Tag: financial crap


Kick-You-In-The-Crotch, Spit-On-Your-Neck Fantastic

28
October

Remember how I was in a bad mood yesterday because my Apple ID had been disabled and because I was told that my SSI limit wouldn’t be increased because I wasn’t (and couldn’t) contribute my “fair share” to the household expenses?  What would you say if I said that those two things might be the highlight of my week?

I was overjoyed when I finally got my Apple account reset.   I was not so overjoyed when I saw that there had been a charge to my account for a $19.99 app.  Of course, since I have no iPhone, iPad, or app-loving iPod Touch, I have absolutely no use for any apps.  So, nice-going whoever ordered that.  That was a big honking clue that that account had been compromised.  It is now back to being disabled.

I’ve also put a fraud alert on my credit and will be closing out money-related accounts ASAP.

Luckily, my Apple account appears to have only been compromised on the twenty-fourth of October, so it was caught rather quickly.  Still, this is all going to be a pain in the ass.  I guess I couldn’t appreciate the not-so-great, okay, mediocre, or semi-good (and sometimes very good/downright awesome) if there were moments that really sucked.

1 comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Confessions, Internet, Music Stuff, Purchases, Rants, So Damn Special

You Don’t Know a Thing About Me

21
September

In a little over a week, I will be back in court. Even though I know that the city was lying in court back in July about the grass, I am still very, very nervous. Since, according to one of my cousins, Municipal Courts are basically set up to be revenue sources for the city, it is unlikely that I will be found not guilty. So, I will be told that I have to pay between $200 and $500, plus court costs, and I could go to jail for “not more than 30 days” for the violations.

I don’t have that money. I will not have that money anytime in the near future, but it will still be expected of me. And when I tell the judge that I’m on a fixed income, he’ll suggest two months. If I tell him that two months won’t do a damn bit of good (in a nicer tone, of course), he will say that that doesn’t really matter. I guess once you’ve been a lawyer long enough to be a judge that you don’t really understand the idea of having less than $500 a month in income coming in.

And while I’m dealing with all of this court crap, I’m also dealing with all the stupid family drama. My mom and I got into a really big argument the other night. She threatened to call DHR on me, which I told her that she could go ahead and do. She started saying how they would move her out and suggesting I would go to jail.

I love how my mom’s memory is so great that she remembers that DHR said that she could be moved out of the house if conditions weren’t good enough for her care, but she didn’t remember that the social worker told her in the same breath that I could also be removed from this house if conditions were not good enough for my care. Of course, my mom’s always been good with the revisionist memory when it could suit her.

My mom and I got into the massive argument, which had basically been brewing for weeks now, because she wanted me to take garbage out. She was demanding that it out right that moment. It was about one o’clock in the morning. I don’t live in a really bad part of town, but I didn’t want to go outside by myself in the middle of the night. I told her that I would do it later, which wasn’t good enough for her. So, I took it out. She and started bitching back and forth at one another, which led to me telling her that I some point she needs to learn to get up off her couch and start getting her water and her food for herself from time to time. This fight occurred after two straight nights of being awakened twice to bring her water and food and being ordered to get my father up because she couldn’t walk five more feet from the bathroom to the door to the bedroom. (She can walk to the bathroom most of the time, and that day was no exception to that ability.)

During the fight, she went from claiming that she had fallen the night before to basically admitting that she’d just stumbled. (Bouts of stumbling are regularly classified as falls from her.) I tried to get her to understand that she isn’t the only person prone to falling, and that when I fall, I generally hit the ground. She was then trying to explain how she just can’t walk and she just can’t go back to physical therapy and she just can’t get the doctors to understand that she has problems with things like her memory or her ability to get around. I have a feeling that if they aren’t understanding that she “can’t” do these things or that she’s having trouble with things that it is probably because she is not telling them things properly. She is probably telling them something that she thinks that they expect her to say. She does this on the phone with people and I’ve seen her sit back and let doctors think that nothing is wrong with her. Regardless of what she says, I think she does enjoy having things done for her. And I don’t mind doing things for her if she absolutely cannot do them, but I have a feeling that she can do more than she lets on. I also have a feeling that she doesn’t completely grasp just how difficult she has been, as of late.

