Showing posts with label the latest drama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the latest drama. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

It Was All Just a Scam

Kind of sad when your own daughter/step-daughter tries to scam you and put you into debt by not quite telling you the whole story, isn't it?

Here's what happened last night.

Kelly calls and Keith talks to her, the whole time thinking that her boyfriend has broken up with her and she is stranded in a foreign country and short of trying to get herself deported has no option other than to ask us to buy her a plane ticket home. As Keith is trying to get the particulars of airports and travel plans, she says that he needs to buy the round trip ticket because it is cheaper than one way. What? Round trip ticket? Buy a round trip just because it's cheaper than one way? What? Hold on just a minute, here.
Did you and your boyfriend break up or what's going on? Oh, we actually did get married but we are sleeping on couches and I need to come home for a while until the economy gets better here and I can come back and get a job. What? Either that or Sean (the unknown husband) will be coming to the US next summer to work here. What? You want us to buy you a round trip ticket to the tune of about $1200.00 and put it on our credit card so that we are further into debt when we haven't had a real vacation since we've been married and no way could we afford to even buy a round trip BUS TICKET right now?!?!? Oh, but you say you'll get a job while you are here and pay us back? Like you paid us back for the $500.00 cell phone bill that you ran up the last time you stayed here?

After he hangs up the phone I look at Keith and say 'No, we are not buying her a round trip ticket so that she can come here and live on our couch and eat our food and run up our bills for 6 months and then use her round trip plane ticket THAT WE ARE PAYING FOR to go back to her husband. Her husband, who should be the one taking care of her, not us. No, she is not getting a round trip ticket from us and we are not going into debt to buy it for her. Absolutely not.

Well, we found a solution, since the whole problem seems to be a matter of her needing money rather than needing to come home. Keith had been talking to his mother the night before (when she said that she absolutely would not let Kelly stay there ever again) and she had mentioned that she had put aside some money for each grandchild as an inheritance, and Kelly had asked for that money before she left for England, but Grandma told her no she had to wait until she died to get that money. Looking back at how that conversation must have gone I'm kind of surprised that Kelly didn't put a little arsenic Grandma's coffee or push her down some stairs or something to hasten the inevitable along.

Anyway, a little light goes on in Keith's head about this money that is set aside for Kelly, so he calls his mom again and asks her if she wouldn't reconsider just giving Kelly the money now so that she could stay far far away from all of us and nobody has to have her come live with them.
Grandma says, you mean that if I give her the inheritance now (about $5000.00) then she can stay in Europe and I'll never have to see her again? You've got it! I'll call tomorrow about getting the money for her, it will take a few days and there will be some fees or penalties, but it will be well worth it if SHE CAN STAY THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY FROM ME!

How sad is that? Kelly was so mean to her grandmother that she is going to be paid to stay away.

Anyway, as I told Keith, we are not now and not ever buying her any plane tickets or sending her any money ever again. If she ever needs to come back to the US (and she can stay with her mom in the crack motel, not here) she will need to set aside some of Grandma's money for a plane ticket BECAUSE WE ARE NOT GOING INTO DEBT FOR HER!!!

I feel so much better, now, yesterday I felt kind of sick and stressed out all day worrying about the whole thing and having to have this extremely unpleasant, lying, manipulating, conniving creature in my house.

We did send off an email to Kelly and told her what is going on and that since she is old enough to get married she and her husband need to step up and be responsible adults. We are not now and not ever going to buy her a plane ticket, especially not a round trip so that she can travel around while we are paying her bills. No!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

This Is Not Going To Be Good

The other day I was having some weird something is going to happen that won't be good kind of feelings and have been just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.

