It's hot and sunny. I can't complain about it being hot and sunny after complaining so much about the rain. It would be entirely inconsistent except...oh, well. I hurt like I tend to hurt in the middle of winter. My arthritis kicked in on the day after my pain doc appointment and I'm expecting a storm. This sort of heat powers storms except I've been hiding indoors so I can't tell how humid it is. You need heat and humidity for one of those typical summer late afternoon storms. Every joint aches like there's a storm coming and my joints are never wrong. This is stormy weather even if there's no clouds in the sky.
Yes, I'm feeling cranky and it's mostly the pain. What I'm jokingly calling "my day of jubilee" is coming tomorrow. You have to be a fan of "The West Wing" to really get the joke in its entirety. I've had an entire week to stew over my parents' apparent generosity and stewing is bad for my health. The main fact is that, after tomorrow, this house will be mine and so there should be no need for further contact. The devil may be found in the details and there could be a lot of details. When they bought the house, they told me it was so that I could have a place to live and then there were details thrown in at the closing. The most frightening was an "irrevocable power of attorney" which gave my parents the ability to act in my name with regard to the house. That and a few other document turned my name's presence on the deed into a piece of legal fiction. I was just enough of a homeowner to avoid jumping through a few hurdles concerning getting utilities put in my name.
When we first moved in, there were a few times when my father saved our asses by fixing things. After that, he started saying that he would fix things when we asked but the jobs rarely got more than halfway done. Eventually, we stopped asking. We're tough enough to live without (fill in the blank), after all. We were constantly plagued by the uncertainty of how he would react if we did anything and that damned paperwork made it so his reactions could have legal repercussions. As you know, there is nothing that I could do to please him so anything we did do would cause problems.
In 2009, we embarked on the great housecleaning. Our goal was to make it so that he might not be pleased but that he would have to look in order to find some reason to complain. In the middle of this great quest, we went to New York to visit the in-laws on our 10th wedding anniversary. It was all we could afford to do at the time and I thought Melissa would be happy to see her mother and sister. She's always happy to see her mother and sister as am I so I thought adding an extra time might make her happier. After all, anniversaries are a time to think of making your spouse happy.
We asked my mother to look in on the cats a couple of times when we were away. She agreed because she's an animal lover, usually an overall good egg and we were all getting along fine at that point. Now, the great housecleaning had made considerable progress downstairs mostly concentrating on the areas we used. We never announced an intention to please them or anything because we didn't want to set up false expectations. After all, not everyone can be the crazed cleaning machines that my parents are. So...we came back from a week in New York that probably could have gone better. After all, I was sick then too. Next we knew, our efforts to clean had been totally ignored.
My father had checked in on the cats. Now, he was being nosy as usual but he claimed the fear that one of the cats had escaped when he came in. It was just an excuse to look behind the metaphorical curtain. We returned to find enraged parents because things like the bottoms of toilet seats hadn't been touched. I cite that only because it's a classic case of "out of sight/out of mind." My birth defect left me as a non-seat lifter which left no seat lifters in the household. We were informed that they were going to "take us in hand" (my words - I have no recall of the conversation in which I lost my temper) and treat us like idiots. I had extensive experience with this sort of abuse and tried to roll with it. Melissa did not so it was up in the air for a while whether we would stay if being treated like that was a condition.
Everyone backed off and it seemed as if cooler heads prevailed. They treated us like pariahs along with my mother's entire side of the extended family. This was a shock because I had always believed in my aunt and uncle. When my sister had her first child, I had hopes of being an Uncle John just like my Uncle John but the feud and my poor health prevailed. Time passed and I ceased to think of it as some sort of punishment. As I'd always expected, the feelings of being a waste of oxygen who needed to die faded as time passed away from them.
My only goal in "the plan" was to find a place to live in peace. If there is some trap clause in tomorrow's paperwork, I'll have to make a quick decision to sign or to fight back. This house is not and never will be an investment to me. Don't get me wrong. I understand the benefits of investments but I wanted a place to live in peace. Peace means minimal if any contact with my parents. Peace means no power of attorney hanging over my head. Peace means freedom from fear. That's all I want.
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