I know that she thinks that I whine too much or that I’m lazy. I know that both of my parents think that. I know that friends that I know both online and offline think that, too. And I guess that maybe I am lazy. Maybe two years of being on what seems like an endless shift of care-taking (i.e. fetching things for my mom, sleeping in the living room so that if she needs me I will hear her, sacrificing sleep so that I can make sure that I do actually hear her if she needs me, standing around fixing food and water in the way that she likes, hearing how I’m doing something wrong, hearing how I don’t get things to her quickly enough, and taking care of almost anything she asks me to do, and some things that she doesn’t) has worn me out. Half the time, I feel so damn exhausted that I think that if I died it might actually be a good thing. I have given up on ever having a life. I have done a lot of that for my mom. I could still be hanging out with my church “friends” and doing things that they liked doing (not that I really enjoyed them that much) but every time I try to get away, it seems like I get to go through a guilt trip. Hell, I get guilt trips even when I’m here all the time. I am tired. I am really tired. And I was so tired the other night that I told my mother, among other things, that maybe she should move in with my aunt–her sister, aka the one who won’t talk to me. (This is also the aunt that my mother has recently begun waxing poetically about how perfect she is and how wonderful she is, even though the total contact that her sister has truly initiated in the last 2 years was a Get Well Soon card.)

I guess I have to accept that this is my life. Misery is apparently my destiny, so I guess I should just get accustomed to it. And in case you’re wondering what the fight with mom and the court stuff have to do with one another: I am often reminded that this house, though it is in my name legally and though I can be fined and imprisoned for things related to it, doesn’t belong to me. I am a guest here. And sometimes I really feel like I am definitely unwanted.

I could probably bring it up in therapy, and the therapist would probably suggest I move into low-income housing. This would lead to another fight, my self-esteem tumbling even more, and absolutely no good coming out of it. I can’t go back to school. Even if I could focus, there is no way that I could ever pay for it. So, I’ve got to figure out how to get out of this damn house and out of all of this unhealthy shit before I go off the deep end.

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Confessions, Family, Friends, General, Mental Health, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses

28
July

The system is flawed. I’ve always known this. I’ve always thought that I understood it, but I don’t think that I fully did until yesterday morning. It probably seems like something that I should have understood last year or even before then. I probably should have understood it when we had the complaints come in the mail a few years ago that required us to paint our house and the storage units in the backyard so that I didn’t end up in court. I probably should have understood it when, before I owned the house, the people from the Community Development would come by my house and have my mom come outside, where they would give her a hard time until she would come back in suicidal because of the things that they would say to her. I should have known and understood it then, but I didn’t. I do now.

Yesterday morning was a lot like last year’s hearing. Only last year, we hadn’t had the lawn mowed in time. And as agitating as it was last year when I was told by the judge that getting the lawn mowed “wasn’t rocket science”, I didn’t realize how much more insulting it could be to go before 2 public officials, one representing the legal system and another representing a part of the government that was allegedly founded to help people who are low income to have houses up to code. I didn’t realize that I would be called a liar; that my father would be told that even if he had written proof that he’d paid to have our lawn mowed twice that the judge “didn’t want to see it” and would refuse that evidence. I didn’t realize that the city has the ability to convict people with no proof. I didn’t realize that my word meant nothing.

The person from the Community Development office came to court saying that there had been multiple complaints against my house. Of course, I don’t have the right to know who is complaining. My family has tried to find out in the past and been told that they can’t release this information. Instead, the complainant becomes the city of Huntsville. It becomes the officials who are on a first name basis with the attorneys and the judges. And it doesn’t even have to be the same official. On the original citation (the warning letter) the inspector is Bill Sweetnam. On the court summons it is Jim Martin. The guy who showed up in court and said that “as of yesterday” my yard was 2 feet high was neither of those two men. When I tried to find out where this 2 foot high grass was, I was told that I would have to wait until the proceeding was over and if I thought they were “lying against” me, then the judge was going to enter a not guilty plea on my behalf. He told me I would have to show pictures proving that we’ve been cutting the grass. I guess that these pictures are supposed to have been taken in June and again in July to show that are grass was mowed. These pictures don’t exist. The city, on the other hand, doesn’t have to have pictures. Like I said, the people who have been writing up the complaints weren’t even the ones who came to court yesterday. So, I can’t offer proof that we’ve paid to have the lawn mowed, which would give direct evidence, but the city can use hearsay evidence against me with no problem.

I left the court in tears. Tears that continued as I went to Legal Aid, where I was told that they couldn’t represent a criminal case. Apparently, they can defend people against a corporation trying to break the law, but when the city government is violating Constitutional rights, then that’s okay. I then tried to call CASA to see if they could help with the lawn care. I broke down even further on the phone with a very nice woman named Susan, who told me that they no longer perform that service but that I should call a local church. She suggested I call my own church. Fat lot of good that would do since last year’s court appearance was after we’d been told that the church was going to be doing the lawn. So, I called the church she gave me the number for, and I found out that they only help people who go to that church. I called CASA back. I got the machine. I explained what I’d heard. I got a call back from someone else from CASA who repeated the “we no longer do that service” line, though she apparently didn’t understand that since I was calling back that I had already heard the line.

