So Now What? (We interrupt this blog to bring you some Random Intrusive Daddy Issues...)

Today was supposed to be my Now What day.  I took the LSAT yesterday, and my plan was that once that was over, I’d get busy making concrete plans for what’s next, what do I do now, how do I get my life sorted out and back on track?  I’ve got a business plan to formulate, and a book proposal/publication plan to think out, and a magic tournament I aim to win, and plans to make for quality time with my kids for the rest of the summer.  I was going to wake up today bright and bushy-tailed, and get back to the business of taking on the world…

But the LSAT took a lot more out of me than I expected.  I knew it would be physically and mentally draining, I KNEW that, but I went in doing it as kind of a lark, and wasn’t expecting there to be an emotional toll, as well.  I (told myself) that I just wanted to take it so I’d know what it was really like and could do a better job of preparing my students and tutoring clients.  I still have half a mind to try law school, but I knew that I could just show up and get the kind of score I needed to get into any of the local schools that are feasible for me to attend, but I still felt like I should practice a little, and did invest half a Sunday working on that.   (That sounds pretty arrogant, but I do teach the class, and I’m not one of those ‘if you can, do, if you can’t teach,’ kind of teachers.  And for perspective, the local schools don’t ask for much above the 50^th percentile; they’re just happy to get competent people who want to enroll.)

That being said, in the moment, while it was happening, and even more so after it was over, I discovered that something inside of me is still fighting for a stupid dream I had (Harvard, baby) that is no longer an option, but that I apparently haven’t quite managed to let go.  I obviously didn’t practice enough to make sure I hit that mark, because even though I know I can correctly answer every damn question on that test, IF I have enough time, it’s an endurance ordeal, and a time-management nightmare, and you have to seriously prepare for that part of it.  And I deliberately didn’t allow myself do the work I’d need to pull it off.  Because I knew it wouldn’t matter, and it wasn’t a good investment of my time, and (I think now) that obtaining that magic score would just cause a dramatic and pointless mental crisis over Lost Things that I can’t get back.  So I didn’t really try, I knew I wasn’t trying, and I thought I’d be OK with that, but I feel pretty awful about the whole thing now; I was fooling myself again.  And I could handle that, and observe it and process it, and not let it disrupt the Now What game, if that was the only thing going on, but there are other Lost Things that I have to deal with first.  Now What has to wait until tomorrow.

It’s my daddy’s birthday today.  If he was here, he’d be turning 68, and if the universe made sense, if anything was fair, we’d have spent the morning finishing a cake (carrot cake was his favorite,) and loading up a picnic for some kind of barbecue extravaganza, probably at Benson park, where the kids could play in the water and fight over the pouch couches (and we could go diving for our lost GoPro, but that’s a different tale…) and he could try to teach them how to fish, and the grownups could play cards, and we’d have a grand old time celebrating with Poppy, and we’d all end up sunburnt (especially Poppy) and exhausted but entertained.  He should be spending the summer helping the oldest boys fix up busted cars, and admiring the girls’ drawings, and I’m sure Jester would have got him roped into playing Magic by this point, and they’d be scheming up ridiculous, terrible nonsense commander decks.  He never even got to meet the little one, but I imagine they would swing together, and she would make him play Barbies and chatter his ears clean off.  Poor baby doesn’t have any grandpas, which is so hard for me to fathom, because my grandpas were pretty much the most important people in my life when I was her age.  She doesn’t know what she is missing, but I do…

Because he’s not here.  It’s been almost 9 years since he’s been here, but he SHOULD be, and that’s what I have to get off my chest.  It’s the You Can’t Pass Go until you do this thing THING, and name this thing, and feel this thing, and say this thing “out loud.”  So, here it goes, this is what I have to say:

