Thursday Tidings

I’ve been going through a personal situation for the past several weeks which I feel like opening up to here on Substack. It exists at a strange intersection of brains breaking, America, Thailand, home, family, politics, immigration, astrology, race, gaslighting, personal budgets and the larger economy. It largely involves utter chaos in the Las Vegas house while I’ve been away.

According to my developmentally disabled friend Scotty, who is prone to exaggeration, the police have been called to the Las Vegas house 21 times in the past few weeks. I’m not sure if that includes the calls to CPS.

One of my close friends warned me years ago, when she, a fire sign Sagitarrius with a November 27 birthday, was fighting with her tween daughter, also with a November 27 birthday, that two same birthday fire signs were a complete disaster.

“We bring out the absolute worst in each other and will fight to the death!” Oh how I did not listen. Me and my husband might have some uncomfortably close astrology, but we’re both martyr types and lovers, not fighters. Pisces-Pisces March 18 close birthdays to mine tend to retreat and be evasive if conflict arises.

For the two tax day Aries born 25 years apart living in the Las Vegas house? Argh.

Uncle Scott and Mary have a lot in common beyond their birthdays and being under the same roof at mine and my mother’s Las Vegas house right now. Both of them have very low income, are unable to work reliably (that’s presuming the economy even has jobs), have no cushion, savings, or credit to fall back on, and it sounds like have burned bridges with other family and friends that they could stay with. And now it’s all out war between the Boomer MAGA and the Millenial black single mother.

It opened multiple conversations with my brother and his wife, my nieces, my daughters, and anybody else who cared to chime in. My conclusion is that war is stupid at an individual and a collective level.

I have been able to triangulate many of the police visits. There have been multiple wellness checks on my mother, who thankfully says she is okay though I worry the stress is terrible for her. There’s been claims by both sides that the other one is abusing the other. I’ve heard of the power being cut off to the living room through the breaker box, of both sides blocking phone numbers, pulling Mom’s phone off the hook, breaking Mom’s phone, or losing it. This is my Mother’s only main contact with the outside world so that led my brother to call in a wellness check after Mary blocked his number. Okay, she admitted to doing that but said my brother was harassing her on the phone.

Both have accused the other of hitting them or planning to hurt them. Uncle Scott claims Mary stole his diabetic needles so she could shoot up drugs (even though I have never known or even heard about her being a heavy drug user). I considered this claim absurd (and Mary adamantly denied it) so the accusation changed to her maybe doing it to be vindictive against him, preventing him from accessing life saving medicine.

Then there was the air freshener or perfume incident, in which Uncle Scott claimed that Mary tried to poison him by spraying air freshener in his face. Mary claims that her four year old son Elon sprayed some perfume in the room not even too close to him with the refrain “You smell!” Uncle Scott does have a body odor problem, so yes, I could see four year old Elon doing that. I’m not sure that justifies a call to police to try to get the little tyke locked up on assault charges, but I wasn’t there and the first casualty in war is truth.

To simplify when I left in March I told Mary that she could stay in my bedroom with her children while I was gone. Uncle Scott, with his fire and brimstone, came in and said that I was killing my mother by forcing her to care for her two little children, after I’d already abandoned mine, no less. Now part of the original agreement was for Mary to lighten the load per say by cooking, cleaning the house, buying food and helping care for the roommate Paul, whose health problems are myriad.

Mary has an economic problem in that funding for a few programs which she relied on including government assisted daycare and reduced rent went away. So she can’t work with having to take care of her kids and getting an SS check of $620 when rent starts at $1400 will not cover it. Mike, the father of her 4 and 7 year old children, dropped his child support payments due to, he claims, not making any money.

My Uncle Scott, who also relies on a very modest social security check, can no longer drive due to his diabetic retinopathy affecting his vision. So he came to stay with us about a week before I left for Thailand, even though we only had a couch to offer him at that point. He is in the exact same boat as Mary: he cannot work in his case due to his health issues and does not make enough to live independently without government subsidies. Also, he’s technically above retirement age at 68.

And then the fighting started. Sigh.

Editor’s note: it’s a dash

Did he say No experiencio in cursive?

Meanwhile in Japan:

The Chinese are complaining about spending say $40 million for abandoned high speed rail lines in unpopulated areas. Meanwhile at $21 billion with zero track laid, the Los Angeles - Las Vegas high speed rail line, the first ever if it comes to the US, is like China, Hold My Beer. You Chinese folks don’t even know what wasteful corruption is.

USA Number 1!

It looks like the dinosaur is going to eat Toledo. But why can’t it be a fire breathing dragon?

To invoke Rodney King here, why can’t we all just get along? My father would be rolling in his grave to know how many times the police have been called to the house. His famous refrain to me was to only call the police if I had a dead body and an alibi.

I considered the call to Child Protective Services presumably by Uncle Scott a low blow, especially as the accusations against Mary were unfounded. Children caught up in the web of that human trafficking ring are something like six times more likely to die and nine times more likely to be sexually abused than had they stayed with problematic parents (eg those already under investigation). Those results are even worse for children of color, as Zoey and Elon are. As I told Jasmine early on, Mary could literally have simply abandoned her children at our house for weeks on end with no contact, and I still would not have called CPS. Being that I know the children’s father and family in Michigan I would have tried to work a deal to bring them there.

Mary is not a bad mother, however, just an overwhelmed one who I felt I could help give a floor of stability for her and her children. The accusations: that Mary is a heavy drug user who routinely abandons her children and who also brings unknown men into the house, are pretty inflammatory. Mary has a boyfriend, Mario, who is the only guy that I have ever seen come around the Las Vegas house. I have never seen her do heavy drugs, and though she does go out sometimes without her children, it’s for short periods of time and they are being watched. The CPS lady seemed to think that Uncle Scott was maliciously trying to force her out through instigating her.

I’m starting to think the Las Vegas house needs an exorcism.

Uncle Scott is exactly a Fox News watching Boomer. He indisputedly supports Trump with the same unquestioning devotion as many triple boosted double masked Covidians had when they inexplicably ended up hospitalized and blamed the unjabbed for their fate. Delusion it seems is a very powerful drug.

I don’t know what Steve Bannon, or Alex Jones, or any of these guys are saying, but I do know that the system retains its power when people fight each other instead of the people shaking the jar. They want Uncle Scott to accuse Mary of being welfare in action for all of the food stamps she gets while he conveniently ignores who is paying for his precious diabetic needles. And what would happen in America if all of those checks stopped?

Those who stand alone are the first taken out. A lot of people are sounding the alarm about mass shortages incoming. With all of this pointless fighting I’m starting to already see it. Nobody can be homeless or they’ll be taken and disappeared. But a lot of people can’t afford a home.

I finally was able to get through to the visa scheduling website on Ka’s visa to America. They said it was fixed and it actually was, like all of my past issues with it had been some sort of bad dream. The waiting room that had looped me endlessly back, or said page cannot be displayed, or just said my wait time was 1 minute for 20 minutes straight, was gone entirely. The sign in page worked and there was a toggle bar to get through to the payment page. I’m still not sure on scheduling but with what is going on in Las Vegas I requested for it to be ASAP.

The worst they can say is no, which is the same as the last seven years of this ordeal. Wish us luck.

Tigerbel had babies! Four of these little cuties.

We could be headed into an insanely full house. With my daughters planning on coming in and especially if Ka gets his visa and everyone is still there, the demographics of the house alone would be reality television worthy. But here’s to new beginnings.

Prayers for Peace..

Buy me a ko-fi