so don't ask if you don't want to know
Posts tagged buck
Welcome to the Deadbeat Club
Dec 27th
I accidentally answered the phone the other day and encountered the dreaded bill collector.
May I speak to Gerald?
There’s nobody here by that name.
May I speak to Debra?
This is she.
Oh, but you don’t know who Gerald is?
Yes I do but he’s not available at this number.
Do you know a number where he might be available?
Nope, we’ve been divorced for almost three years and I don’t have a number.
Blah blah blah, she exhausted every question possible about how to located him or if I knew where he was working or how much he made, etc. Then she started in on me and I gave her the barest minimum in responses.
(Here comes the good part.)
She: So after your necessary bills you have about $1000 left over a month so you could afford to make some sort of payment on this debt, right?
Me: Not really, I still have other bills and I do have to eat.
She: Well, what do you spend your money on? Cable TV and Internet? Eating out all the time? You could go with the basic plans and save money and stop going out and wasting money.
Me? Seriously? You’re suggesting I sit in the dark and eat Ramen so I can afford to make payments on a vehicle I no longer have? What kind of good-effort payments did you have in mind?
She: Even $25-50 a month would go a long way in clearing up your credit.
Me: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE TO PAY OFF $14,000 WITH $25 A MONTH PAYMENTS? I’d be dead of boredom and starvation long before the first grand was paid off. No thanks, my credit is so far down in the crapper that the world’s best plumber couldn’t dredge it up.
She: So I should just put you down as refusing to negotiate?
Duh.
My position on being a deadbeat: It’s the business or bank’s responsibility to NOT give me credit. If they’re careless enough to throw away their money, why is it my responsibility to give it back? And with interest? What a rip-off! I made enough car payments to pay off the actual price of that car. It’s not my fault they chose to apply my payments to their interest scam first, and then when the car exploded and got ran over and repossessed it wasn’t worth enough to get the rest of their money. Price of doing business, yo.
Now with people it’s different. I hand someone money and I never expect to get it back, then when I do it’s a bonus, right? If someone hands me money and it’s a loan, I pay them back as soon as possible. (Thanks Mom, did you get my check yet?) People are people and I don’t renege on people. Just businesses.
Anyway, I told her not to bother calling me when she got further down the list and found the loan on his truck that we defaulted on too. Let it go beyotch, we ain’t paying. Blood out of a turnip and all that.
There's a big ugly.
Dec 2nd
There is. A big ugly as we call it, means something ugly happened and we need to talk about it, or deal with it, or bury it in the backyard.
It’s really personal, so if you’re just a random Debbie’s kinda funny reader ya might wanna skip this one.
Ready?
A couple of months ago Ginnie mentioned that Brittany (my niece who lived with us for a couple of her emotional teenage years) told her a big ugly. That Buck had touched her (at least once) inappropriately. That’s about all I got… you know getting information second-hand isn’t something you act upon. My first thought was bullshit, then well… maybe who knows right? Thousands of spouses always say NEVER! So I suggested to Ginnie that she maybe ask her girlfriends in a round-about way if anything he did made them uncomfortable. Other than him just being himself; he always made the kid’s friends nervous.
And then it festered in the back of my mind and I mentioned it to a few close friends.
So… Casey and Kira and Ginnie went to their father’s for Thanksgiving. Apparently the liquor was flowing freely and when Ginnie’s boyfriend Roger went to pick her up TheNewWife kept him busy chatting and then told him to leave, meanwhile Buck kept Ginnie distracted until she was so drunk she passed out.
Then sometime in the middle of the night he crept in and groped her. His own daughter. Complete what the fuckage. She said she pretended to be asleep and kind of moved away and waited a few minutes til he left the room. Then went out and told him she needed to go home RIGHT NOW. He said he was too drunk to drive (which come to find out he was) but she didn’t care and he brought her home.
What the hell happened to the man I married? This person, this THING he is now is so not anything like he was then. I could have never imagined he would act this way. I don’t understand it. FUCK blaming it on the drink. Does the constant drinking just make it easier for him to violate common decency?