My dad was the kindest, most patient, understanding, and self-sacrificial person I’ve never known.  He was funny, he was sweet, he was creative and resourceful, and he had all of these big dreams, a lot of which I never even knew about until he was gone.  He wanted to open a little restaurant one day.  That’s the one that floored me, because it shouldn’t have been a surprise.  He cooked most of what got cooked in our home, and he always volunteered to work the kitchen at our Girl Scout Jamborees.  His camp name was Cookie, I thought he was just trying to be involved.  I never realized how much he loved it, and if I had known, I might have skipped out on grad school to stay home and do that with him, because that would have been so much fun.  (And since neither of ever managed to learn a damn thing about business or money, it would have been an epic financial failure; but still, it would have been fun.)  But I didn’t know, I didn’t have a clue what he wanted, because he never really spoke up for himself, and he was always so damn busy…

My whole life, my dad was busy, taking care of everyone else.  When I was a kid, he went to school and worked; when he finished his degree, he just worked for people who often didn't appreciate him, and he always had these god-awful long commutes.  And most nights (it couldn’t have actually been most nights, but it felt like most nights) he’d get home, eventually we might have dinner, and then he’d be out until the wee hours of the morning working one of our damned constantly-busted cars, trying to diagnose weird noises my mom was bitching about, rebuilding transmissions, keeping our Frankenstein's monster cars alive.  He had every parts store in the region’s number memorized… And he’d have work he brought home to do, and he’d run around catering to whatever nonsense my mom dreamed up, and at some point they both got involved not with helping, but actually RUNNING the softball league, which sounds like cool parental involvement, but was really parental abandonment because it was a MASSIVE time investment in a hobby that my sister was already done with, and that I was wrapping up, because it took up all of their nights once it started; they were always off in meetings somewhere, or on the phone getting yelled at by coaches and parents, or organizing tournaments that neither one of was a part of, and that’s where things were when I left home...

And nothing ever got easier for him.  His kids didn’t succeed at this whole growing up thing the way that we should have.  He tried to start his own engineering business, but that didn’t work out.  He at least got a big house to mess around with and work on, and room for a shop, and he was building a random forge and trying to figure out how to get permits to run a smithy...

The year before he died, things were especially hard.  He was exhausted, and I could see it, and I was worried but I didn’t know what I could possibly do, except for try not to add more things to his load.   He was doing every damn thing for everyone, for my mom and my sister and her kids, and his mom, and his mother-in-law.  He’d work all week, and almost every Saturday, at least, head out to Grandma’s house in Rowena to work on projects for her.  And when that wasn’t happening, my mom would send him to Grandma Nick’s house to do projects for her (that she, at least, didn’t like to ask him to do.  She felt like he had enough and didn’t speak up.  My mom would get mad at her and scold her for that, and say “Jim can do it, why didn’t you say something?” and assign him another chore.) 

He did all the cooking at home, all of the shopping, he made my mom’s breakfasts and packed her lunches, and ran the laundry back and forth up the stairs.  He did, by himself, almost all the chores that needed to be done, chores that other people in the house were perfectly capable of doing for themselves.  And he came down to stay with me a few times when things were bad in California, and I was all on my own, to help me with the kids and my stupid car, and to make sure I was OK.  But HE wasn’t OK, I knew he wasn’t, and I was so scared.  I told my friend a week before he collapsed that I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack any day, and I didn’t know what to do except worry, and I still feel bad that I didn’t try to do more.

He was tired all the time, he had something going on with his back and was in a horrible amount of pain, and was trying some crazy experimental (dangerous) traction therapy to help with that.  He was starting to develop food sensitivities.  And some asshole doctor told him that his problem was low-testosterone, so he was apparently taking supplements for that (which is bullshit, because he had a congenital heart defect that almost killed him as a child; and that stuff is definitely NOT good for the heart.)  And most of all he was WORRIED all the time about his stupid kids, and the messes we were making, about my sister’s dependency issues, and my divorce apocalypse, and the hurt we were inflicting on each other, and he didn’t know what to do about any of it, so he just keep doing.  I can’t even describe how much guilt I feel over stressing him out so much.  I did my best to not ask for things from him, and to let them all cast me as the straight-up villain in our family drama, not to explain myself, not to defend myself, just to let them all hate me if they needed to, so at least (I thought) my poor daddy wouldn’t feel like he had to choose sides.  But it wasn’t enough… I don’t know what I could have done that would have been enough, and no one else seemed to notice that it was a problem.

