Homeless

Our situation is my fault if you look at Who Knew How To Prevevt It. I know not to run up bills you can't pay or go shopping until all your bills are caught up. We wouldn't be homeless if I had taken control. But no matter what I know, it is hard to take control of adult children. Moving in with my kids to try to save their butts should have given me some leverage. Being the main one paying the bills should have given me a Lot of me leverage. But it did not. Should I have been more forceful, insistent, demanding? Could I have? Does that I didn't make this All My Fault?
Maybe.
I see that my attempts were weak, ("AC when it is in the sixties still? Really?") But even if I had been firm, stated the truth that poor people don't turn on AC at all! Stop smoking if you can't buy your own! (Instead I have bought my daughter's cartons of name brand cigarettes while I smoked the cheapest myself) COULD I HAVE TAKEN A STAND AT ALL TO PREVENT THIS?
Yes. I just can't stand when my daughters hate me. I am weak. Both have either ignored my suggestions or even gotten angry at me for nagging. So I just sat here and watched us all go down. I did start to make survival plans for myself after a while, and I would be fine if it was just me, Jeremy, and Kira. But I can't not try to take care of all of them even now.
I paid the $625 in rent every month, bought hundreds of cigarettes for everyone, bought toilet paper, soaps, etc., paid on the sky high utilities when I could, all with my $9,00 a month income. Several times when the power got shut off Jess got Jazzy' s father to pay yo turn them back on. We all get food stamps, but if I try to say to them anything about how food stamps are just to supplement our food bill, not so we can buy name brand products and junk good, I'd get shut down fast. When the food stamps run out, it's cash that should go to utilities. Then in May with the lights about to be shut off again I asked Jeanette if I should pay the electric or the rent, I couldn't pay both, and she chose electric. We're being evicted by the sheriff Wednesday.
Jeremy hasn't been working. He wants to, but I haven't been able to see how I could manage if he did. There are six children here, three only 5 years old, and he has been their main and often only caregiver. He is usually the only one who even washes a dish here, he usually does all the cooking, too, and even with him doing more than his share and mine, I've never lived so filthy. Jeremy, Kira, Jazzy, Jessalynn and I went away for 5 days once. He  cleaned the day before we left but Robby had friends over that night so the house wasn't very clean anymore before we left,  but Not A Thing was done while we were gone. Not even a dish washed. How could I send him out to work?? Instead, he goes and sells plasma twice a week for $65 a week that all goes to gas, cigarettes, (he doesn't smoke) and household things. He does ALL of this for me and because of the grandchildren here. I don't think anyone except me has even thanked him once for all that he does. Instead they yell at him for being slow, for getting frustrated with the kids, even for forgetting to take out the trash.
And he is going to be homeless with us as soon as he gets through packing and storing everything he can by himself.
I have allowed all of this and the sad thing is that I'm sure that  my daughter's won't learn a thing from it all even though I have no idea who or what they will blame for it.
 But will I? Will I become homeless with them again first, trying to save them, and second, letting them walk all over me to our destruction again?
No. 

Think Again

We've all seen it on TV if not in real life: The prostitute whose pimp controls her through her drug habit. We shudder and say, "That could never be me, I'm not a prostitute and I don't have a drug habit."
I'm a 57 year old great grandma and I can no longer honestly say that.
There are thousands of people in the world dealing with debilitating, chronic pain. I am one of them. I wake in the morning and my first involuntary thought is Pain. I give thanks for the day, take a morphine, and wait to be able to get out of bed, usually with a full bladder!
I have a Pain Management Doctor, the only one I know of left in Omaha who doesn't try to just put a bandaid on it, and, for all intents and purposes, I am his prostitute. When he says frog I jump because he controls the quality of my life. Without him I wouldn't get out of bed, play with my grandchildren, or have a life and he is one of the things I give thanks for morning and night. Hundreds of doctors have told me to quit smoking. This one only had to say it once because the order came with the threat of reduced pain medication if not its cessation altogether. A good thing, right?
Recently I had the misfortune to make him unhappy, and as I sat and listened to him berate me and even call me stupid, for the first time, I realized that I am now his Ho.
And I hate it. What can I do about it?? I'm researching it, suddenly willing to try anything with any risk that has any promise of ending my need for narcotics and Him.
I may have found an out, if it works I will definitely document it. But what happened to me is still just as wrong, and I started to wonder about all the other Legal Ho' s out there and about all the addicts on the streets who are self medicating and often dealing to support it. And research does back up my claim that they are out there. Right now, I would consider joining them if I weren't so scared of the legal repercussions, which is silly because I would probably be shot first, suspected of being some Granny Narc....
What happened to me was a misunderstanding from a miscommunication, or, at least, a lack of explanation from the doctor, on top of him totally forgetting what my treatment plan has been, compiled by a possible mistake he made that resulted in him calling Me stupid and reducing my pain medication dosage. The pimp  can do that when you displease him. I didn't get slapped around  though that might have been preferred over trying to adjust to living in more pain while in the middle of moving and trying to give the children in my care a Fun summer. I was silent before my accuser, afraid that speaking in my own defense would worsen the punishment.
My husband doesn't even have that kind of power over me!
If you, like me, say you would never prostitute yourself for drugs, pray you never need them! and Think Again.

