Catching Up

I know the waiting list doesn't look like it's moving. I'm trying to work on several things at once to catch up.  Please be patient.  I swear I'm working on them.  Thanks.

Last Chance Sale

Well, this whole family drama has caused me to put off increasing prices. I haven't even had a chance to sit down and figure out new ones. I hope to by February 1.  So for the rest of this week (through Sunday) I'm giving you a last chance discount of 15 percent on my current, lower prices.  So long as you fill out my order form by midnight Sunday and pay your down payment in a timely manner, I'll honor the lower price.

Finally Home

I just got home last night. I'm trying to catch up on emails and comments now. Tomorrow I'll start catching up on designs. Thanks for being patient and understanding!

Update

You know what they say about best laid plans...

Right after I wrote the last post, the sheriff showed up and served me, my sister, and my 11-year-old nephew with a dispossessory warrant to kick us out of the house. I'm not sure if I said it in the last post or not, but my sister lives in this apartment/mother-in-law's suite off of the back of my grandmother's house.  So now my grandmother is trying to kick her out, presumably in retaliation for us trying to get her help for the dementia.  Good times.

Anyway, since they did it on the the Friday before MLK Day, I couldn't even file an answer for all 3 of us until Tuesday morning.  My sister and nephew are considered tenants at will under the law, which means my grandmother had to give them 60 days notice to get out before filing for a writ. She gave them none.  I had to research and write up an answer to that effect. Thank goodness for law school and my free access to the Georgia Bar's case law database.

I also had to write one up saying I'm not a proper party, as I don't even live here. I have never lived here. I was only visiting for the holidays and then had to stay longer to deal with my grandmother's mental evaluation, yet I'm listed as a defendant. And don't even get me started on suing an 11 year old...

So I file that for us on Tuesday morning, only to find out that dear old granny put on her application for the dispossessory that all three of us are physically and mentally abusing her.  I can tell you right now I've never laid a hand on the old bat, but when I read that and all the implications of how having that on a court document to follow me around the rest of my life went through my head, I wanted to.  We've never abused her. If anything, it's been the other way around, esp. when she's having one of her fits/episodes, but who's going to believe us over an 80 year old woman?

I was going to go home Wednesday morning, but it was storming so I said I'd get up today. Then last night one of the neighbors comes out, drunk as can be, and starts yelling, "Shame, shame, shame!" at my nephew, who wasn't doing anything but getting his bike out of the yard, so that was fun.  When my sister went to bed last night, she told my nephew she had a feeling something bad was going to happen today since I was going home. It did.

Before I could even get out of my PJ's and pack up my car this morning, we hear someone ringing the doorbell. My dad was hear to see me before I left so he went around the house to see who it was. (The doorbell is only on the front entrance to my grandmother's house, not my sister's apartment.) I knew based on how long he was around there it wasn't just a vacuum cleaner salesman. It was something bad.

My dad eventually comes back and tells us this guy is in the driveway, and he's telling him that my grandmother is on the way with "the law" to forcibly remove us from the house.  I knew no writ had been signed because there's supposed to be a hearing next Thursday on the 60 day issue, yet this is a small town and small towns don't always abide by the law so I called up the magistrate court to double check. Nope, no writ had been signed so the clerk told me to call the cops.

I did. Then I had to throw on some clothes, pull my hair into a messy ponytail, and go around there and wait. When I showed the random guy in the driveway the paperwork, he threw up his hands, said he wasn't getting involved, and left. Then we saw he was a locksmith.  Basically, my grandmother thought she could just change the locks whenever she wanted because she filed that initial paperwork.  That's what happens when the people who are whispering in your ear and telling you to do these things think a few episodes of Judge Judy make up for three years of law school.  They don't.

The cop showed up not too long after the locksmith left. We explained what was going on. He seemed sympathetic and when my grandmother showed up sans the law, he explained to her she couldn't throw us out until the judge says so. She wasn't happy. Neither was her escort, a rep from Adult Protective Services.

Yep, Adult Protective Services.  She's convinced them we're all beating her up and that she needed an escort today to keep us from hurting her poor, old self. Have I mentioned I don't even live her to beat her up?  Not only that, but she told the cop and APS that I was embezzling money from her.  Hell, most days I don't even $10 in my checking account. I'm constantly worried about how I'm going to pay bills or buy groceries, but yet I'm embezzling money? Seriously?