At his funeral, my mom’s stupid “best friend”--this crazy lady who had been hanging around since I was a kid, who I’m not even sure actually liked my mom at all, but was CLEARLY in love with my dad, and fawned over his every move and word and breath of air, even though he found her very obnoxious and did his very best to avoid her—anyway, this lady gave an extended eulogy about how he was the perfect Christ-like man, the best man who ever lived.  How he gave everything of himself, and never asked anything in return.  (There was also a pointed critique in there about what she really thought of my mom and how she treated daddy.  It was incredibly awkward, but I can’t say it wasn’t accurate.  It was just incredibly bad timing.)  And Diana was right, in a lot of ways; he was infinitely loving and infinitely giving, right up until his last breath, but he was those things to a fault.

He never told anyone “no,” he never said “not right now,” he never said “I’m too tired,” or “why don’t you try and do it yourself first, and I’ll help you if need it,” or “I actually had something else I was hoping to do today, can we do that tomorrow?”   He always sighed and said yes, and then he got to work.  And they, THEY, I guess we, never stopped asking him, demanding things, finding new projects for him to work on, making new problems for him to solve.  So what happens when you take a really nice man, with no boundaries and no sense of his own worth, and throw him in with a bunch of vampires?  What happens is that they will eventually bleed him dry.

And that’s exactly what happened.  My dad didn’t intentionally sacrifice himself to save us, he just got used up.  I remember that stupid day like it wasn’t even yesterday, like it was still today, like somehow it’s still happening, like it’s always happening right now, all the time, and I can’t stop it or fix it or change it, it just IS, and it always will be.  

It was a 100 fucking degrees in Troutdale, and supposed to get hotter.  We had planned to go down to Springfield to visit my uncle, but it had been a busy, grueling week somehow, and I was exhausted, and my parents came over (I was staying at grandma’s with the kids, getting ready to head back to Santa Barbara in a few days) and he asked me what I wanted to do, and I said “Daddy, it’s so hot, and I’m tired, can we just stay home and relax?” And that’s what we were going to do.  I figured the kids could play in the pool out back, and we could hang out, and I could finally get a chance to show him my travel pictures and recount my adventures in Italy and stuff like that.

And then for some stupid reason, I don’t even know how or why it came up, my mom decided that he should fix Grandma’s swamp cooler and get it running again.  We talked about just living with it for a few more days, or making things easy and just going out and to buy an air conditioner, because it needed parts, and no one even sold swamp cooler parts around here.  But she got it in her head that it needed to be fixed, and started calling different stores and said “if I can find the parts, I’ll go get them, and if not, we’ll buy an air conditioner.”  She struck out over and over again, I was really hoping common sense and fate would win, and then she finally found some hardware store up in Sandy that had the stuff and decided she was going to go up and get whatever it was, so he’d better get to work. 

The stupidest thing about all of it was that Grandma didn’t even want the damn thing fixed, she wanted to make potato salad and play cards, and didn’t want any more time invested into this swamp cooler that had been kicking around since like 1952.  She was prepared to go without, or get something easier to deal with, but no one could win once my mom got determined.  So I sent the kids out to play in the pool, my dad started working on it by himself, because I have fuck-all idea how to fix a swamp cooler and it looked like a one-man job, and the temperature continued to climb…  I told him to be careful and take it easy and drink water, and he took an alarming amount of Advil or Tylenol or something, and drank some water and said he’d be fine.  He even got a bandana soaked in cold water and tied it around his neck, he would be fine...  And this whole time, I was just SO frustrated and so angry about what was happening, I wanted to scream.  It was taking everything I had not to just unleash it all on my mom.  But I felt like it wouldn’t change anything; it would just be more drama, and the swamp cooler was still going to get fixed even with a fight.  So when my mom got back from Sandy, I said I was going to the store, and went off to get a soda and chain-smoke and brood and cry for a while, while I tried to compose myself and get ready to go back in. 

I was gone maybe half an hour.  I came back to find a firetruck outside the house, lights flashing.  My heart dropped and I knew what happened before I even made it to the door.  My dad had collapsed about 15 minutes after I left, the boys saw him and screamed out, my mom tried to do CPR.  If I had been there, I could have done it better, because her mobility issues made it very hard, if I could have done it and not passed out from fear…  But I’m usually pretty good in situations like that, and if I had just been there…  But I wasn’t.  

