Elizabeth N.
Herder of cats
....of the Famdamily Chronicles.
Cast: Brother D., his wife A., their sons G (married, one son, an hour from his parents) and S. (not-yet-married-but-well-attached, well away in California)
D and A bought the family ranch from the rest of us 15 years ago. It would take far too long to explain what they've done to the place, but it all involved far too much money, horrible business sense, lousy ranching sense, SHITTY neighboring and a lot of other complicated stuff. Now they are so far under water, it's hopeless, but they are making a last ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy involving round God Knows How Many of creative storytelling-for-financing and yet another SUCKER with a dream of ranching to go into some kind of partnership with them.
D. was always the Golden Boy in the family. There were several factors involved, but he was born into set of circumstances were he could do no wrong, was subjected to a lot of wacko parenting incompetence, and when he was not quite six, my poor sister was born and disrupted his status as baby and king. She was the object of his unmitigated wrath for.... well hell, it would STILL be the case except for the fact that my BIL is a lot bigger, stronger and better off than he is and would cheerfully squash him like a bug if he went one millimeter too far.
He abused me a lot, too, but not out of that sense of entitled wrath. Again, hard to explain, and I think it's enough to say that he's a good chunk of the reason I've been in therapy for so long, and that therapy has helped me learn to protect and value myself, and to see him from the perspective of an adult in charge of her own safety.
I'm the baby by far at 50. He's 65. A is 71, I think. A is the sanest of her seriously mentally ill clan, far as I can tell, with mostly untreated bipolar I with paranoid and psychotic features. Thankfully, she has mellowed some with age, the opposite of most of her clan. (So far, anyhow.) She is in charge of the medical care of her 90-something mom in CA, who is in permanent care with advancing dementia. Today I took her 200 miles to the airport in Billings so she can fly to LA for a few days to take care of some legal stuff.
That would be cool, except that D., it transpires, has undergone a very significant change of mental status in the last year or two. At the moment he's nice and well behaved, but he's lost a LOT of cognitive capacity and judgment. Mr. Engineer, Math Teacher, Former Fighter Pilot, Former Bush Pilot, Former Flight Instructor.....in other words, strongly analytical, detail oriented mind, but also lover of poetry and nature and philosophy...... cannot be trusted with the smallest of decisions. His vocabulary is a fraction of its usual strength.
Ach, so many details I could put here, trying to condense a little bit.....
He never had a lick of business sense, EVER, despite being a super hard working guy who really, really believed that a good idea plus endless investment of effort would pay off. For being such a colossal asshole who believed the world owed him its best and would always smile on him and reward him BIG TIME (for which he was willing to work, yes, but success was still a foregone conclusion), he nonetheless worked his butt off.
He continued to be an abusive, tantruming asshole. He and A left a stream of destruction in their wake. The ranch is not just mostly gone, not just mortgaged into fantasyland and beyond, it is a trash heap of wrecked dreams, underfunded ideas and sheer......STUPIDITY gone amok. Perhaps another day when I am not drinking I will write an essay about what I see there. My parents and the people who built the place before them are shitting themselves in eternity.
But for now I'll focus on my broken down brother, the guy whom I wish I could consign to hell and forget his existence, but whom I understand despite myself, for we are so very similar in personality.
I have been trying off and on for ages to gain and keep some connection to them and the nephews online. When I come out here, I always call and email and FB. The CA nephew S. responds faithfully but without family details. D and A rarely respond and in ways that leave me scratching my head as to whether they ever hear a word I sayvia any channel.
G pisses me off the worst, because he ignores every personal interaction, never acknowledges voice mail, email PM, NOTHING. His cunt wife does not respond either, ignores my FB friend request, but I'm still on the mass mail list for every gift grab event for the grandnephew. He has time to spam me with his political and "business" shit, though.
Week before last, he did a spam blast right after I had tried AGAIN to connect with him an his parents, an on the heels of my fucking inlaws' most recent bit of bullshit. I went OFF in true EN fashion. He decided let mommy and daddy kow I was "feeling neglected," so D called my sister. *sigh* Oh well, better than nothing. So I reciprocated and called back and discovered the Crazy House.
My sis and BIL told me they ahad sold the herd to pay some bills and that they were flailing about to survive. But they didn't know WHY......
