So, my father is here for the summer. He usually comes for two months in the winter and two months in the summer. There are some good things about having him here, and some bad. It is all very complicated when you are sharing a house with your parent at 36 after you haven't spent more than two or three weeks with them at a time since you were 17.
Here is one thing I've learned since living with him. I used to drive myself absolutely crazy spending four or five hours cleaning house until 2 am the day before he got here (because 9 pm-2 am is the only 5 hour block of time I have to do anything.) I would literally make myself sick doing it, because my father and sister have some sort of cleaning obsession...but that is a whole 'nother post for another time. Anyway, he would come the next day and bitch about the house being a mess and clean everything over again. So then one time, I can't remember what was up, one of the kids was sick all night or something, and I couldn't get the house cleaned up before he came. And the next day he bitched about the house being a mess and cleaned everything over again. Hmmm. I thought. Five hours of back breaking work vs. 0 gets me the same results. I'll opt for the zero from now on. Actually, I decided to do what I call "courtesy cleaning" I take about 2 hours to clean the place before he comes, the same thing I would do for any guest. Okay, maybe a little less, because most guests don't come to my house and immediately start cleaning my floors.
There has been a lot of speculation and gossip from the in-laws and other relatives about my housing situation. Here are the facts: Before my mother died, they talked for years about buying a second home for themselves out here. Every time they came out here they looked at real estate. Right before my mother died, they put an offer on a house. This kind of happened in the blur of my mother's illness and that hyper-hysteria that happens when someone you love is dying and you want to fulfill their every wish and you don't have a clear head yourself. That offer was rejected and literally a day later, my mother died. Although she had terminal brain cancer, she might have gone several more months, but she actually died very suddenly of a pulmonary embolism, a complication caused by the heavy medications she was on. So it wasn't as if we expected that she would go that quickly. My father and I decided about 8 months later that he would buy a house out here and I would pay the expenses. He owns the house and it is paid for. I pay property taxes, utilities, insurance, the stupid homeowners association fees, and some maintenance costs.
But I am purely a renter. There is no guarantee that I will inherit this house or be able to keep it after my father dies. The entire estate, the bulk of which is the wrapped up in the two houses he owns, will be divided equally between my sister and I. Both houses were bought at comparable prices, but although the Kansas house is larger and nicer, this house is appreciating a hell of a lot faster than the Kansas house. So, I may end up owing my sister money. To pay her and keep living in this house, I might be able to get a mortgage and pay her off that way, or else I would have to sell this house and pay her her share.
The other issue is that my mother put 'my part' of the inheritance into a trust and made my sister the trustee. This is because she thought that if I received money I would lose SSI payments. But she never talked to me about it and she didn't know that I don't qualify for SSI any more and will never qualify again. I've paid enough FICA to qualify for SSDI, which is a long-term disability insurance program, not strictly an entitlement benefit. Therefore, it does not matter how much I ever have in assets. SSDI is not contingent upon any amount of wealth. You pay enough quarters to social security, you get a percentage of what you paid in. End of story. Now, I suppose the laws could change, but I also suppose it is equally probable that my sister could develop retinitis pigmentosa or some other disability and be up a shit creek as well as far as that goes. I know my mother meant well. She had a folder with her will stuff in it and it had a newspaper clipping about parents whose kids had Downs syndrome who had left their kids money and then the state took their benefits and health insurance away. This sucks, but it hasn't pertained to me since I was about 24 years old.
So, I've seen enough people get into such huge fights about inheritance money so much that it destroys families that I just don't worry about it. I pretend that whatever potential inheritance doesn't even exist. It seems like worrying about it as much as my sister does would be like putting a big ticking time bomb on my dad and just waiting for him to kick off. I don't want to live like that. So, I just dismiss the whole thing. With my sister as trustee, I might as well kiss that money goodbye anyway. Not that she would spend it on herself (she would save it for herself because with my kidneys, it is a good chance I'll knock off before her anyway), but she would say things like, "Well, you can only use this money if you buy this house that I approve of in Olathe, Kansas" or something. You'd have to pay me a lot more money than that to get me anywhere near Kansas again. No offense, Kansans, but its just not for me. So, I'm grateful that I get to live here for below market rent, but I'm a renter, period. If it doesn't work out, I'll move down the street into D's building or something. We'll still be in our same neighborhood with the same transportation, church, etc. so it would be a bit more money and less space, but it would not be a devastating lifestyle change or anything.