So we don’t really know what to do. She’s not going to raise a stink about any of it. She’d rather just never get anywhere near him again than be all confrontational. And with it being all she-said and he’ll-deny…
I know you read just about everything I post, so here’s your head’s up. If I ever see your miserable face again you son of a bitch, I’ll scratch your fucking eyes out. Fuck with my kids again? I’ll pay someone to cut your dick off and feed it to you. I have lots of friends now, someone will know someone. And the moment I have some sort of proof or evidence or something other than her word against yours, your ass is fucked you PRICK! Vengeance is mine sayeth the Mom. I hope you rot in your bottle. All that drinking can’t be doing much for your new wife… that OR your tiny useless dick… but do you have to get your thrills from your own daughter? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Actually I can NOT talk about something
Oct 11th
Even I have stuff I can’t talk about. For instance there’s a couple of horrible bullshit things going on in my life over the last couple of weeks and you haven’t heard anything from me.
One will be resolved this Thursday, hopefully. If not, I’ll be blowing up here and you’ll know about it then. If all goes as planned, you won’t ever need to know. Cryptic enough?
The other will be an ongoing . . . I hate to use the word investigation but questioning? Checking out? Someone told me something criminal/evil/horrible about my ex that doesn’t compute. So I’m planning to ask around if this “thing” had happened with other people – for corroborating evidence sort of – because I’m not completely sure about the accuser. Not that I don’t believe, but I don’t disbelieve either. I don’t know. So I’ll be asking around as soon as I figure out how to approach the subject. Tricky. The thing is, even if it’s true there’s not a lot I can do about it now. Except blow up here, right? So if there’s corroborating evidence, then you’ll hear all about it. Again, cryptic enough?
See, I can be circumspect when I need to be.
An open letter to the father of my children
Dec 9th
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!!????!!!!!
Dude, you’re screwing this up.
Shall I go back to your only granddaughter’s birthday party you didn’t bother to attend?
Or that your daughter wanted to spend some time with you on her 18th birthday and you were too busy? The whole fucking weekend? And then you send her a birthday card in the goddamn mail. A birthday card. You live less than 5 miles away and you couldn’t be bothered to make time for her?
SHE WAS CRUSHED!
You know how sensitive she is. And yet you not only send a stupid card with an old dead $20 bill, you sign it from both you and your new girlfriend. Whom she’s barely met. The same woman you once put on the phone to berate your daughter for something that had nothing to do with her. Beyond tacky.
You can’t take the time to drop in to her work (do you even know where she works now?) or make a date or get together in some way?
I know you’re still bitter but you remember those classes we had to take (and you really should know this without a class) where they EMPHASIZED you don’t take your ex-spouse feelings out on your kids. EVER!
I don’t trash talk you to the kids, I do it elsewhere. Wish I could say the same for you. You want to know why they barely talk to you? Think about it. You’re doing this to yourself. I encourage them to call you, to try and make plans because it’s the right thing to do. But when you do bother to answer the phone, you’re either too busy to make a date or you trash me. Fucking get over it and try, TRY to be a father.
Do you even care your son is back in Iraq? Did you make any effort when he was here? Have you made any effort at ALL with any of them? And to keep trying, considering they barely had a relationship with you when we were together.
It’s not their place to make the effort. You’re their father. It’s your fucking JOB!
Well, I sure hope you’re enjoying whatever it is you are doing. It ain’t parenting.
Why isn't the world right?
Dec 6th
I don’t want anything special from anyone, I just want stuff to be done the way it’s supposed to be done.
Our child support check is a week late so far. I don’t know if it’s because of the company he works for screwing up or if it’s the government agency that forwards it to my account. It’s bullshit either way. Court ordered automatic deduction electronically deposited into my account. How frakking hard can it be? Seems like every time there’s a holiday the ball gets dropped and we get screwed.
Shit.
I hadn’t heard anything from the body shop about the Freelander, so I called them yesterday. More bullshit.
Shorthand:
I wish I could take away the hurt
Nov 18th
Your child turns 18 and what do you do? Maybe a party, maybe not. At least a dinner celebration? A gift or two? 18 is a pretty big deal, right?
I gave Ginnie my ring that I’ve had forever. My ring to her – meaningful.
I bought her the t-shirt she really wanted so she’d have at least one present to unwrap.
I paid for and went with her for her first tattoo. Again, what she really wanted.
She wanted to have a meal with her father. She wanted to spend time with him on her birthday. Was he available? No. “Work” and then some other reason (blamed on me) that he couldn’t take the time. He hasn’t bothered to call her since. In today’s mail was a birthday card and $20.
She’s crushed. Not so much about the $20, but because a card pretty much shows her what she means to him.
She told me yesterday that she’s afraid to call him because all he does is bitch about me. You know, he took the same so-called parenting class I did before we divorced. #1 RULE IS DON’T INVOLVE THE KIDS IN YOUR ISSUES!
