Reassessment

Thursday the 18^th, I spent an hour and a half talking on the phone with our builder Brody.

It started as a work call: Since the USDA has fully shafted us and the Kutztown property is basically impossible for us through a conventional mortgage, we're back to square one and looking into other options—one of which was the possibility of buying a quarter of an acre I had found recently that already had an old mobile home on it very close to Athennia's work.

The plan would have been to buy the property for the land itself, trade the existing home in as part of a down payment to Clayton Homes (just like trading your old car in when buying a new one), and then purchasing the house we'd actually like to live in. But, the existing home was manufactured in 1975—a year before HUD standardized building code requirements for manufactured homes—and so no lender was all that keen on working with us to finance that project.

Sucky but understandable. <shrug>

Anyway, it was a slow day at the salesroom and Brody had time to chat; so we ended up discussing all sorts of topics, like people, the meaning of life, and the first 80 pages of my novel Untouchable that I'd sent him a week prior.

Later that night, Athennia and I watched Gallagher's 1980 comedy debut An Uncensored Evening...

It's absolutely astounding how many "moving parts" that guy's acts had to them. He was truly a master of his craft and a pioneer in his field; and watching something from more than four decades ago was a nice change of pace from today's snowflake world of "don't hurt my feelings or I'll call it a hate crime and have you thrown in prison."

Thanks for the laughs, Gallagher :)

Friday the 19^th, Lou drove Taylor to a school function up in Allentown... and then called Athennia screaming in pain and insisting that she had severe pain in her feet and was breathing in a more ragged fashion than usual. (P.S. That's Athennia's description, not mine.)

So, then?

Instead of calling 911, she decided to drive herself and Taylor all the way back to Bucks County—and she literally would've just driven home and stayed there, if Athennia hadn't convinced her to go to the emergency room at St. Mary Hospital.

It turned out that the oxygen levels in her blood were critically low—dropping to a dangerous 83% before they finally managed to stabilize her.

Then they determined she was fighting a severe case of cellulitis—particularly in her feet and legs—as evidenced by the bright red skin (among other things, I'm sure) that she had managed to keep hidden from Taylor, Athennia, and apparently even her podiatrist somehow.

So, Athennia left work early and rushed right to the hospital, stayed there most of the evening, and finally got home later that night (at which point we watched Gallagher's Two Real special).

Saturday afternoon, I had a visit from my old "friend" Cherkoff—the guy who used to bring his crappy Jeep Cherokee with a jet engine around to rotate his tires next to the guard rail four times a week when I first moved in here.

For whatever reason, he must've woken up today and decided that 17 months and counting was more than enough time for his blue pickup to sit here with an IKEA "do-it-yourself treehouse plus tire swing" sitting in the bed.

So, he showed up and spent a few hours trying (and of course failing) to get the thing running...

Sunday the 21^st, our realtor Angel was supposed to take us on a walkthrough of the property with the 1975 mobile home that I mentioned above. But he'd had a death in the family a week prior and canceled on us because his family had him out on all sorts of funereal errands.

He offered us Tuesday or Wednesday evening as alternatives; but, not knowing what might happen with Lou, we didn't feel comfortable committing to either of those. (Incidentally, the property had a pending offer 12 hours later anyway; so it turns out it didn't matter anyway.)

Suddenly we had a free day to do whatever we wanted... and Athennia announced that she wanted to go see her mom again (completely understandable) and then take her grocery-shopping afterwards (less understandable).

So, off she went.

And maybe she got back around 3:30-ish. I honestly don't remember.

But apparently, instead of perpetually-famished Taylor using her food stamps to learn how to feed herself like the legal adult she is, she wanted to squander them and treat Athennia, me, and Riley (and Athennia's sister Sandy) to lunch from Wawa.

So, Athennia and Taylor came back to the apartment with lunch in hand, and we ate together like a family—at least, until Sandy started blowing up Athennia's phone...

Yo! What the fuck is goin' on; why didn't you call me? I just got to the hospital and went to Ma's room and found it empty. I nearly had a fuckin' heart attack! I was like, 'Yo! Where's my mom?' They moved her down to the first floor, to the ICU. They said they called you. What the fuck? Why didn't you tell me?

Athennia had to out-shout her sister just to explain the simple reality that nobody had, in fact, called her—as we all well knew, since her phone had been sitting right on the kitchen table all through lunch.

