So yesterday morning, my mom calls me and says she has decided to move back to NY to live with my brother in his one-room motel room, where his kids come by on the weekends (and sleep on the floor). He convinced her that he is going to be homeless if she doesn’t come help him because he can’t afford child support, etc.
She is convinced he will pay his half the rent and she can pay the other, while saving for a down payment on a two bedroom apartment for them.
Never mind that he has never paid her a dollar back of what he’s borrowed and stolen from her (thousands). And that he has bad credit and can’t get an apartment. And won’t pass a background check due to felonies/misdemeanors/nonsense. And only works part time and won’t qualify for a 2 bedroom apartment.
Oh, and my mom is 70 and on social security and won’t qualify for one either.
BugGirl wants to buy my house that they are both living in right now, but can’t afford it yet as she is working on her credit and saving for a down payment. My mom living there was supposed to help my daughter with the bills. Now she suddenly has to cover my mom’s portion of the mortgage with no warning - because my mom plans to move with one suitcase and her cat next weekend.
And my mom wants to store everything else at my house - for free - until she can afford to move into the new apartment. Again, which will never happen, as my mom is on social security and gets like $1200 a month. There is no way she is saving up $2400 for a security deposit/first months rent for another place. Especially not with my brother taking her money. Because no way is he going to be paying any bills with my mom there.
So when I told my mom how crazy this is, and how this is going to hurt both of her grandchildren financially, she told me that she doesn’t care about my kids, and instead has to think of my brother.
Never mind that I straight up gave up my dream of buying a building downtown and instead bought this new house so I could let her live in my other one, so she’d have a stable & safe place to stay. And I just spent $1000 moving her down here. And then put $2000 on a credit card getting things fixed, paying for insurance for her, etc. so she’d have nothing to worry about.
It’s incredibly rude, selfish and disrespectful to me, my partners and everyone involved.
She dropped all this on me, and then when I told her this was an absolute terrible idea, she told me that she couldn’t live with her grandkids because BugGirl was always sleeping over at her boyfriend’s house and never home, and that BeanBoy was too fat and when he pooped, she had to clean the toilet after.
I’m like, what? I said, um, did you tell him to clean up after his own self? Of course she didn’t, because then she wouldn’t have anything to complain about! She also had complained previously that he NEVER washed his dishes, which BugGirl was quick to say on that single occurrence, that he had in fact left them rinsed in the sink overnight, and they were in the dishwasher the next morning. Once she called me to tell me he hadn’t washed his bedsheets in two weeks, and when I asked him about it, he was very confused and told me he had done that the day before. She literally is a nutter about this.
Anyway, when she started yelling about him being too fat, I told her the conversation was over, and hung up the phone.
BugGirl and I had a 45 minute conversation yesterday afternoon, and she was upset that her grandmother would just leave her in the lurch with the bills like that. She said she could probably pay part of my mom’s rent but not all of it (she gets paid next Thursday). I told her not to worry about it for June, but instead focus on finishing up the sunporch floor (she tore it up and now it needs the concrete leveled and sealed).
We talked about selling the house, but she was clear that she wanted to make it work somehow - she wants to buy it just as soon as she can. She said she can probably swing an extra couple hundred dollars each month, but not the entire amount. I told her I would help her with her credit just as soon as I get past the housewarming party, as I have zero time to focus on anything else other than readying my new house for that.
The call ended on an optimistic note, but that really didn’t help me a whole lot. I then called my mom and told her that this was an absolute terrible idea, and that she was a garbage grandparent for doing this to my children. I ended by telling her that I loved her, but I would not be talking to her for a few months, and would not be seeing her before she left.
This was pretty devastating for me, as I never in my life have ever said anything like this to anyone before. I spent the entire evening crying.
My sister called at some point, telling me that our mom called her everyday to complain about something (not real news because this is how she always is). However, she didn’t know that my mom was moving to help my brother with rent and child support - she said mom just shared that she couldn’t stand being so far away from her and my brother and their kids. She went nuclear on the phone, screaming that our mom can’t move back, as our brother would bleed our mom dry and they’d be homeless in two months, tops, and that they’d then look to her for help.
She doesn’t want to help. She hung up with me, saying that she was telling her son not to drive our mom to NY and that she’d tell our mom she would not be moving. She was angry and loud and reiterated pretty much all of my own issues with the plan. I have no idea what happened after she hung up. She was loud and obnoxious and feeding on the drama.
MisterMoonbeam took me on a walk around the neighborhood, and redirected my focus about building a fire pit in the yard. We talked about putting in a landscape berm on the one side of the house, to give our side yard more privacy from the street. That side of the yard is along a dead end section of road with two houses on it, one of which is far down and around a corner we can’t even see, so it’s not a priority.
Anyway, it calmed me down. We then spent some time refilling the water feature - he had mucked it out earlier - and scooping leaves out of it. When we sat together on the back deck, SirGawain called and started going on about how he had to call his younger sister and figure out how to get my mom under a conservatorship. I’m like, uh, no. My mom is making a dumb ass decision, but she’s not got dementia or anything like that. She can choose to live where she wants, and if she wants to go live in a one room motel with an under-employed drug user, she can make that choice.
He upset me a great deal, and after I hung up, I spent the rest of the evening crying with both DarkKnight and MisterMoonbeam alternating on rubbing my back and hugging me. I mostly just was laying down and trying to play games on my phone, but they’d come in and check on me or lay beside me while being on their own phone.
I finally fell asleep around midnight, and I woke up like an hour ago. I’ve decided to just move forward and focus on all of the work I didn’t get done yesterday around here, as I am now a day behind with my plans and our housewarming is a week away! My bestie is coming over later and we are heading to Virginia tonight with MisterMoonbeam to stay with our polycule friends there, and attend the Virginia Ren Faire on Saturday.
I’m planning today to finish mulching around the sunroom outside, and around the pond. The area gets full sun all afternoon, starting around 11 am, so I need to get to doing that fairly early on. I also need to clear out all remaining boxes in the living room, and take stock of our supplies, as we have hired painters to come in on Sunday to sand and paint the fireplace wall, as well as the inside of our front doors, and to do baseboards and ceiling touch ups in my partners’ bedrooms.
I know I need to buy carpet tape and a small extension cord. I am still putting the couch cushions outside, as it smells musty from being in the basement here for 40 years! DarkKnight has washed it down with bleach, with vinegar, and sprayed it liberally with Lysol. I have set the cushions outside in full sun like on 5 different days. We threw away the mattress (it’s a pull out couch) and bought a new one, though I haven’t unboxed it yet because I don’t want to transfer the smell.
I am out of ideas. I can’t afford a new couch right now so hopefully things get better with it! It has been greatly improved so I am keeping my fingers crossed that the slight odor clears out completely soon!
I like it a lot because it’s original to the house and I can fit my whole dang polycule on it! (It’s 102 inches long).
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