Answer? My once thought bright brother fell prey not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES to email off shore junk mail scams. A and the sons caught it the first time and stopped it before any money went out but he did it TWICE MORE,
Cast: Brother D., his wife A., their sons G (married, one son, an hour from his parents) and S. (not-yet-married-but-well-attached, well away in California)
D and A bought the family ranch from the rest of us 15 years ago. It would take far too long to explain what they've done to the place, but it all involved far too much money, horrible business sense, lousy ranching sense, SHITTY neighboring and a lot of other complicated stuff. Now they are so far under water, it's hopeless, but they are making a last ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy involving round God Knows How Many of creative storytelling-for-financing and yet another SUCKER with a dream of ranching to go into some kind of partnership with them.
D. was always the Golden Boy in the family. There were several factors involved, but he was born into set of circumstances were he could do no wrong, was subjected to a lot of wacko parenting incompetence, and when he was not quite six, my poor sister was born and disrupted his status as baby and king. She was the object of his unmitigated wrath for.... well hell, it would STILL be the case except for the fact that my BIL is a lot bigger, stronger and better off than he is and would cheerfully squash him like a bug if he went one millimeter too far.
He abused me a lot, too, but not out of that sense of entitled wrath. Again, hard to explain, and I think it's enough to say that he's a good chunk of the reason I've been in therapy for so long, and that therapy has helped me learn to protect and value myself, and to see him from the perspective of an adult in charge of her own safety.
I'm the baby by far at 50. He's 65. A is 71, I think. A is the sanest of her seriously mentally ill clan, far as I can tell, with mostly untreated bipolar I with paranoid and psychotic features. Thankfully, she has mellowed some with age, the opposite of most of her clan. (So far, anyhow.) She is in charge of the medical care of her 90-something mom in CA, who is in permanent care with advancing dementia. Today I took her 200 miles to the airport in Billings so she can fly to LA for a few days to take care of some legal stuff.
That would be cool, except that D., it transpires, has undergone a very significant change of mental status in the last year or two. At the moment he's nice and well behaved, but he's lost a LOT of cognitive capacity and judgment. Mr. Engineer, Math Teacher, Former Fighter Pilot, Former Bush Pilot, Former Flight Instructor.....in other words, strongly analytical, detail oriented mind, but also lover of poetry and nature and philosophy...... cannot be trusted with the smallest of decisions. His vocabulary is a fraction of its usual strength.
Ach, so many details I could put here, trying to condense a little bit.....
He never had a lick of business sense, EVER, despite being a super hard working guy who really, really believed that a good idea plus endless investment of effort would pay off. For being such a colossal asshole who believed the world owed him its best and would always smile on him and reward him BIG TIME (for which he was willing to work, yes, but success was still a foregone conclusion), he nonetheless worked his butt off.
He continued to be an abusive, tantruming asshole. He and A left a stream of destruction in their wake. The ranch is not just mostly gone, not just mortgaged into fantasyland and beyond, it is a trash heap of wrecked dreams, underfunded ideas and sheer......STUPIDITY gone amok. Perhaps another day when I am not drinking I will write an essay about what I see there. My parents and the people who built the place before them are shitting themselves in eternity.
But for now I'll focus on my broken down brother, the guy whom I wish I could consign to hell and forget his existence, but whom I understand despite myself, for we are so very similar in personality.
I have been trying off and on for ages to gain and keep some connection to them and the nephews online. When I come out here, I always call and email and FB. The CA nephew S. responds faithfully but without family details. D and A rarely respond and in ways that leave me scratching my head as to whether they ever hear a word I sayvia any channel.
G pisses me off the worst, because he ignores every personal interaction, never acknowledges voice mail, email PM, NOTHING. His cunt wife does not respond either, ignores my FB friend request, but I'm still on the mass mail list for every gift grab event for the grandnephew. He has time to spam me with his political and "business" shit, though.
Week before last, he did a spam blast right after I had tried AGAIN to connect with him an his parents, an on the heels of my fucking inlaws' most recent bit of bullshit. I went OFF in true EN fashion. He decided let mommy and daddy kow I was "feeling neglected," so D called my sister. *sigh* Oh well, better than nothing. So I reciprocated and called back and discovered the Crazy House.
My sis and BIL told me they ahad sold the herd to pay some bills and that they were flailing about to survive. But they didn't know WHY......
Answer? My once thought bright brother fell prey not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES to email off shore junk mail scams. A and the sons caught it the first time and stopped it before any money went out but he did it TWICE MORE,
. I'll be back. If you're reading this far, bless you.