I called the Legal Referral Service in the state, which provided a number for a lawyer that I will have to pay for their services, even though I can’t afford to do that. Alan, friend from childhood, told me to use a public defender, which I would do, but I don’t know how to contact one. I haven’t seen any numbers or offices that exist for a public defender office in this area. A cousin of mine told me that the system works this way in municipal cases and that this is a revenue source for the city, so the judge is going to side with the city, even if the evidence isn’t there. And I guess I understand why it works that way, but it doesn’t feel right. Another friend from childhood, Melanie, told me that something similar had happened to her family. (Her parents live in my neighborhood.) Her exact quote:

I had a similar city representative come through Sandhurst a few years ago when i was staying at my parents. They were issuing warning/citations/whatever? to people who appeared to have rust on any items in their yards (sheds, etc). He wanted to claim that my parents shed had rust on the roof and needed to be painted or replaced. How he could tell if their was rust on a shed roof without entering my parents backyard is beyond me…but he dropped the issue when I started to ask questions. I would agree that this is just a “money-making scheme” for the city….that’s why I live in the county now. I’m sorry for all the troubles you are experiencing.

It makes me think that the Office of Community Development is going around to the poorer neighborhoods in areas of town and issuing complaints for things so that the city gets money from the poor to finance everything. That may sound nuts, but every defendant in court yesterday was poor. Every defendant had to pay some kind of fine or payment to the city. People who didn’t have their pets’ licenses or violated anything regarding the city’s animal services were forced to go to a class where they paid $25 to be informed about the value of that program. By paying for that class, they had no fines and no court costs, but they still gave money to the city. Every single case that was seen ended with a person paying the city. And even with this not guilty plea, I know that I’m going to end up paying the city. I don’t even know if an appeal would work for this. (My cousin suggested I appeal if I get convicted.) I don’t know how to stop this. Do I find some way to make a lot of money so that my family and I can leave a house that my grandparents bought in the seventies? Where would we go? Do we go to the county and pray that Huntsville doesn’t annex us? Do we move in with my grandmother and hope that we can survive out in the middle of nowhere? What do I have to do to make this stop?

I wanted to kill myself right after the proceeding. I really did. I was pissed that Amy Winehouse got to die and that I have to deal with this, which I know is a crazy way to think, but I am so sick of this. I’m tired of being in a country where we’re taught that we have rights and we have freedoms and that discrimination is wrong, but then I first get kicked out of college because I’m crazy and now I’m being accused of a crime and I’m guilty even if I know I’m not and even if evidence exists that proves that I’m not. I don’t understand why this is okay. I don’t understand why people who can afford to pay taxes won’t and then judge people who are in poverty because they are in poverty. I don’t understand why it is okay for politicians to play around with the entire economy and threaten to not do their jobs, which will in turn cause my checks not to come in next month, which means no food, medicine, doctors, anything. When did this country become like this? And why? Why is greed okay and justified, but justice is wrong and discrimination is encouraged? Why does this happen to people? It’s not right and it’s not fair and it’s not legal and it’s just plain wrong, and I can’t understand how anyone can justify any of this, but they do. People justify it all the time. My family, not my parents but other members, even justify it. And I don’t know why. How can people support this kind of thing?

The only possible good thing that could come out of me going through the trial and (possibly) being convicted is that I can get sent to jail for a very short time, less than 30 days. (I think that’s less than what Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan did for drug-related offenses.) Before you ask why that might be good, I can explain. As we all know, I am crazy. I am a certifiable loony. The more stressed I get, the worse my psychiatric state gets. If I go to jail, I will be a suicide risk. This is not a planned thing, it is just a fact. I will be suicidal. And it will get especially bad when the city probably will disregard the whole giving me my antidepressant and my pain medicine. In the first day without my Effexor, I will get suicidal. This is normal for me. The longer I go, the more depressed, the angrier, and the more psychotic. The city will put me in a hospital because of this, because they will find out (since I also am a lot more forthright when these things get exacerbated) that if I don’t get to go to the hospital that I will make sure to let everyone know that they denied me proper psychiatric care. That is also not a threat, just a reality. I swear that this system has got to change so that people don’t get exploited, and if it means that I have to go to trial, possibly be convicted, possibly go to jail, and maybe file an appeal, then you know what, I guess that’s what will have to be done. This city has got to stop using people that they know can’t fight back.

2 comments » | Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, How I Met Your Neighbors (aka An Overactive Imagination), Mental Health

Just Floating

16
April

I have been sick. I’ve had what appears to be the worst sinus infection that I have ever had. My mom and I think it may be the same one that has been dismissed by the ENT as allergies. (The allergist said I had 3 allergies and none were bad enough to make me this sick.) This would be the infection that came along about 2 or 3 months after my sinus surgery last year.