The paramedics arrived very quickly, but his heart had stopped and he wasn’t breathing, and they didn’t think they could fix it.  They kept working on him, though, for about 3,000 years, or 20 minutes, or somewhere in between.  I called my ex and told him to come over and get the kids RIGHT NOW, because I didn’t know what was going to happen and they needed functioning adults.  They got his heart started again, they got him breathing, but the paramedic told me it had been too long, and that the only thing we could hope for was a miracle.

But we didn’t get one.  He hung on for a few days in the hospital while they tried things to cool him down and get things going again, but it was too late, and I never got to tell him about Italy, and he never got to teach the boys to drive or fix their cars, or see the girl’s drawings, or play magic with Jester, or meet my baby girl, and we aren’t having a birthday party for him today, and my kids don’t have their Poppy, and I don’t have my dad, and it’s my fucking fault.   Not entirely, but it is partly, you can’t convince me that it’s not.  For not fighting the fight with my mom, for not just going to Springfield, for being so stressful, for bugging out and running and being there to perform CPR… And it’s their fault, too, for pushing him so hard, for taking advantage of him, and not caring for him, and bleeding him dry.  And it’s his fault, too, for not speaking up for himself and saying no.  “Not today.  Just buy a damn air conditioner so we can look at pictures and play cards and enjoy the day,” and now there aren’t any more days.

I had some point in mind, some reason I had to write this.  I wrote about parts of it once before, but I was compelled to delete it by lawyers, or my mom, or something way back when.  But I think it's something that is not meant to stay deleted.  And I something I was thinking today about why it’s so important  that people learn to stand up for themselves and speak out for what they want, and that there’s some better way than either submitting to everything, or bailing and hiding out.  And something else about how worried I am about my Uncle, how he’s gotten stuck taking on this same role, and I don’t know how to bust him out before he gets used up, too, because they will use him up, and anyone else who lets them.  I feel like that’s where I intended to go with it, but there was a lot more in there that wanted to come out, and it took over.  I miss my dad so much.  I hate that he’s not here.  I know so many people who had no dads, or shitty dads, or absent dads who have somehow managed to hang around on the edges of people’s existences, just taunting them with the fact of their ongoing disinterested existence, but I had one of the BEST dads in so many ways, and I barely got the part of life where I really got to know him as an adult, and see him be an awesome grandpa, and all of that, and it fucking sucks, almost too much to bear, but I usually manage, just not on this particular day.

I’m done, though, for now.  Whatever lessons are supposed to come out of this, whatever I’m supposed to do with it can’t happen today, because it’s his birthday, and I have to finish up this grieving nonsense, and get my head on straight to go to work.  And, it sounds like, go play some Barbies.  They are going on an epic camping trip in the living room, and I apparently play some integral role in the trip’s success.  Yay, Barbies, someone's got to do it.

Revenge of the First

It has been a few weeks, and I haven’t posted an update on the situation with my mom’s house, mainly because life has been INSANE, but also because I handled things less than ideally, and I am pretty embarrassed by how it all went down.

The plan, dear interlocutors and interested parties, was this: we were going to get the Mustang sold to make the June payment, and then my mom was supposed to work on getting some of her assorted stuff (fenton art glass, sewing machines if need be, etc.) sold to make the July payment.  My sister was going to have a big garage sale, to clear things out, and I kind of thought to help with the mortgage payment.  We had things under control, we had a PLAN.

But, like most plans I try to make, it did not really work out.  Selling the mustang in its previous non-running state was a major challenge, we also had substantial life things to deal with and had a hard time keeping up on it all.  My sister DID have a big garage sale, and I believe she made some money at it, but I don’t think any of it went towards saving the house.  I don’t know.  No one actually tells me things unless/until it’s an emergency they want me to solve.