This hasn't been a real good year for us, what with cars and refrigerators breaking and overtime cut off at Keith's work, and my business not even turning a profit this year, and not being able to find even a crappy job at walmart, and insurance that only pays 80% and a big doctor bill for what they didn't pay on Keith's follow up cancer colonoscopy and his daughter Katie not paying her dental bill that he co-signed on and is now showing up on his credit report, thereby screwing up his credit rating. It just seems like it's been one thing after another and not enough money to pay for it all.

So, here's the back story on the latest drama that I'm going to tell you about.

Keith's other daughter Kelly went off to England this summer to marry some boy that none of us had ever heard of before, don't know exactly how she met, and don't know why some boy would want to marry her all of a sudden, anyway. She had been living in Las Vegas with her Grandmother for a while, much to Grandma's consternation, because Kelly is not the most pleasant person in the world and was not a good houseguest to put it mildly. She eventually got herself an apartment and was working and paying her bills and things seemed to be going along just fine. Grandma was happy not to have to deal with her anymore and we were happy that we didn't have to deal with her either. So, she goes off to England to supposedly get married and of course can't find a job there because England is in a recession, too, and any jobs are going to go to real English citizens, not some American twit who moved there basically because she reads too many romance novels and thought that an English man would have a castle or be a lord or something and would sweep her off her feet and she'd live happily ever after or whatever.

A few months went by with Kelly not calling or writing anyone and us all wondering if the whole thing was one of those white slavery rings and she'd be sold off to the highest bidder somewhere, who would then want his money back after living with her for a few days. Again, she is not a very pleasant person, at least around her family. She cut off her brother and sister from her Facebook friends, apparently not wanting to have anything to do with them, because she's got this whole new Fairy Tale life in England with someone who really loves her or whatever.

Then, we get a very short email from her that she and her boyfriend are going to Cyprus so he can work on some newspaper that his sister owns and stay in a house that his sister owns because neither of them can find work in England. And then last night we get a phone call from her brother who got a very short email from her telling him to call Keith and tell him to read his email. Keith only checks his email every few weeks or whenever he even remembers that he even has email. So, Keith gets on the computer and reads this big sob story about how it's not working out in Cyprus and her boyfriend's sister says they have to be out of her house by Dec 31, and she can't find work and the boyfriend can stay with a cousin or friend or something but there is not enough room for her so can we please buy her a plane ticket to get back home and can she please stay with us or Grandma or her Mom until she can find a job. And she's so sorry she knows that money is tight with us but she wants to come home.

Ugh.

Well.

We had her living with us for a few months when she was 17 and it almost ruined our marriage.

She is now 21, but something tells me she hasn't matured all that much after all and there are no jobs here, so I have visions of her laying on the couch all day watching TV. Not to mention that our second bedroom is now my workroom and if someone is living in it that could be an issue right there, and then there is the only one bathroom issue, and the only 999 square feet of living space issue, and the extra grocery bill issue, and the added stress on the utility bills issue, and the six cats that get freaked out if someone even knocks on the door let alone comes into the house issue.

Grandma absolutely emphatically does not want her back in her house, ever ever again, and her mother is currently living in a crack whore fleabag motel because she and her husband gambled away their house, so options are few and it looks like she'll be living here again.

Ugh.

We emailed her back and said that we really can't afford to buy her a plane ticket, we don't have that kind of cash laying around and will have to use a credit card and pay it off later, and we are not doing anything until she calls us, and to call us collect tonight when Keith gets home from work.

So, this morning the phone rings at 6:30 am and it's her making sure her phone card works, and she will call back later when Keith is home. I guess that's one way to get your kid to call you, refuse to do anything over email alone. She must have thought we'd just jump at the chance to buy her a ticket from the links she sent us to a ticket buying place and not even question any of it.

So, we'll see what happens after the phone conversations tonight, hopefully Keith will be able to keep it together and not totally go off on her. He told her when she left the US to make sure she had a return ticket 'just in case', which was stupid advice and Keith just doesn't trust her judgement and blah blah blah.

This whole thing has got us both extremely stressed out and will probably only get worse.

Ugh.