I can’t believe I spent most of my adult life with this man. If he doesn’t reach out to these kids pretty soon (and do it without trashing me) he’s going to lose them. I don’t think Max gives a damn any more, Casey and Ginnie mostly avoid calling him because of how he talks about me . . . and can’t just get over it all. He’s got a woman living with him! How does SHE put up with this hate and anger?
All I can say to Ginnie is that I love her and someday he’ll be sorry he treated the kids this way. It’s all his choice. I’m not doing anything to make matters worse (though I seem to get blamed for everything anyway) and I’m certainly not going to do anything to help him out. He’s sinking all on his own.
Oh Jebus H Criminy Shit
Oct 6th
So Friday morning Casey and I went to this used tire place to get . . . reassurance? He knows a guy who knows a guy and they cut us a break. I’d budgeted $120 for a new tire (for a car I hope to unload pretty damned soon) and ended up paying $25 on a fairly new tire. Except it wasn’t the one “damaged” in my hit-n-run, it was the one on the other side that was so bald there was no tread left. The “damaged” tire we found out was fine once he got it up on a jack. And guess what! My car doesn’t shimmy and grind anymore. For the moment anyway. Now Ginnie can stop angsting about the car.
And here I was thinking I was about $100 bucks up right? No such luck. Ginnie came home from school with a couple of envelopes: one for a class ring and one for her announcements/cap & gown. Order due TODAY. Thanks for the financial warning School people!
The good and the bad
May 9th
My economic recovery deposit arrived this morning. First thing I did was hand Ginnie $100. She’s been great about not asking Mom for money so I thought of her first.
Second, I bought my ticket for Jonathan Coulton on Thursday night. The plan is to attend machinegirl‘s recital and go from there. I can’t wait!
The Ex has been filling her head again. More shit about the car and how I need to catch up on the payments (I am, thankyouverymuch) and I should be giving her the child support checks and that she file to be an independent minor. The man is stupid. Child support has been explained to him numerous times and he refuses to understand it. Get over it asshole.
So I ask her:
If you’re an independent minor, where are you going to live? I don’t have to support you anymore, right? Your father has a one-bedroom apartment so you can’t move in with him and he HATES your boyfriend. What kind of advice is that to suggest you move out so he doesn’t have to pay child support anymore? You want to be independent? You’ll have to pay rent if you stay here.
Seriously! I try try try not to disparage him in front of the kids but he doesn’t hesitate at all to slam me sideways. It’s frakking difficult to explain where he’s wrong without using a snarky tone of voice. And I usually tell her to ask any other parent out there, that way it’s not just my word against his. Why must I always take the high road?
Grrrrr
Activity
Mar 28th
I’ve been trying to get out this week and walk more. Wednesday I literally dragged Kira up to the Sonic around the corner and back again. I had to drag the stroller backwards to keep her out of the sun, because stupid Grammi forgot all about sunscreen. That’s about a mile round trip in 83°F for a lunch the little brat didn’t even want to eat. By the time I got back, my right arm was shaking from the strain and it’s still sore.
Yesterday we went up to Superstition Springs Mall after I dropped Ginnie off at school. I like to go up early and let her play before the place really opens and I parked at the opposite end of the mall from the play area. At about an hour, some guy mentioned the Kids Club concert in a bit. I (stupidly) decided to hang around for another 45 minutes for that. I remember Persephone from when Ginnie was younger and we’d go to to City of Mesa events. Apparently she’s with Westcor now. Even children’s performers need to pay the bills I guess.
Kira was NOT having fun and seriously did NOT want that Dewper guy in a beaver? costume anywhere near her. We might try that again, but wait until it starts to get there instead of expecting an 18-month-old to be patient and sit still. I dumped her with one of Casey’s friends for the night so I could get some things done around here.
I should probably walk today, but I’m just not up for it. Yup, I’m lazy. For some odd reason every flea my daughter’s stupid dog has dragged home is living in my bedroom, eating my feet. He’s not even allowed in here and yet I have five flea bites on my left foot. Plus a few on my arms. I sprayed last night so hopefully I’ve killed them off. Or maybe they’ll eat my right foot tonight and I’ll have to kill the dog. I hate that damned dog.
My car died at the McDonald’s yesterday and though I got a jump there, I called Buck to get his opinion on whether I needed a new battery or just to charge the one I had. He suggested a new battery, then called an hour later and said he’d pulled a really decent battery out of a wrecked truck and would (and did) put it in my car last night. The entire encounter, while not friendly per se, went rather well and I thanked him politely when he left. There is hope for the future!