While this was going on, I discovered something else.  I applied and was accepted to a graduate teacher education program in my area.  I received a generous funding package, comprised of scholarships and a tuition remission fellowship that was going to make the whole thing cost me about $1000.  Not bad, really, since scholarships for teaching school are pretty rare… BUT I discovered 2 weeks before class started that the tuition remission did not start until Fall 2019, and I had no funding at all for summer term.  Also, the additional endorsement program they pushed me to enroll in cost quite a bit more than they said it did at the info night...

“WELL, SHIT,” I thought, “but I’m already committed to this,  and $5,000 still isn’t that bad for an MA,” so I filled out last year’s FAFSA and a financial aid form, and was “awarded” a Stafford loan that was enough to cover both tuition and an excess of, very conveniently, just a bit over the amount needed to cover my mom’s next stupid payment if we couldn’t get the Mustang sold in time. In the meantime, my brother-in-law very graciously offered to come down to visit and stay for a few days and get the car to start and run.  So, I figured, “OK, I’ll accept the loan, hold off a few weeks on selling the car, give my mom a temporary loan until that happens, and then have this little pool of money left over to put a down payment on a new van, since ours is breaking down”  Sure, it’s not what student loans were intended for, by any means, but basically NONE of the student loans I took out for my Ph.D. actually went to tuition (CUSTODY LAWSUITS, living expenses while ex was unemployed, etc., BOOOOO!!!) so I’m already on a roll, at least this makes things simple and I can stop being so anxious about it and do this in an orderly fashion.

So brother-in-law comes down, they mess around with the car for a couple of days, finally get it running, husband posts it for sale right before I head off to leave on what’s supposed to be my last-hurrah-before-becoming-a-worthless-graduate-student-again trip to Seattle for a Magic tournament.  I’m thinking, when I get back, it will be sold and life will be grand.  But shit happened.  So much shit, and it didn’t work out.

Life got super stressful in a number of new and exciting ways, the car got unlisted, grandma’s health took an abrupt turn for the worse. (She got better, though, like she does.) (I don’t mean “better” as in  she’s going to completely shake off this whole dying plan, but she did recover from the apparent crisis, and is back to her basic slow, steady, generally cheerful decline.)  My mom also DID start making inroads into sorting her stuff for some kind of sale, so that’s good.  The Mustang is now in my garage, it has a trip permit, and it’s sitting there taunting me and trying to tempt me to take it out and drive off fleeing into the sunset, as I have a tendency to do when I have access to a convertible in the midst of a mid-life crisis scenario. 

(OK, that’s only happened ONCE so far, so that may not indicate an actual a “tendency,” but the overwhelming pull that stupid car has on me right now makes me suspect that it easily could become one if I let it.  And hey, maybe that’s not so bad.  The last time it happened, it more or less worked out because, while the Rabbit DID sort of burst into flames in the dead of night on a spooky and remote stretch of highway between San Francisco and Santa Barbara, I DID meet a prophet out of the deal (my first and only so far).  And the interesting, painful, but enlightening and completely necessary drama that ensued, eventually, after much agony, did end up being for the best.  I think.  Let’s just say it did.)

Whew, I got off track, because this is where it all went wrong, and I am super stressed about it, and now we get back to the June payment.  I got back from Seattle much later than I expected on the 23^rd.  My grad program started the evening of the 24^th.  I was exhausted, there was a lot to deal with, I just barely got myself to my first class.  But my first class was kind of awesome, and I felt pretty optimistic about that.  I was still really worried about the cohort leader I was assigned to, but I had a meeting scheduled for the next day with the department head, and it was my understanding that I was going to be able to switch groups before the first class met, and everything would be OK.  BUT IT WAS NOT OK.  It was super not OK, but I sent off the emails I needed to, worked on my Monday class homework, did some other stuff that really needed to be done, and just let my mom know that, look, I took out enough student loans to cover the $1500 you need for this month, and you can pay me that back when we get the Mustang relisted and sold, hopefully this weekend. 

“But,” she said, “actually, some things that I wasn’t expecting came up, and could you actually do $2000.”  “Um…” I thought, “that breaks into the van money I got selling Magic cards in Seattle, but we should definitely be able to get $2000 for the car, but maybe not much more, and I was really hoping we would also be reimbursed for some of the miscellaneous money we’ve put into getting it salable and posted…but OMFG, whatever, I don’t have time to get her sorted out to do anything else.”  So I agreed.  (I also found out that she actually only has one more balloon payment to make, not the two that I was expecting, and so the other part of my acquiescence was just relief that we were a lot closer to done with this mess than I thought.)