But...

The fact that either Lou must have given the hospital an incorrect number for Athennia, or someone on staff entered it into their system wrong, meant ding, round two!

Time to go back to the hospital.

I looked at Athennia and sort of shrugged...

Look, if your sister wasn't there, I'd offer to come with you for moral support. But, you know I can barely tolerate your mom's antics as it is... and neither one of us can stand your sister. She's loud; she's crass; she's ignorant.

I can only bite my tongue for so long before I explode; and nobody wants that in the middle of the hospital.

But Athennia said she would love the moral support... and that she was primarily going to the hospital to lace into her sister and set her story straight.

So, out we went. It was maybe almost 5:00 by this point.

We found Lou's room—which wasn't difficult at all, since we could just follow the sound of Sandy's voice once we were within about 25 miles of it.

And Athennia set the story straight: She had not received any calls, because the hospital staff had transposed two digits of her phone number when they entered it into their computer system.

Mystery solved: There was not some nefarious plot to prevent Sandy from getting updates, as she seemed to think there was.

Fortunately for us, Sandy had an hour's drive home and finally decided to leave around 7:00 P.M.

So then Athennia and I took the opportunity to enlighten two of the nurses about the... sensitivity of the bigger picture—particularly the reality that Athennia's uncle Kevin technically has power of attorney over Lou, and if he were to find out she's in the hospital, he might take that as his chance to come clean house and throw away everything in Lou's storage unit and her trailer... possibly including Taylor.

Then we warned them about Sandy's modus operandi and the fact that she'll be hovering there like a fly on shit, because if there's any chance of Lou passing away, Sandy will be the first one to grab the keys to the trailer and go rummage through it for cash, pills, pawnable items, and whatever else might appeal to a junkie.

We finally walked out of the hospital at sunset...

...but, no sooner did we arrive home, when Taylor called to let Athennia know that,

Hey, so you know how you and Aunt Sandy just agreed like half an hour ago not to involve uncle Kevin or uncle Oscar unless it really got to the point that you feel it's absolutely necessary?

Well, Aunt Sandy literally called uncle Kevin as we were leaving the parking lot.

So, Athennia decided to call her uncle Oscar.

Surprisingly, Oscar actually answered Athennia's call, and the conversation seemed to go relatively well. Out of respect for her mother, Athennia said she would defer to him and Kevin as far as how they might want to handle the situation; and so, Oscar asked Athennia to do three things:

• go over to the trailer ASAP and collect Lou's purse, medications, car keys, and house keys before Sandy could get her hands on them;
• find a copy of the will and let him know definitively what it said about who had power of attorney (because apparently Lou and her brothers had started drawing up a new one after we cut everyone off last year, but Oscar didn't think that version had ever actually been notarized);
• and finally, try to complete the bankruptcy process Lou was still in the middle of—because it could all backfire in her face otherwise

And then he said something I've had in the back of my mind pretty much from when I first met Athennia:

...And, when the day comes that something does happen with your mom, just walk away: Don't set foot in that trailer; don't stress about going in and sorting through everything or trying to clean it up. Just wash your hands of it and walk away.

So, when the day's festivities were finally over and we looked at our phones to check the time, it was... 10:45 P.M.

So much for "I'll be back by 2:00."

The Fam strikes again!

Monday the 22^nd was Riley's first day of a three-day PSSA test stint. Our local testing center was down at the movie-theater-turned-church on the outskirts of the Franklin Mills Philadelphia Mills Mall.

I was originally slated to accompany Athennia and Riley to the PSSAs; but then we had a notice on our door from our maintenance guys late last week to let us know that an exterminator would be coming by sometime Monday morning or afternoon.

Kitten grabbed us some lunch from Burger King on the way home from the PSSAs; and then, finding ourselves with a rare Monday afternoon together (with her having taken off of work), we decided to dedicate a few hours to protecting her mom from the chaotic force of nature that is Sandy...

First, we realized pretty quickly that Athennia's copy of the will was nowhere to be found in the apartment—which could only mean that we had packed it back in the summer when we thought we would actually be moving sometime this decade... and thus, it was in a box in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house.

