Tuesday, September 8

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A really lovely sunny day. Last night was really cold, and we had a light frost, but today still was warm and pleasant.

Going back to this other barn with my sweetie to show him around, and he thought it was really well laid out and probably a good place for River too. Like I said, the only thing I am hesitant about is whether I could find someone willing to come do lessons with me, and if I would end up being alone all the time.

We finally got around to taking the joists from a section of roof out of the horse pasture. The joists were from a section of the roof from the trailer tear down. My husband was "saving them" in case we wanted to build another shed. This spring we had taken the shingles and the plywood sheeting off of the joists, but never got around to taking the joists themselves out of the pasture. Well, now they are somewhat weathered from sitting there all summer in the rain, and not as nice for someone to re-use, but we're going to try to sell them/give them to someone. We got them stacked on our trailer, and out of the pasture, so that's another giant "broken window" cleared up.

We watched "Swingers", from '97. A movie about a guy getting over his ex-girlfriend. It's kind of an important movie in the same way as "Good Will Hunting" in that it launched the careers of several now influential actors that are in it, it was also filmed with hardly any money on a cheap camera in everybody's apartment and local bars etc., and Jon Favreau is now one of the biggest producers in Hollywood, and this was his first real movie. It was really just an okay movie with a few pretty funny bits in it, but it was kind of the launching point for so many people that it was interesting just for that.

Monday: I was really and truly lazy today, and I really needed to be lazy. I've put in so much physical labor this summer, and have been so stressed out (and a few things are finally moving again and I feel better) that I just felt like doing nothing all day, so I did.

The one thing I did do is I worked on loading River again before my husband left for work, and he was pretty relaxed about it. I did the same thing of putting his hay in the trailer and letting him load himself and unload himself several times without any pressure or pulling, and was pretty relaxed and stayed inside the trailer of his own volition and ate hay.

I did call my train wreck sister, and she was going on and on about how bad her living situation was, and how she could be homeless, and I ended up saying to her "you COULD be in an apartment any time you wanted to be in one, you really aren't in danger of being homeless, you just don't want to live anywhere but where you are right now with all of your stuff" to which she replied "well, yeah, there's a thousand other places I COULD live" and I said "Yes, so you are only in the situation you are in right now because you are choosing to keep throwing money at trying to stay where you are because you don't want to get rid of your stuff".

It costs her more to heat this place than it would cost her to live in an apartment. She can't keep up with the demands of having to haul water, mow a giant amount of grass (the mowers keep breaking down), and pay the utilities and keep her vehicle running, and on and on. If one major thing happened, like the furnace, she couldn't fix it. If the tractor doesn't run this winter, she won't be able to clear the snow. If the old truck doesn't run she won't be able to haul water.

She just wants to live in this abandoned shithole town in her old trailer where she can get drunk and smell bad and not wear clothes if she doesn't feel like it. Where she can keep hoarding, and grow a garden that she doesn't eat anything from it, and she's constantly fighting to keep wildlife out of her yard and so on.

I can understand on some level, the appeal of living in what probably kind of feels like an acreage. She's out in the country, with no one around, and I get that. I can understand the freedom of coming and going and no one paying attention. I get that when you're a hoarder you don't want anyone seeing your stuff. It's just not going to be sustainable for her.

I think it's important to keep showing her that she isn't really in danger of being homeless if she could manage to live in a way that meshed with society's expectations. She COULD get an apartment. She just doesn't want one because she would have to not fill it with stuff, and she would have to put clothes on because she's in town, and not make tons of noise, and not let the filth build up, and try to live in harmony with what's appropriate among civilized beings.

This really is the mindset of people who are chronically homeless. The ones who don't want to be part of a program, who don't want rehab, who don't want to get a job, and to get help for their mental illness. That's my sister. She doesn't want to get help for her drinking, she doesn't want get help for her hoarding, she doesn't want to get help for her emotional issues, she doesn't want feel like people are watching her and judging her. She doesn't want to be held accountable for anything. She has trouble applying for financial assistance because she didn't file taxes for something like 15 years (the government doesn't really care if you don't owe anything, but then there's no record of your earnings or proof that you didn't have an income etc.), so she had to go through the laborious process of trying to recreate her financial history. It gets too hard to do, after awhile. This is what you hear about why some people just don't fit into any program to help them get off the streets. You can't help people if they don't want to be helped.