Well, I thought I was done traveling, but maybe not.  You know, guys, I never thought I would start a journal here.  I have about three other blogs.  One was for my overseas teaching experiences.  Since I am no longer teaching overseas, that one is defunct.  And I can't post this stuff anyway because my family reads that one, and I don't want my family to read this.  One is for the teachers at my former school.  That one isn't active because I haven't told them about it yet.  I am waiting to see what happens with the lawsuits.  And the other is my very private thoughts that I don't tell anyone.  I may turn them into a book one day.  A nice, anonymous book. 

Anyway, I am just so stressed that I have to tell someone.  I called one of my very best friends, and she commiserated with me, but she is traveling to her son's graduation from the Navy, so I can't bother her right now.  And she is dealing with her boyfriend's cancer anyway.  I can't talk to my husband because he is in this...stuff...with me.

But I am not sure how much more I can take.  No, on second thought, that is a stupid comment.  The truth is that unless I decide to kill myself I can take a lot more and will.  But I can sure tell you that the summer of 2007 is not one of my banner years. 

Oh, yeah, these are supposed to be hair journals.  Well, my hair isn't doing so good now, either.  It seems very dry and there is a lot of breakage.  I have been conditioning every day but...I also put a pair of scissors in the car and I do s&d on long trips and when I am waiting for my deliveries at Sonic.  (For those of you not located in the southern US, Sonic is a drive-in burger joint where the waitresses still wear roller skates.  They have the BEST crushed ice, and a coke just tastes better when it's in a Sonic cup!)

Anyway, I just feel like I have to tell someone, some nice anonymous someones, just what hell my life has been.  I mentioned on another post that I had to leave Egypt.  I did not finish the school year, but left six weeks before.  I left because of my husband.  It is such a long story, and I'm not sure how to put it.

The people at the school are very unethical.  When we first came, they bought our children's plane tickets so we could be sure of all traveling together.  We were to pay them back when our house sold, which it didn't do until March.  They were supposed to deduct the cost of their health insurance, but instead they lumped it in with the tickets.  We owed them $5,400.00.  In October, a teacher quit, and my husband offered to do his job for two weeks while they looked for a replacement.  The school assigned him the duties permanently in an attempt to save the salary.  My husband informed them that if they wanted him to do two jobs they would pay HIM the other salary.  He taught those classes for three months, but never got any extra income.  If he had, it would have been about $5,400.00. 

There were lots of politics and power plays and garbage like that going on at the school.  He got caught in some of them, and when we returned from spring break in April he had a letter on his desk reassigning most of his duties to his assistant, who until he was hired was in charge of the computers at the school.  That letter was followed by another reducing the length of his contract and his salary, and that was followed by more sabotage of the computer system he was left in charge of.  So we left.

Now I had been trying for five years beforehand to be an administrator.  But my problem was I had no TAKS experience.  (TAKS is the standardized state test here in Texas.)  It was one of the reasons we started teaching overseas.  I had signed a contract to be the elementary principal next year, but I kept hearing rumors that they were looking for a principal.  That was one of the ways I knew that if we didn't leave my husband would be fired.

When we returned, my stepfather did not treat us like we were people who had been through a horrible experience and left all their dreams in the desert.  He treated us like we were a bunch of spongers who were only too glad of an excuse to start sucking them dry once again.  The first day we were here, he told my husband that being here was a problem and our job was to get out as fast as possible.

For background, our first overseas jobs were in Saudi Arabia.  We had a lot of visa trouble and ending up not leaving until mid-October, eight weeks into the 2004 - 2005 school year.  We stayed with my mother and her husband during that time because we had gotten rid of all our furniture and were trying to rent our house.  It was supposed to be two weeks.  It ended up being two months.  We sold one car before we left, but the other didn't sell for months.  My mother had to take care of the sale for us.

We left those jobs and took ones in Egypt.  The pay was much less and we couldn't afford to keep our house.  My mother had to handle that sale too.  Apparently my stepfather really resented that.

Anyway, the school threatened us with felony theft, since we left without paying the money we owed them.  We replied they owed us an equal amount.  Actually, more, since they withheld his last paycheck.  They said if we didn't pay them we would be hit with punitive damages. interest, lawyer's fees, and whatnot in addition to the criminal charges.  We asked if they wanted their website back. 

See, the school made my husband put the charges for hosting the school website on his personal credit card.

I realize he is saying that he wants a divorce.  I tell him that I think this is not something we should be discussing right now.  But I have realized something.

For over twenty years I have been trying to keep peace between my stepfather and my husband.  I have told my husband more than once that I didn't want my mother to have to chose between her husband and her daughter.  But I know now that the person who didn't want to have to choose is me.  But that option of "non-choice" has been taken away.  I have to choose now.  And there really is no choice.  I made a vow before God nineteen years ago that I would leave my mother and father and cleave unto him, and that is what I have to do. 

But I don't have to be happy about it.

Thanks for listening.

Oh my.    You have had some major challenges thrown in front of you.  I hope that just putting it all down in writing has helped you see your situation more clearly and can help you develop a plan that will give you, your kids and your husband some peace. 

So where was I?  Oh yeah, denying reality.  So after she left he stayed in the house, even though he really couldn't afford the payments alone.  It was very important to him that EVERYTHING be as it was, so she could come back to exactly the same life she left.  Which idea gets crazier the more I think about it.  

