Salvial_Ten's journal

Earlier today I was at my grandmother’s mooching food off of her like any smart, broke college kid would do if they had a grandmother that liked to feed people living not but a few blocks from their campus. While I was there she had “Dr. Phil” on and there was this couple on the show that got married something like six weeks after they started dating, had been married for three years, and did nothing but fight with one another. They both claimed that they felt trapped by their marriage. How the fuck did they think it was gonna go? I mean, it’s a bit rash to get married that soon after meeting isn’t it? They’ve also got three kids; one was from the husband’s last marriage. I was watching this show and got to thinking about the idea of marriage and why it is I’ve always been so…adamant about remaining single.

I finally figured out why it is I’ve always shied away from the idea of getting married. At first, I thought it was just because I had some inborn fear of commitment but that isn’t entirely the case. Nay, it is more like I know I’m the type of person to make a decision—especially one as important as deciding to spend my life with someone—and stick with it.

This, might actually sound like a good thing, but what if the person I decided to marry ended up being a horrible mate? Dating for an indefinite amount of time, and even living with someone isn’t the same as being bound by marriage to them. In marriage, there isn’t that much room for the “self” when it comes to making important decisions as to move to another place for a career, change banks, and other such things. I don’t know if I could really trust anyone enough to have intimate knowledge of my finances, and I don’t know that I’d want to know so much about my partner’s. Some things I will always consider to be strictly my business come hell, high water, or the IRS.

And of course there’s the ideal of divorce. Things would have to be seriously bad for me to consider it, seeing how that I wouldn’t make the decision to wed lightly, and I’ve mentioned before that I’m a rather stubborn person. There wouldn’t be any chance of reconciliation, at least not on my end. With my luck I’d also get the short end of the asset stick as well. But, even though I’m not, and will never be, a rich woman there’s a good shot I’d force a prenuptial agreement on my spouse anyway. Damn, that says a lot about how much I trust people, doesn’t it?

You can say what you will about falling in love, I’m far too pragmatic and to some degree selfish to let myself fall into a decision like marriage without covering my ass. Does anyone else share my feelings on the subject, or am I just an exceptionally cold person for looking at marriage like its just some business contract?

--Jami

P.S. On a completely random note, I almost posted this one to other topics.

School! It is back, and I'm getting on the ball a lot faster than I thought I would. The semester is going alright and the lone fine art class I have -sniffle- isn't so bad. There's only one or two projects scheduled that are gonna bug the piss out of me and we've already done and are about to critique (on Thursday) one of them. Thusly beginning a lot of stuff I really want to do. Ummm lessee. Other than that its all lectures. I'm not digging' my Texas Govt. class all that much. The professor is nice but she's very timid and not at all good at public speaking, poor thing. My US History retake is fabulous because I already know what to expect and I adore the professor. Introdection to Philosophy is fun. I'm glad it isn't in the morning or I wouldn't really be awake enough to participate in class and all that mess.

Only over all complaint I have is that everyone expects a shit load of reading this semester. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that from time to time I'd like to read something that isn't a textbook. Such is life though, and I'll tough it out. Snippets of philosophical writings really don't do much to further the understanding, tends to leave out key background points to the arguments being presented. The best thing about this semester though, is that I finally have a couple of classes that my friends are in. Brad in philosophy and Heather in Multicultural Perspectives in Art. Long ass class name. O_o

I wonder how long it’s gonna take me to sleep in and skip a class?

Hopefully I won't, because I really want to up my attendance this semester and I'm shooting for all A's because I wasn't happy with 3 B's and C. But even that was a vast improvement upon my freshman year. Though, that's tied in with a lot of bullshit that went down in the rest of my life. If you really want to know what they were, find some of my backdated entries. I'm pretty sure I spent some time raving and moping about 'em.

I think I've run out of things to ramble on about for the evening.

So long and good day/night/whatever.

--Jami

Okay, I think my journal has basically turned into a place where I bitch. And reallly, I'm fine with that. Especially with what's been going on. My mother has hit a new level of insane. Before it was just a nervous breakdown and she sort of got back to normal.

Well, ever since i got back from Russia she'd either been babbling at me or yelling at me for reasons not even she understands. It got worse today. She went to work this morning for a meeting about a complaint she filed with EEOC concerning age descrimination. That was at like eight this morning and I got a call around nine from grandmother saying that mom was over at her apartment and acting really weird. I went over and found out that mom had just taken off, and was offered breakfast. Mother showed back up while grandmother was cooking and that's what I had been hoping for. She was babbling about a dream and that we were all dead and something to do with MLK Jr.

