It's been a while since I posted anything here. Life has been...a bit up in the air for the past few months.
I am typing this from a new place. Another room rental, but there is no uptight live-in landlord/lady to deal with here. Thank fuck. I always knew there was a reason I was not entirely comfortable with my former landlady, but that is all in the past now.
It is going to take me some time to settle into my new place. Due in a large part to the fact that I still have too much stuff. Not as much as I used to, thankfully, but still a fair bit that I need to organize and put away neatly somehow. I have visions of me having to rent a small storage unit somewhere, but such is life.
In other news, I bought a vehicle finally. My dad's estate has been pretty much finalized, and I got a nice chunk of money wired into my account. With that, I went car hunting, and ended up buying a 2019 Nissan Rogue. I paid $8500 down and financed the rest, with reasonable monthly payments considering that my credit is not the best. And it still left me with a hefty amount in the bank. I paid my credit card mostly off, and have set about replacing some of my furniture so I no longer have to deal with the mismatched cast-offs I had been dealing with for entirely too long.
My sister is...learning some very big lessons in adulting as of late. Her boyfriend/fiancé/whatever is stuck in the US for the foreseeable future due to being denied entry back into Canada a couple of weekends ago. It turns out that he had a bench warrant out stemming from an incident in 2009 that he was apparently unaware of. Especially as he's been coming and going across the border several times over the past couple of years.
The pair of them got stuck in Detroit for a couple of days, complete with a pickup truck and a car dolly rented from a U-Haul location somewhere in Windsor, Ontario. Because he got stopped at the Canadian border. And she can't drive for a whole bunch of reasons. She called me the day he got denied entry and basically said it was an emergency, and explained what had happened. As if I was going to be able to wave some magic wand and either get him entry into Canada or me to suddenly appear there to pick up the truck and shit. Yeah, that wasn't happening, obviously.
I told her to figure it out, and welcome to being an adult where people don't just run out to save her ass when she does something stupid. In the end, well, I paid way more than I should have to get them out of the mess they found themselves in. I paid for a night at a hotel, a bus ticket for him to get to Kentucky (where his mother is living right now), and the Incorrect Drop-off fee for the U-Haul stuff. As it was, my sister had tried to arrange for somebody to come get her in Detroit and bring along another person to drive the U-Haul back. However, the two times I know of that the attempt was made, the people were denied entry into the US. Even though they had all the necessary documents to cross the border. Maybe it was the situation, I don't know. But things were going badly and they didn't look like they were going to get better anytime soon. Hence me forking out close to $1000 by the end of it. But at least my sister doesn't have a huge U-Haul bill hanging over her head, she's back home in Leamington, Ontario, and the dude she's head over heels in love with is safe with family. AND he has a job, and access to a vehicle in Kentucky.
During all of this, I had researched what I would have to do in order to have my sister declared unable to look after herself and make financial decisions for herself. After months of watching dude use her financially and making no effort to actually look after my sister and help her, I just couldn't sit back and not do anything. From my vantage point here in Newfoundland, it was pretty damn easy to see that he was making no fucking effort. And my sister was making it easy for him by just handing him her bank card. The saving grace in all of this is the fact that she can't touch her trust account and make withdrawals. The trust pays her rent, tenants' insurance, her utilities, and her phone and wifi bills. She gets close to $1500/month in disability payments, which should be more than enough to pay for groceries and the odd night out. But she was having difficulties making that stretch. Why? She was paying for his monthly phone bill, insurance on Dad's car, gas for said car, and vapes and food for both of them! And that was before thinking about groceries when they needed them. At no point had he financially contributed a damn thing, and that started around the time Dad was admitted to the hospital last year.
So, it was pretty clear to me that my sister couldn't see what was going on. And she really doesn't have the adult capabilities for reasoning this shit out. All she could see was that she didn't want him to leave her, that she needed him, and blah blah blah. Even though she had bitched to me about him not touching their laundry for around three weeks, including the towels and bedsheets she had gotten sick on over two weeks before this. Apparently, she even threatened to kick him out over it! That was what finally got his ass off the couch.
I know she doesn't like being all alone like she is, but it is about time she learned. And I finally told her flat out that I am not planning on moving to Ontario anymore. She did not take that well, but I really didn't expect her to. I had to explain to her that at my age it is really difficult to start over from scratch somewhere. I'd have to find a job, and hope that it pays enough for me to survive on. And before I could even pick up sticks and move, I'd have to pay off my vehicle in full. Short of me winning big, there is no way I can do that within a year.
Also, I had a chat with the trustee of my sister's account. If my sister were to move to Newfoundland, the trustee would quite happily give me control of the trust. Largely because I'm on the same page as the trustee in regards to everything. If my sister were to move to BC, it would likely fall to my brother to manage the account, and that would be a bad idea because he'd figure out a way to drain it for his own use. Not to mention, that she has a lot of trauma where he is concerned.
I would have my sister move this way if I could. Mainly because I am already involved with the disabled community here and could easily get her set up with the resources she needs here. But she knows that I would not allow her man to stay. Why she seems to think that her and I would be living together, I have no idea, because I don't think it would work very well. I know that I'm not an easy person to live with, and I'd probably end up losing my shit at her if she tried the whole "I'm disabled and can't do anything, but I'm cute so people will help me" bullshit that she's been pulling for entirely too long. That's how she managed to get money out of people over the past few months. Money that she has no way of repaying. Even though she swears she will. Oh well, not my monkey, not my circus.
A few times even before I bailed my sister's ass out of the situation she found herself in, she had reached out to me to hint at wanting me to send her money. Despite me telling her she was absolutely cut off even before the final estate payout was made. I've even told her that most of the money I got has been sunk into my car so she gets it through her head that there's nothing available anyway. I mean, there is money available, but not to her. My finances are such that I can still pay for stuff I need to, and have a little bit of fun with it as well. Such as finally replacing my busted Samsung watch - I had been making due with a regular analog watch, but I missed having a smart watch. And I know that I got one hell of a crazy deal on my first one ($50, bought from a friend) after spending a LOT more than that on the one I bought today.
The watch has been my one real splurge in all of this. Some could say that the car was the major splurge, but the fact that I had managed to go 18 years without a vehicle in this province is probably a miracle. Newfoundland is so driver-centric its crazy. The bus service in the capital city is absolute shit at the best of times, and with the amount of junkies that get on the bus and shoot up in the back, it just isn't safe anyway. And getting between cities is really difficult without a car. There is no train service at all because Newfoundland did away with that years upon years ago, and the bus that travels across the province is pathetic. At least now, if a management position opens up at another store in my company, I have a better chance of getting it now that I have my car. Or if a better job in general opens up outside of a bus route, I can get there.
In the meantime, I'm going to continue unpacking my stuff and getting my new furniture put together. And sleep. Lords and ladies know I need my sleep. I'm getting old and worn out LOL
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