So I gave my dad a heads up that we were stopping by to do some "unpacking." We sliced open about a dozen boxes that we thought could have been potential candidates, but no luck. And so, the absolute last place the will could've been was in Athennia's safe—which was also at my parents' house, but she hadn't thought to bring along the key.

That meant the only solution was to lug the entire safe home with us.

We also took the opportunity to stop by Lou's trailer on our way home, though Taylor told us the moment we arrived that Sandy was already on her way up and would be there any minute.

Athennia found a plastic bag and collected her mom's purse, medications, car keys, and even the key to the shed—since Taylor informed us that Lou's neighbor "Doc" (who does handiwork and odd jobs for her in exchange for cash or, more often, pills) had taken it upon himself to use Lou's lawnmower to cut not only her grass, but also several of the other neighbors'.

Despite my repeated warnings to Athennia that we should bounce before Sandy arrived, so as to avoid conflict, Athennia let Taylor and her neediness pull us in just long enough so that Sandy pulled up just as Kitten and I were leaving.

We played it casual, got everything safely into Athennia's car, and managed to be on our way without much issue—though, if things had played out some other way, I suppose the trailer park would have been the place of all places to have an issue.

We weren't even two miles down the road though, when Athennia's phone started lighting up with voicemails from Sandy, accusing us of "some shady shit going on."

When we finally got home from our adventures (and I got that damn safe back upstairs), we made stromboli for dinner and relaxed the rest of the night.

Tuesday the 23^rd, my mom and I took Riley to her second day of PSSAs.

With a few hours to kill while she was testing, Mom and I decided to grab breakfast at Hampton House Waffles & Eatery in Feasterville and then check out the happenin' place that is the Neshaminy Mall.

Luckily I'm 39 now; so I didn't have to hold my mom's hand to prevent us from getting separated in the crowd...

We stopped at Barnes & Noble to grab Riley an overpriced muffin to eat whenever she finished testing, and I scanned the science section and impulsively picked up a copy of Matt Parker's Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World—which, based on a quick skim-through, I'm confident will be well worth the $18 price tag :)

The guy who rang us up had some video-game themed tattoos on his arm; so, opting for the absolute weirdest wording I could conceive, I asked,

I don't wanna sound weird; but can I get a picture of your Luigi?

Then I explained that my wife has a lot of ink as well—and my sister and I used to play a crap-ton of Mario—and I thought they'd both appreciate the artwork.

And so? Check out the Luigi on this guy...

When my mom and I got back to the Franklin-Mills-turned-Philadelphia-Mills-movie-theater-turned-church parking lot, we ended up sitting there for probably almost two hours until Riley finally texted us that she was finished.

But in that time, we observed all sorts of oddities that one would probably expect to see in a Philadelphia-branded locale.

First, there was some crackhead-looking guy sort of sauntering around the edge of the lot—with a hoodie on, and his socks pulled up over his shins, despite the temperature being in the 70s.

Then, some time later, this guy showed up...

I wanted to go knock on his window and tell him,

Hey there, Big Shoots... I realize that parking spots are few and far between around here; but, if you look hard, I think you could probably still find one. And, like, I do mean one, because this is not a Ferrari.

But my mom asked me not to :(

Finally we got Riley's text that she was finished. Then she asked if I wanted to meet her friend Taaro's dad...

...which I honestly really didn't...

...but I said sure, because I knew that she wanted me to.

So, I headed inside and found her and Taaro standing against a wall; and, no sooner had she introduced me to Taaro, when he said, "Oh, here comes my dad."

I turned around...

He said his name is Kenny; and it turned out that he and Athennia had already met the day before—during which she had briefed him on my background in IT, which he apparently shares.

So, we geeked out about that, swapped some war stories, and I got a reminder from the universe not to judge a book by its cover :)

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Athennia had spent the last couple days confiding in her best friend Emily—and two colleagues John and Melinda—about the recent developments with Lou's ongoing antics (both inside and outside her current health issues), and the added dimensions of Sandy selfishly vying for control, and the strained relationships with Athennia's uncles, and Taylor's safety hanging in the balance for the time being, and so on and so forth.

Apparently the sentiments from Emily, Melinda, and John were unanimous and congruent with what I've been saying for more than two years now...

But John took his analysis a step further...

And, that statement alone was enough to spark an epiphany and cause Athennia to look back over whatever semblance of a relationship she and Lou might have ever shared... and she realized that they've never actually really had one at all.