It isn’t really in my sinuses so much anymore. It’s pretty much everywhere else in my body (fever, swollen lymph nodes, chills, etc.), so that would explain the lack of icons, blog entries, etc. It isn’t that I’m purely being lazy. It’s that every time I’m awake and doing anything that requires more than the simplest of brain functions, my body seems to be about ready to fall over. What have I been doing? Reading and listening to music. I’ve posted some on tumblr and I’ve been doing reviews and opinionated stuff–because I’m more tempted to speak my mind when I’m running a real fever.

After two weeks of it being really bad, I finally went to the family doctor. I didn’t see mine, but the doctor that I saw was really nice and really concerned. She had to go see what anti-biotic could be used, because of the Ceclor-Septra-Penicillin-Zithromax allergy + the fluoroquinolone toxicity. I ended up with Doxycycline and I had to promise to go to the ER if I started showing any signs of allergy. So, I’ve been on that for a couple of days and its been less than fun. Hopefully, I will start feeling better soon, though.

Oh, I was watching CNN yesterday and I saw the latest Idol results, which don’t usually concern me. This time I saw a name that looked familiar. Apparently, Paul McDonald, a friend from high school, was on American Idol and got voted off. How did I miss this? Clearly, I haven’t been paying as much attention to Facebook updates as I should have. If I had known, I definitely would have voted for him, even if I’m not a big fan of the show. (Oddly, I always seem to end up getting the latest albums from a lot of the people from the show.)

So, I feel crappy in the whole sick way and I feel like a crappy friend.

Probably doesn’t help that now my mother is sick and seems to want to blame a lot of stuff on me. I really wish that she would stop blaming me for things whenever she feels bad. This week I’ve been the cause of the financial burden, the cause of her sinus infection (I even got called an idiot for not getting it taken care of sooner), the cause of something getting lost (something I’ve never seen), etc. She’s in a bad mood and it apparently is my fault. And before anyone suggests I leave or anything, I want you to remember that 1.) I have no way to leave and 2.) I own the damn house I live in and I get held legally/financially responsible for anything wrong with it, so I shouldn’t have to leave. I would love to go away and never come back, but it won’t happen. I’m stuck here. I’ll always be stuck here.

Comment » | Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Family, Friends, Janet Goes AWOL, Music Stuff, Pre-College Years, Sickness and Health, Top Artists, Top Songs, Tumblr

Play By The Rules

1
February

So, even though the garnishment was dismissed by the judge, the wonderful Wells Fargo people refuse to lift the garnishment from the account until they have word from the court (a copy of the letter we got doesn’t count apparently) and will not be giving the money back. According to their legal department, they don’t have to give back the money because of the wording on the writ of garnishment. Who cares that the garnishment was dismissed? Who cares that they had taken the money before they were supposed to? Who cares that they took money from people whose money should have been left untouched?

It is absolutely ridiculous that they feel the need to do this whole thing. It seems like they would care about building a sense of trust with the folks who bank with them. Instead, it appears that they are more interested in holding onto money that doesn’t belong to them. So, it looks like this will probably be taken to the court in another form–a lawsuit.

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Family, General, Purchases, Rants

The Wait Is Over

28
January

The Judge sent a letter to the lawyer today that said that the Writ of Garnishment has been dismissed. My mom and I were quite happy to hear that when the lawyer called, and my dad was happy when he found out. Of course, we’re still going to have to wait for the money to be put back in the bank–if it ever is.

But I think there has been a bit more joy to end this week than there was towards the beginning. I just wish that none of this had ever happened in the first place.

4 comments » | Confessions, Family, General, Purchases

Writ of Stupidity

26
January

My parents went yesterday to stop Wells Fargo from garnishing their account since the only thing in it was the disability payment from Social Security. When they got there, they were apparently told that the less than $200 in their account had already been seized by the bank–most of it for the bank’s $100 fee. This, as you might already know, was the wrong thing to do.

My parents had 30 days to respond to the order which was issued on the 19th (a week today). That meant that the money wasn’t supposed to be garnished for those 30 days. The money was gone within the first week, though. So, my parents had to go to the local Legal Aid office.

They found out that a lot of banks do this. They also found out that the lawyer’s office (Nathan & Nathan) that pursued the debt has a tendency to pursue debts that they know can’t be paid–thus they pursue frivolous lawsuits.

My parents and I have to go in tomorrow to the Legal Aid office to sign some paperwork to stop the garnishment. (I have to go since $200 of my money goes into their account every month to cover the expenses I’m supposed to pay as part of the SSI thing.) The lawyers told my parents that they probably won’t get the money back, but that hopefully this will stop the freezing of the account and will prevent any more money from being taken.

1 comment » | Causes, Confessions, Family, General, National Weirdness, Plans for Life, Rants

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