She gave me a deposit slip, I went to my bank and withdrew the cash, drove it over to her bank and deposited it on Wednesday, and let her know, and ASSUMED she’d let me know when she’d made the payment because she knew I was worried … but all I heard were crickets.  “Well,” I thought again, “grandma’s been struggling, and she’s probably worrying about that.  I’m sure she made the payment.  Of course she did.”  But more crickets.

Meanwhile, I was dealing with an apocalypse at school.  They wouldn’t let me switch cohorts, my guys was 100 times worse than I ever imagined, the department was only marginally helpful in sorting it out.  I was panicking because I went in not 100% sure if I actually wanted to be a high school teacher, and became certain that, either way, there was no way I could make it through a term, let alone 2 years with this guy in charge of my classes, my placements, and my veritable fate.  I was dealing with that, and trying to keep the kids somewhat entertained, as well, and not really thinking that I needed to also micromanage my mom.

But then it was Friday, the 28^th, two days before the first, and I still hadn’t heard from here, and then I got scared.  I sent her a text in the morning – “did you get the payment made?  It’s the 28^th…”  No reply.  I went to the meat market, and started a pot of hamhocks and beans for grandma, because I know it sounds cheesy, but they always cheer her up and have lead to improbably health rallies in the past.  I did some other things, and got ready to take the kids to the park.  I still hadn’t heard and thought everything MUST be OK or she would have said something, and then I realized in one of those lightning-flash oh-shit moments that probably the opposite was true somehow.  So I called her around 2:30.  She didn’t answer.  I left a message.  More crickets, so we went to the park.

The big kids drew and walked around, the little one played and looked at rabbits, and we were treated to a very flashy obnoxious show of squirrels doing it.  It was a pretty good park trip all around, but as we were about to get in the car, the phone rang.  At 3 FUCKING 45 PM, the last bank day before the first.  It was my mom calling me back, guess how: IN A PANIC.  Some auto payment debited early, allegedly, and she was another $350 short.  Could she borrow that much until Tuesday, when she would definitely pay me back.  I’d need to come by and get her debit card or a deposit slip, and take care of it right away.

SO FUCK.  JUST, FUCK.  I was pretty exasperated, but I didn’t chew her out.  I’m already 2 grand in on this, what the fuck does it even matter now.  I told her I’d drop off the kids, and head over, we’re apparently doing this again.  Dashing across Gresham in afternoon traffic, getting the slip, going to my bank, going to her bank, hoping to make it on time, waiting in line to do bank business on the Friday afternoon before a holiday week when everyone who still gets physical paychecks is trying to turn them into spending cash.  FUCK.

I did cry in the car, and told the kids what was happening, and how this wasn’t OK, and I would never, ever, EVER do this to them, and they didn’t need to worry that this was some kind of normal.  (It’s not normal, it’s not OK, and I will NEVER put them through this.)  I stopped at the house and got them settled, and scooped out a couple of containers of beans for grandma, and headed over to the house to get the thing.  I got over there and went inside, and realized my uncle was there, but no Momma.  She was at HER house, by the way, going through stuff and didn’t mention it.  So I jumped back into the car, went over to her house, she handed me the deposit slip and thought it was funny that I was confused?  No sorry, no thank you, just here you go, do the thing.

And I did the thing, and texted her from the bank asking her to please confirm for me when she’d made the payment so I could stop worrying about it.  She at least did that, but was very terse about it, and seemed put out by my distress.  I was rattled, and stressed out, and felt like a complete chump, but I didn’t have time to rage it out.  I went to Magic with my son, I played horrifically because I was so distracted, but that’s still better than sitting home stewing in bile. 