So, she called me from work and asked if I could talk.

Sure.

And she laid it all out for me in depth—explaining that she finally understood the reality of it all...

So...

I had been under the impression that this was the revelation Athennia had had last year that prompted us to write the letter cutting our ties with everyone (and logically explaining why, so there'd be no ambiguity).

But, it seemed that Athennia needed to hear it from someone even more outside the bubble than I am.

Or, from three someones, with complete unanimity.

And so, despite us just having taken the steps the day before to thwart Sandy's attempts to get her grubby paws on Lou's cash, keys, pills, and entire life, Athennia was now ready to concede everything to her dear little sister.

Then came Athennia's inevitable admission that this would eventually become incredibly difficult for her to abide by, whenever the time came that things started to get even worse than they have been so far.

When her mom realizes how utterly fucked she is, with an addict-minded narcissist calling the shots.

When her health continues to deteriorate.

When things continue to get increasingly "real" in the land of fantasy.

...But, Athennia knows that it will become increasingly difficult for her to just sit on the sidelines and do nothing, even as she realizes why she has to do that...

And so, she said, she would need me to provide moral support and remind her.

But I couldn't help but point out that that's not exactly an enviable position for me to be in—or a necessarily healthy one as far as our relationship goes.

Like,

I worry about the potential for that sort of situation to pit us against each other and breed resentment between us real quick—even in a situation that has nothing to do with us directly.

So, I told her that I think she should write herself a letter—here in the present, in her own words and her own handwriting—to serve as a compass of sorts going forward. Then, whenever times do get tougher, she can lean on me for support while referring to that, and it won't ever feel to either one of us like I'm just unilaterally holding her back from providing the help that some visceral emotional part of her will surely feel compelled to provide.

That's the best approach I could come up with, at least. Who knows? I have absolutely no experience in this realm, because my family is... not like this.

That evening I made tacos for dinner and Taylor came over for some homework help.

Then she asked if we could take her to Wawa on the way home so she could stock up on food for the next day; and I waited in the car while she and Athennia went inside.

Some matter of minutes later, they returned to the car and Athennia said,

Sorry we took so long... I just had to stay in there and watch that bullshit go down!

You didn't just see five black guys run out of here just now?

(Nope.)

Yeah, there were a bunch of guys that all came in together; and then they split into three groups and started loading up their schoolbags with candy bars and potato chips and all kinds of stuff from the shelves.

The "main guy" had a hoodie pulled tightly over his face, and big movie-star sunglasses and nitrile gloves; and the others were just sort of trying to hide their faces from the cameras.

All the employees were well aware of what was going on; there's just nothing they can do about it. And they said the cops don't think it's important enough.

Wednesday the 24^th was Riley's final day of PSSA testing...

I had set my brand new book right by the front door to ensure that I wouldn't forget to grab it on my way out... and then I promptly forgot to grab it on my way out.

So, with me being the forgetful child that apparently am, my mommy and I retraced our steps from the day before and popped into Barnes & Noble yet again, where she offered to buy me a book.

This time I opted for fiction: I regularly slog through nonfiction of all kinds—software-engineering, mathematics, scientific skepticism, political philosophy—but I rarely consume any fiction just for fun.

I went with Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" novel Bad Luck and Trouble—figuring that since I've already seen the second season of the show that was based on the book, I could enjoy the novel for what it was while also analyzing the story itself as well as the differences between the book and the show... all of which would be potentially helpful to me as a writer of fiction.

Then, instead of buying Riley another $4 Starbucks muffin inside B&N, Mom and I stopped by Acme and grabbed a dozen doughnuts for just $2 more.

Later that night, Athennia was craving a salad and offered to treat me and Riley to Saladworks.

And, as if we weren't fielding enough bullshit this week, her Check-Engine light came on halfway home; so we stopped at AutoZone to borrow their scanner and see what error code the car was throwing.

EVAP PURGE VALVE SOLENOID (*and/or any of these 15 other things as well)

Awesome.

So, it wasn't exactly super-urgent in the sense that Athennia couldn't go to work the next day. But the repairs would probably be expensive, and she'd get terrible gas mileage in the meantime (which, under current sociopolitical conditions, is even more expensive).

Never a dull moment around here!