schedule (or make up one of your own) and then it translates it over an entire year in both a calendar form and in text. If you want to make any changes you just click on the day and it will change color making it the day of the other parent. Simple huh? It's simple because it took three years of my life and most of my savings to make it that way. I must really be determined or crazy.

In April of 1993 I was sitting at my desk surveying the usual assortment of stuff that collects there. An overdue video, a barbie, a few tangled hair ties and the aforementioned calendar sheets, colored pencils and calculator. I was a single mom, the editor of a great and unfortunately now defunct national newsletter called Solo a Guide for the Single Parent and about to become the west coast editor of Divorce magazine. I had no time to count the hours and minutes or overnights that my then four-year-old daughter was going to spend with her father.

But if I didn't count them my attorney and for sure my husband's attorney were going to. We live in California where the amount of time you have your child is reflected in the amount of money you
receive/give for their support. Ugh. So count, color, flip, count, color, flip it was making me nuts! Surely there had to be an easier way. Wasn't that what computers were for? I typed on mine but surely they must be able to do all this repetitive stuff. I knew there was a computer program for all the money involved in getting a divorce. Dividing the property, dividing the assets and probably even one for furniture and great aunt Martha's silver. So why when it came to your most important asset, your children, were you on your own? So fed up and very naive I decided that I would make a computer program that scheduled, counted percentages and produced a calendar that we could all use. After all how hard could it be?

That should have been the big warning light question. After all it was 1993. I graduated from school in 1978. There was not a computer in sight. I took languages, history and typing. So couldn't I hire a computer guy? Sure there are lots out there. Couldn't be that difficult, after all there are lots of computer programs so there must be lots of computer programmers. Well there are and they, like all professions, come with many different ethics and many different pay scales. I know because I went through many of them until I found an honest straightforward guy who understood what it takes to make what is now Kidmate.

Here's what I wanted: open to a screen which tells you who makes up the family at present. The parent, the co-parent and if you need it an additional caretaker like a grandmother, nanny or boarding school, then add the children. Then click to the next screen and make up a
weekly/monthly pattern that works for you or access a pre-programmed visitation plan that I could research from the psychologists and judges I knew. Then go to the next screen and see what that pattern will look like over and entire year or for the next 10 years. Add the holidays. Presto you'd printout a calendar, hit printouts text and it will write out for you what the calendar says so that you can admit both into court. Wonderful and simple and eventually what I got.

I also got all the perils of creating a new business. Some of those included deadwood partners, dishonest programmers, trademark paperwork that would drown a forest and a new awareness of that most powerful tool, the internet. The quest for the perfect Kidmate became my focus for the next three years. Those preprogrammed parenting plans? There are twenty of them. The judges and psychologists? Turned out that they were all smart, concerned and connected across the globe. Plus they were thrilled that SOMEONE was FINALLY putting a program like this together. I received input from over 100 of the best.

For the next five years, when my daughter was not with me, I travelled to every family law legal conference that would have me. I am not a lawyer. I found that legal professionals were leery of someone helping them to do their jobs who wasn't a lawyer. Gradually Superior Court judges especially in New York, Minnesota, Texas and South Carolina became supporters of a program that they could rely upon to give consistent information regarding parents and children in their courtrooms. Someone who became a dear friend, the late Honorable John Montgomery, said to me he was thrilled never to have to see another Kinko blowup and pie chart. I was pooped but Kidmate had become the market standard. Reliable, concise and worth every minute to help clear the "custody confusion" of divorcing families.

Now at last I am able to give to single parents the program we need. Kidmate for single parents is a straightforward computer program that calculates custody, shows percentage of time each child has with each parent and produces a calendar and a text to show everyone concerned just where their children are as well as who pays for what. We all know that these things change so the program gives you years to change the plan as your family changes. The courts will accept Kidmate, the lawyers, mediators, custody evaluators and facilitators are finally embracing technology that will eliminate their own calendar sheets, colored pencils and calculators. The $75 single parent Kidmate is available now by emailing kidmate@lapag.com and requesting the single parent version. It can also be ordered from our legal web site www.kidmate.com by simply putting in single parent version on the order form. It's bigger legal brother will continue to help courts internationally and I'll get to stay home for a few of those weekends and return those late videos on my desk.

Italian Coq au Vin

Impressive but so simple to make. Most ingredients will be in your house. Serve with rice, noodles, or potatoes.

• In a large fry pan heat the oil (I like Olive Oil)
• Add about half of the garlic to the hot oil
• Lightly coat the chicken thighs in the flour then brown in the frying pan for 5 minutes
• Add sliced sausage and sauté together for a few minutes
• Add the onion, carrots, mushrooms, rosemary and garlic and stir
• Add the wine and tomatoes, sir again.
• Cover and let simmer for at least 25 minutes.
• Removed from heat and let stand for 10 minutes
• serve!
  

Best Banana Bread

Lots of banana flavour and easily doubled. This is a family favourite!

• Preheat oven to 350
• Lightly grease a 9x5 loaf pan
• In a large bowl mix the flour, baking soda and salt
• In another bowl cream together well the butter and brown sugar
• Sir in the eggs and mashed bananas until they're well blended
• Stir the wet mixture into he flour mixture just enough to moisten
• Pour into load pan and bake for 60 to 65 minutes
• Loaf is done when a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean!
• Let cool for 10 minutes in the pan then remove and place on a wire rack

Well it's been a long time since I've missed two newsletters in a row. Between the investigation going on with the person stealing from our website (read more here) and having one of the world's nastiest sinus cold there's just been no time or energy to get a newsletter out.

I do thank all the people who checked in to see where it was and all the wonderful people who provided content for this month's issue. I actually had so much content, some will have to wait until next month!

I'd also like to thank each and every person that aided in the discovery and reporting of the above person who has been stealing our content and graphics for almost two years now. It was a website viewer who first brought it to my attention 18 months ago, and it is still website viewers who are reporting the new offenses that are going on to date. It's the loyal viewers such as yourselves that keep me doing this and keep me smiling through it all.

Well folks, that's it for another month. As usual, if you have any suggestions or contributions let me know! We're always up to suggestions and recipes sent in also have the chance to be included on the website.

Jill Lassaline, editor
Single Parents World