By the time I managed to get her home she was sounding like a Dr. Seuss character and babbling on and on about the dream and how she was at peace and how her father was dead and we were all in heaven and at one point I think she actually said she was god and I was Jesus. I finally got a call from the VA whom various members of the family had been trying to reach all day and they said I need to get her to the emergancy room. Which I'll be doing as soon as someone gets here to help me.

--Jami

My dad has finally starting going to another doctor. This one isn't being paid by a nursing home or letting us run a thirty day free trial at the clinic...This one is actually willing to take medicaid insurance and keep our co-payments low and is also my grandmother's doctor.

And he had some blood tests run on my father and this time everyone is in agreement that he's bipolar...like his younger brother and sister, and like some of his aunts and uncles (which I've never met). This is alot more believable than dementia and like the doctor in Indiana claimed was my father being on the verge of turning into a vegetable.

But really, at this point, I don't think I'm willing to believe a damn thing. We've been pushed around and ignored and lied to so damn much that I think I'm about ready to just throw my hands in the air and laugh at the absurdity of it all. Though, I think my mother would feel better if I didn't so I won't. She also wants to have me tested for BPD. I don't blame her for wanting the tests done, I do have a high risk of it after all. Besides, I think I want to know.

In other news I'm looking forward to leaving the country in roughly thee days and not coming back till about halfway through the month. I am not however looking forward to knowing what I got on the research paper that made me late for the last lecture before the trip.

--Jami

I really hate to entitle my journal topic that, but there just isn't any better way to put it.

I know I've not been on the site half as much as I used to be in the past month but there have been some things going on that have needed my full attention. The first of which is the problems I've been having with my father.

I don't remember if I wrote about it here or not but roughly three months ago my father skipped town to go to Indiana in order to avoid going to trial and likely jail for getting into a wreck while he was drunk. The wreck happened back in June and of course, the court system being backed up as it is, didn't schedual his trial till July and the court date ended up being in September. The court appointed him a lawyer who flat out told him that there wasn't anyway he'd be able to avoid jailtime due to the fact that he'd gotten a ticket and arrested in May for public intoxication. Plus he went to jail for a weekend over the wreck and his Driver's Liscence was revoked. Not to mention he had a past history with alchohol related citations on his record.

So he got scared of going to jail, did the wrong thing by selling his truck takin' alot of money out of the bank and and buying a plane ticket to Indiana to avoid the arrest warrent and the court date. This was in August...I think.

About a month later we got a call from his mother (whom he'd been living with) saying that he was pretty sick and wouldn't eat or drink anything, and hadn't done so in a couple of days. My mother told her to get him to a hospital, and that he has Medicare which would cover the bill. His mother didn't believe us and thought that we were lying so that she'd be stuck with paying his hospital bill (she's a very selfish woman). Well, it took another few days for us to get ahold of his sister, who did trust us and took him to the hospital (I'd like to think she would have done it anyway, because she really is a caring person). By the time she could get him to a hospital he didn't know who anyone was, he had severe withdrawl symptoms (he'd been an alchoholic for 30+ years), an inflamed pancreas, slight brain deterioration (which might have been natural or alchohol induced), and on the verge of dying.

He stayed in the hospital for about two weeks, from there he was taken to a shoddy rehab center that misdiagnosed him twice in the month that he was there. He could only stay a month before they were going to start charging for his stay. My grandmother of course, would not pay for him to stay there, and my mother didn't like the treatement he was receiving.

It should be noted now that we were hearing all of this second and third hand from Indiana, seeing how neither mother nor myself could afford to get up north and take care of this. Plus the state of Texas did not know he was there.

So, grandmother said that she'd take care of him only if we sent her all of his social security and retirement to take care of him...My mother and I both knew that she wouldn't use the money for that so we told her that we'd have care arranged for him by the time he got out of the rehab center. And somehow we managed to do it. We got him set up with a nursing home, and on the day grandmother got him here mom was able to take him to the home. They had to get him there by four pm which was no problem for mother. (I didn't get through with classes until three thirty so I couldn't get him there. We live half an hours drive from my school, and from there it'd be another fourty five minutes to get him to the nursing home. I couldn't go with them.) My grandparents couldn't even stay long enough for me to say hi to them. In fact they'd been gone about five minutes when I got home...according to my roomate.