He quit his job, withdrew his retirement, and spent it on get-rich-quick schemes.  When those didn't pan out, he REALLY couldn't afford the house, so he got behind on the payments and got an eviction notice.  He went through all sorts of machinations, including bankruptcy, to keep the house.  But without income, he just lost it again.  The sheriff was coming to evict him on a Tuesday.  My brother showed up with some friends to move him out to his mother's house, which he inherited free and clear, on a Saturday.  My dad refused to go.  He believed God would miraculously bring my mother back, and that God would supernaturally prevent him from losing the house.

He has been living in my grandmother's house for the last 20 years.

The times he has told me he was supernaturally prevented from succeeding, supernaturally prevented from looking for a job, the times he has told me that God was going to miraculously restore everything...well, let's say if I had a dime for each one I would not be going on public assistance now.

People who successfully ignore reality for over 25 years get REALLY good at it.  

During those 25 years he neglected his health, including the diabetes he refused to treat.  As a result, our interaction today was taking him to the retinal specialist, who injected his eye with medicine to stop the bleeding.  But whenever I asked him to go to the eye doctor, offered to drive him, offered to pay for it, he said no.  God was going to restore his sight.

When we were there, he couldn't read the E.  The big one.  At the top of the chart.  Yet he sat there in that examining room and told me that he was going to go back and live in his house.  Ah, the house.  I will get to the house.

He didn't brush his teeth during those 25 years, with the result they are rotting brown stumps in his mouth.  It is even difficult to be in a car with him, as the stench of the rot kind of wafts into the front seat from the back.  We haven't dealt with those yet, although I did get a statement of care from the dentist.  $8,700.00.  But God was going to restore those too.

When he was going through really lean periods, I sent him groceries, since I lived over 300 miles away at the time.  The next time I visited, I got them back.

Now, the house.  There was an article in Reader's Digest this past year about collectors.  How they fill their houses with stuff.  To the point they have to sleep in their yards.  Well, he wasn't THAT bad.  His bed was clear.  But imagine a 2100 sqf house filled with garbage.  Not rotting banana peels, but broken chairs.  Crutches.  Lawn mowers.  Vacuum cleaners.  Books.  Clothes.  Coffee cups.  Magazines.  Imagine stacks of this stuff six feet high, with little paths running in between.  It took two hours yesterday to clear the entry way so we could fully open the door.    

I spent years worrying, if I couldn't get him on the phone, that he was dead in that house and no one knew.  I agonized over him driving his motorcycle, asking myself how I would feel if he killed someone, or worse, caused someone to kill him, leaving them with the guilt and possible criminal charges?  

Finally, last year, I got a reprieve.  He stopped at a convenience store because he didn't feel well, and the clerk called EMS.  The hospital said he had the beginnings of dementia and refused to release him to anything but a facility.  They also took away his license.

I found a facility near where my brother works.  He improved SO MUCH, that we decided to try him at home with a home health nurse.  Stupid, with the house the way it was, but he really was a LOT better.  But the nurse said he couldn't stay, and when I walked into the kitchen and found a burner on full blast and nothing on it, I agreed.  I found one by his house, hoping to move him into assisted living at a later date.  He is on Medicaid, so things are complicated by the utter lack of finances on both our parts.  (Part of my teaching in the Middle East was to try and get some money to take care of him.  Boy, did that one backfire big time!)  He kept trying to walk home.   So while I was in Egypt my brother moved him to a facility much farther away.  His friends can't visit easily, but the prospect of walking home is daunting, even to him!  Plus, he is in the locked ward.

He doesn't want to be there.  I don't want him there.  But he still has this idea that he is going home.  He told me this today.  I have asked him to give me power-of-attorney to sell the house.  If he would, I would work to get him someplace less restrictive, because that would tell me he has accepted his reality and is willing to deal with it.  No dice.

When he entered the facility, Medicaid placed a lien upon his house.  They get to recover their costs before he can make a profit on its sale or I can inherit.  Well, the house isn't worth that much.  The year he has spent in the facility so far has pretty much eaten any profit on the house.  But in the meantime, it is sitting empty, a liability to all in the neighborhood.  

Okay, there is still more, but I promised my son I would stop at 10:30 and watch a movie.  To be continued. 

As I sit here,all I can think and say is OMG!  I feel as if,maybe it is the way you write,that I am right there seeing all of this!  I totally feel for ya!  Trying to deal with Medicaid or Medicare can only be short of screaming at the top of your lungs in sheer fustration!  They're there though with their "hands" out to either be paid or expect to be payed(?) for whatever they think they should be payed for. Also with your father's "unique" thought of God will provide or take care of this mess,is so much like the thought that I have of my father,he'd throw his kids or anyone for that matter a weighted life preserver if you were drowning!  I wish you all the best with dealing with all the garbage nonsense that alot of these burocratic agencies throw at you.  Also your father.  He sounds like a very talented man that has a gift for dealing with reality.  I don't mean that in any way sarcastic or malitious(spelling?)

You are welcome. Thank you on the correction.  It's alittle tough to think that early in the morning and spell words not often used!!
Please think on that book.  I truly believe it not only would be good "therapy",but you write with such openess,it is refreshing!  I did alot of creative writing in highschool and further on in my adult life.  It truly is a privledge to expand on the ability to read,write and share with others.  Just my opinion .

Thanks, BB.  You have no idea what seeing the words, "He is mentally ill", just matter-of-factly down there in black and white (or was it black and purple?) did for me.  You are right.  I cannot argue or fight with him.  He isn't capable of rational actions, and the fact that he looks and sounds reasonable so much of the time doesn't mean he is.