This house is very hard to have kids in. I had a lot of say in location, but my dad picked the house. It is a nice three bedroom with about 1900 sq. feet. My father has the master bed and bath downstairs. When he is not here, I literally close the door, per our agreement, and forget that part of the house exists. The kids share one bedroom upstairs and I'm in the other. We have one bathroom upstairs and a small loft area where my little office is. The living/dinning/kitchen is a bit cramped, especially with D here and we can barely pass each other in some tight spots without stepping over each other. I complain about the size, but not seriously. I know full well that millions of children and families in America and throughout the world would consider this a mansion.
There are many very nice features in the house, but it makes it a little nerve-racking to have small kids in. The floors are hardwood and the cupboards are cherry and granite. The banister is cherry and it has some craftsman woodwork around doorways etc. It has a huge stone fireplace in the living room with a chunk of old growth timber for a mantel. It has a lot of potential to be very nice, but we haven't really done anything decoration wise since moving in, so it is kind of plain right now. I keep thinking I'm going to wait until the kids are out of the throwing food across the room stage before I do anything major. And again, since I am not the owner, I can't do anything that major. Because of the woodwork, I get a bit panic stricken all the time trying to save it from my two boys and my quadriplegic partner. All three wreak havoc on baseboards and door jams. The granite and cherry and hardwoods are lovely, but I get a little jealous when I go to other people's houses and I see their Formica and vinyl floors. So easy to clean (and replace, if it comes to that!).
Anyway, so my dad comes and he blurts out with no context whatsoever, "Carolyn is kind of my girlfriend and kind of not." And then proceeds to gush about the (previously unbeknownst to me) Carolyn. It has been almost three years since my mother died. She was only 55 when she died and my father is now 64. He is a young, healthy 64 with a bit of money, a pension, and good looks. I knew this was coming. Carolyn sounds very nice and I am so grateful she is not 23. She is actually a couple of years older than my dad and is also a widow, previously married for 42 years. She also had her own career and her own money, which is good. Some of the women my dad briefly dated previously were a bit desperate, clingy and a bit scary. I don't mix well with needy, clingy women. At least the I NEED A MAN type of needy. I try to understand them, but basically, I just don't. They are like aliens to me and I don't know what to talk to them about. One good thing (for me at least) about my father is that he is relatively obtuse about giving women attention, so no clingy, needy woman is going to last too long with him.
I want my dad to find someone and be happy. But it's JUST SO WEIRD!!!! I feel like I'm living with a guy in junior high. He talks about her all the time. He jumps up and runs to the phone every time it rings, and if it is her he runs into his room and slams the door and stays in there for an hour. The fact that my dad can even maintain a conversation with anyone for an hour is kind of shocking, okay? He lost a bunch of weight (he was never fat, but he had a bit of a gut and it is gone now.) And, get this...He just paid $300 to Arther Murray's for DANCE LESSONS!!!! WTF? My dad can't get from point A to point B without lumbering around the house with thudding footfalls that make the whole house shake. My dad is a barely educated, beer drinking, cussing, union man railroad worker. He knows about welding, not the foxtrot. He dresses up for these dance lessons which are almost every night and comes and asks me how he looks. He came in tonight and lumbered through the rumba while telling me his dance instructor had nice cleavage. Oh, it's WEIRD!!!!
He is already talking about inviting her out here, not this summer, but sometime in the future. (She is in Kansas, if I haven't said that.) And intellectually, I'm very okay with it all. I want to give them the space they need to decide if it is going to work out or not. I want to be supportive of him with the whole dating thing. I try to keep my nose out of any judgments for the most part. If she comes out here, I want her to feel welcome here. I don't feel any sort of disloyalty to my mother or feel any need to compare her to my mother at all. Its apples and oranges to me. Best case scenario, she could end up being a nice female friend for me and the boys as well as my father. So, really, I am cool with it.
But it's just SO WEIRD!!!!
In case I haven't said that enough.
Heh, though, I pity the day she meets my sister. My sister is going to lose her little controllfreakishly insane mind over this. I just hope my sister doesn't manage to put too much negative pressure on my dad about the whole thing and screw it up for him.
Okay, but it's WEIRD. But I guess it will be better than everyone thinking that he is my husband and the father of my kids when we are out together if she is with him. Ick.
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