Thus is where the current trouble begins. We admitted him under their promise that he'd be more or less automatically approved for Medicaid because he's lving on social security and disability/retirement pay (due to an accedent that happened several years ago...I've writen a journal entry on it). They lied. According to Dad's Social Worker person (I really don't know how we ended up with one) my father makes 200 USD more a month than is the maximum allowed by Medicaid for Approval. At this point he's been in the nursing home for two months (October and November), further more, unlike the Nursing Home (NH) people said, Medicaid will not cover from the time he was admitted till present upon approval. Which means that we now owe the nursing home something along the lines of 109 USD a day from the time he entered care. They won't start billing till after they find out he's been denied Medicaid...however we've till January nth to get Medicaid.

This comes as a hard blow to mom and I. The social worker lady said that we can put all of dad's social security into what is called a qualifying income trust, which will gives mom the "beneficiary" a check a month out of what's left after medicaid takes what they need from the SS check. Which is great and all but they didn' know that they had to give us the forms to fill out and take to a bank. Nor did they know that a law was passed in 1996 that said we don't have to have a court order or lawyer to get the trust fund. Nor did they know how to get the paper work.

This leads us to yet another problem. The psychologist that works at the nursing home just declaired my father incompetent, which is true. Last time I saw him (Thanksgiving) he thought I was six years old, got left at home, and refused to acknowledge that I was even sitting in the room. From time to time he thinks mom is his ex-wife and sometimes he doesn't know where he is.

We don't have power of attourny over him and now have to get it. The good news is we can get legal services for free, the bad is that we have to wait for them to come to Wise County in January because you have to get the PoA in the county you live in. Mother wants me to have it as well in case something happens to her. Also, she needs to see about getting a will for her and father because she knows my second older brother (my dad's only son) will try and steal everything from our home and land out from under me...My grandparents in Indiana would try to as well.

The social worker lied another time when she said that we'd be responsible for dad's care up to the month his medicaid was approved. According to something I found online at a senior care website, they have to pay back three months of treatment on him (if we get things taken care of in January that will cover all of it). Another hard blow has come in that Medicare which he already has, won't co-pay for this because they don't handle mental cases. So that brings us to far above 109 USD a day...to mom won't even tell me what.

To make matters even worse, mom has been having "mini-strokes" quite frequently because of all the stress plus high blood preasure and insomnia. Her health is getting worse and her mind is slipping quite abit. I'm scared that she'll end up in the nursing home with father by the end of it all. So is she, so she's going to try and get power of attourny over herself and dad to me in case of that happening as well as getting their will made which would leave all their possesions to me. Just to make sure I don't get shafted (she know's I'd give certain things to extended family).

If they both end up in the N.H. I don't know what I'm gonna do, because I don't think I could go through and get all of this done myself. And I'm not even sure what I could do for mother, she doesn't qualify for social security and therefor not for Medicare/Medicaid either (as far as I know at any rate). And I know for a fact I couldn't take care of them myself.

In the end, if she can't get him Medicaid she'll have to bring him home, drop out of school, quit working and take care of him 24/7 which would be horrible, because of all her own problems and that would kill whatever social life she had. It's a hard way to live.

Also, because she just got promoted at Dollar General, she's available for really crappy insurance, which after the end of next year means she's at risk of losing her Veterian's Insurance which covers everything from eye exams to fully pay for the several medication's she needs to stay functioning. Her insurance at work won't even co-pay persecription meds.

At least we found all of this out after we got finnished prepairing for Christmas...though I wish now that we wouldn't have spent what we did. Also, I wish we could have found all of this out afterwards.

--Jami

P.S. Merry Christmas everyone, and I'm sorry I posted this, but I needed to get it off my chest.

Time:

Time is something I've got alot of but am horrible at truely managing. I can't think in terms of grouping out my time to gain the most output. Sure, I can feel crap in on an organizer but the odds of me actually following the game plan are somewhere along the lines of finding Stephen King writting a lovely moralistic childrens pop-up book.

So here I am, sitting at my desk unable to comprehend the writting assignment due tomorrow night in class and I know damn good and well that at roughly three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Roughly three hours before the damn thing is due and I was hoping to actually do a damn good job on the project. Hah.

Guts:

I finally mentioned the feelings I've got for the friend mentioned in my Blindingly Obvious, Painfully Stupid...And as predicted it got me absolutely nowhere. Though I've yet to see if any awkwardness is going to come of the situation. Fuck me...I'm an idiot.

Basic Tune-Up

I should probably get one of these for my vehicle as well as a front end alignment and other things. But this isn't the point. The point is that for some reason, I'm quite unable to comprehend most of what is spoken to me, I get distracted easily and I'm prone to just randomly wanting to go and hurt myself. I don't understand why I've been feeling like this but it all boils down to needing a mental tune-up...

Now I just have to find a place that does such for twenty bucks and under. :-p

--Jami