More things happened with school, the situation got worse, I realized I couldn’t do it and needed to drop, but decided to sleep on it a night, and dropped out Monday morning… only to find that I had to drop by midnight Sunday night to get a refund, because summer term is really, really stupid like that.  I filled out a petition to get the refund, anyway, due to the extremely bizarre circumstances I was dealing with.  It should eventually be approved, but there are several more steps to go, and I am not even 100% sure what happens with the student loans once my drop is processed.  Are they all due back right away?  Do I just have this stupid money in my account?  If so, I’m going to see if I can send it right back to them, but there are several layers of “Ifs” that must be resolved before I even get to that point, so I have not put in the call yet.

In any case, now I’m stuck here, with another chunk of student loans taken out, my mom (OBVIOUSLY) did not call me on Tuesday to arrange to pay me back the $350.  My whole life plan is screwed up, and I feel like a total chump.  So far as I can tell, she hasn’t actually started trying to sell anything to make the August payment, and I suspect is planning on me stepping in to organize whatever sale she is envisioning carrying out.  I’ve got a bedeviled Mustang sitting in my garage taunting me, and everything is a gigantic mess.

But I am trying to just keep going.  I relisted the car today, and have already had one pretty serious bite.  I called my boss and said “hey, I actually AM available to teach for you now,” and was immediately assigned more classes for the summer than I probably should have taken on, but I feel an urgent pressure to make some money, just in case this refund thing doesn’t pan out, and because the van’s still busted and is not, like my grandma, a magical, immortal, self-regenerating beast.  And more than that, because when I go to work and teach my silly classes, I feel competent, and in-control of the situation, and fulfilled knowing that I am helping people who actually want and appreciate my help, but the same time able to say “no,” when they occasionally ask for help that exceeds my contracted list of duties and obligations. 

I’m trying to make a new life plan, and figure out what’s next.  I’m reading a self-help book on codependency, because… when someone told me that was the problem with me way back in the Generalisimo days, I thought they just meant “as it pertains to your relationship with Franco,” and did not pick up at the time that they meant “YOUR WHOLE ENTIRE PROBLEM, STUPID, EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU AND THE WAY THAT YOU’VE BEEN TRAINED TO INTERACT WITH PEOPLE.”  It was a tricky time, I was fighting for my life, and the fact that I at least heard part of that message and got out was, I think, still a pretty decent victory, but it probably would have kept me out of some of the additional trouble that followed if they had explained that a little more thoroughly at the time.  It would also be helpful if, instead of just explaining the 1000 ways my brain is dysfunctional, it would take a chapter out to explain how “normal, healthy” people do respond to this kind of nonsense, so I understood what I was aiming for.  But it doesn’t, so I guess I will just have to interpolate and guess.

And that’s where I’m at.  Waiting to hear from the school, waiting to hear from my mom about the $350 (assuming that I won’t),  waiting to hear from potential Mustang-owners, and currently, at this EXACT moment, babysitting a classroom full of students who are enduring the agony of a proctored LSAT exam.  Waiting and thinking and hatching plans, and planning responses, and building up the nerve to tell my mom “NO MORE. That’s it, I’m out, you’re going to have to figure out the rest.” 

I know that’s what I need to say, I’m trying to work up to saying it, but it’s trickier than it sounds.  My poor uncle is imprisoned over there trapped in her net (he’s a grown man, he could also say no, I know that’s at least not my responsibility, but … my brain programming is barely hanging on to this concept in general, and is not ready to stop worrying about him.)  Worse yet, it sounds like, we’ve heard disturbing rumors that, she’s trying to sucker my nephew who just turned 18 into taking his place, and that is TERRIFYING.  FUCKING TERRIFYING.  Like, I know that I need to defend myself, we also have an obligation to protect the kid, because he’s also been raised in this nightmare scenario, he doesn’t understand that it’s not normal, and we want to make sure that he really understands what’s really happening, and knows that he does have the right to say no.

So, anyway, everything’s pretty much fucked at the moment.  But the goddamn house isn’t being foreclosed on for another month.  I’m so tired of all of this, I want out, I want to run away.  But I don’t want to see another unsuspecting victim get sucked in to take my place. 

Anyway, this has all been super fun (I’m apparently less fine and composed about it than I thought I was when I started, arghhh!!!,) but the students are finally ready for their break, so I’m ending this here.