2014 Repost Life With Jeanette

I was a little surprised to find this entry. I have talked about KNOWING something was wrong with Jeanette long before she started blowing up this year but didnt realize I had journaled about it in 2014. This was written after Exotica was raided and Jeanette and all the employees were arrested. Jeanettes children had been loving with me for over a year before the raid on Wxotica and we had hardly seen her. She was in love with and literally Slave to Master Jon. I was being evicted from my 2 bedroom apartment (again, I lost my last one for the same reason) and Jeanette was jobless and a total wreck from the raid and imprisonment of Jon. We had to move and she had no income to pay her rent so I offered to move Jeremy, Jess, Jessalynn, Jazz and Kira into her basement until she could get back on her feet. It took a week to clean the moldy, filthy basement. Jeremy and I did it alone.  Even though the kids hadn't lived there, the house was filthy too with dirty, molding dishes stacked in the kitchen and big piles of fast food trash piled in the corner. When I heard that Jeanette was telling people how she was taking care of me and that we were "living off her" i wrote the following in this journal. 
After we lost that house we all moved into a house Meezy was buying. Jeanette was furious because I took the master bedroom, mostly because of my age and disability, it was ground floor with a bathroom, but Jeanette was even angrier that I let Jess take the nicest room on the main floor. It was thru Jess that Meezy was helping us,  he would have been very upset if Jess got less than the best. Jeanette had to take one of the basement rooms at this house. I listened to her rant about it waiting for her to realize that SIX of us had to cramp into the basement at Her house. At least Meezys house had a bathroom down there!! It was huge, was a luxury home fallen into disrepair,  much better than the basement situation the 6 of us had been in.
This is what I wrote in 2014 about life at the house on 42nd street with Jeanette:

It's been one year since we moved into Nett's house to help her after she was indicted. Not an easy year!! You could say we have gotten along amazingly well for four adults and six children living in a two bedroom house. That would be accurate. But a lot of the peace we live in is attributed to people biting their tongues and not saying what they think/feel to maintain that precarious Peace. Not sure how long it will continue... It is a struggle to be sure!! I pay the $625 rent out of my $720 disability, Jeremy sells plasma to keep everyone in cigarettes (even though he doesn't smoke!!) and so we have money for gasoline and household things, Jess usually comes up with money to keep the electric on, and Nett tries to pay the phone bill most months. Jeanette and her kids have rooms upstairs and the rest of us live in the basement, something Jeremy and Jess have a hard time swallowing. They have a harder time than I do with the whole situation. Jeanette doesn't seem to see how little she can contribute or anything the rest of us have sacrificed to do this for her. I think maybe I understand, and thus excuse, that better than the others, but I admit it confuses/bothers me a bit, too.Somewhere in her mind She is doing Us the favor. I think part of it is that we prevented her from bumping her butt too hard when she fell. I recently called her sister in law out for talking about how we are all here living off Jeanette and it somehow made Jeanette angry even though I said nothing that wasn't true and nothing bad about Nett. A bit strange, makes you go hmm. I'm proud of Nett for going back to school and do whatever I can to make it easier for her but it is often at the cost of any harmony with Jeremy!! He has the worst time here. He does ALL of the housework that gets done and cooks and does 90% of all the child care and Nett treats him like shit. He takes it for me and because he loves the kids but it is a bitter pill. I have no clue how to talk to Jeanette about anything here. Pretty much gave that up other than I did insist that she stop telling people that she takes care of me. She gets some child support and has had ADC part of the last year. We all have to watch her go shopping and out to eat etc. whenever she gets any money and we all walk by her room now cooled by a window unit AC while Jeremy sweats cleaning the house because I tell him we can't afford to turn on the house AC. A lot of bitter pills but I keep making everyone take them because I really think Jeanette is clueless that her actions are wrong. She scares me more with her social blindness than her physical blindness and I just keep hoping she will somehow wake up and See how she looks to others. Not long ago Jeremy got in trouble for pushing a neighborhood boy out of his way to get to Jazz and Kira who were crying. It was wrong, all hell broke loose and I chastised him along with everyone else, butt Jeanette was his biggest hater in this telling him over and over how terrible it was that he touched someone else's child. I kept waiting for her to remember/realize that she did far worse last summer running in the street and knocking a little bit off his bike for picking on Robby. I still don't think it ever crossed her mind. That is only here for example of how her mind does or doesn't work. Jeremy and Jess both want to move out and let her figure out what everyone else is really contributing here, and that may happen soon, but I'm afraid for her if it does. I doubt it would make her See anything. I think it will end up at Look what they did after all I've done for them. Her heart isn't bad. I think she has a good heart. I believe she really believes she is the one helping everyone else, I think she really believes she is better and smarter than the rest of us. I just don't quite see How she sees things the way she does. I wish I could fix all of this but I'm afraid I am running out of time. If I can't really explain it how can I keep convincing everyone that she Knows not what she does?? And now Jon may be getting out of jail and Nett is back in love with him. That will force a conclusion here, no one else loves or wants to be part of his life. We will definitely leave them to each other and pray for her children.