So needless to say, I didn't go home today.  I've had to deal with this crap all day today.  My dad has called everyone he knows in the sheriff's and police departments. My sister is scared to death she's going to get arrested for elder abuse at any minute.  I'm worried about my law license.  Every time we hear a car drive by or see a police or sheriff's car, we jump. It's just a mess. I can't even believe this is my life right now. You try to help someone by getting them help before they hurt themselves or someone else, and this is what you get in return. Allegations of embezzlement and elder abuse and dispossessory warrant.  It's just so surreal.

Unless something happens yet again in the morning, I'm going home.  I feel like I need a bumper sticker that says Atlanta or Bust at this point. Then I'll start trying to catch up on this backlog of design work. Again I apologize for falling behind.  I would like to say if I had known that any of this would happen, I would have never gone to the court in the first place to get her the mental eval, but based on what Adult Protective Services said in the driveway, they received a complaint about us BEFORE we had her evaluated.  In other words, all of this would have happened regardless because my grandmother is an attention-hungry nut job who thinks she can make up one lie after another without any recourse.

Again I'm sorry for the delay.

To Anyone on My Waiting List....

I was supposed to be back home right after New Year's. However, my plans were changed due to I guess what you could call a family emergency.  My 80 year old grandmother has been suffering with what I guess you could call dementia for years now.  She does and says things and then can't remember doing them a few days or even a few hours later.  She has extreme bouts of paranoia, so much so she won't even let us open the blinds because she thinks people are in the bushes looking in.  She hears and see things that aren't there.  She rarely bathes or brushes her teeth.  She doesn't take her insulin or eat when she's supposed to.  She hoards.  She lies pathologically.  It's just always something.

Like I said, we've been dealing with what we call her fits for years, but recently they've been getting more and more violent. She's tried to hit us on several occasions and has succeeded on a few.  A few weeks before Christmas she threatened to throw boiling water on my sister. Then right after New Year's, when I was set to drive back to Atlanta the next day, she hid the only working phone in the house and then sprayed what had to be half a bottle of Red Door perfume all throughout the house.  She did that knowing I'm deathly allergic to perfume and that my sister and nephew had asthma.  As if that weren't bad enough, while I'm sitting there, with my throat swelling shut and no way to call 911, she tells me in the most malicious tone possible that she doesn't give a damn about any of us and that if I died from the perfume, she wouldn't cry at my funeral.

As you can imagine that was the last straw.  If she would do that with perfume, who's to say she wouldn't use a loaded gun next time, and yes, there are loaded guns in her house for her to do so.  We planned a family intervention, just like you see on A&E, made her sit down and listen to us, the whole nine yards, in order to try to get her to go with us to a doctor.  However, she flipped out and said the only way she would go is if a cop took her.

So first thing this past Monday morning my sister and I got up, went to the probate court, and filled out paperwork so a cop could do just that.  My grandmother then flipped out on the sheriff's deputy who came to get her, refusing to go anywhere with him. He called for backup. She flipped out on both of them then, threatened to hit them and throw herself down the stair, even brought up the guns at some point. In the end it took three sheriff's deputies and a set of handcuffs just to get her to the ER.

The ER ended up sending her for evaluation at the place where they do the five day evals, but yesterday they let her out, two days short, so apparently she put on the poor, abused grandmother routine she puts on for the neighbors.  She basically has them all convinced we're abusing her and trying to kill her in her sleep so we can have her house.  That's part of the reason I'm still staying with my sister.  The neighbors--people who've barely said five words to her in ten years--have all ganged up on us, claiming my good, upstanding Christian grandmother isn't a liar and we are.  My sister has been scared to stay alone.  She's alternated between being mad at the neighbors and my grandmother to rationalizing all of my grandmother's behavior and feeling guilty to believing we did the right thing.  I've spent most of this week staying up to 4 am with her, trying to calm her down, getting two hours of sleep before we have to get up to take my nephew to school, and then trying to get a few more hours of sleep before we have to go pick him up again.  In other words, I've barely gotten any work done, and I'm sorry for that.

Right now we're waiting for the fallout of my grandmother coming home.  Two nurses brought her home yesterday, but she was gone again when we got back from picking up my nephew.  We know there will be fallout of some sort. At the very least she's probably going to cut off my sister's cable and internet today so if you email me and I don't get back to you immediately, please don't be offended. I'm not ignoring you. I'll email you just as soon as I get home.  We're pretty sure she's going to start the legal proceedings to have my sister kicked out as well so I guess what we're really waiting on is to see if the cops show up and arrest us based on one of her fantasy stories or serve us with restraining orders or what. 

So if I don't end up in jail, I'm planning on going home this weekend. I can't just keep sitting here waiting to see what happens. I have to get back to my life and my job.  I will try to get as much work done as I can today, at least until the internet gets turned off. Then as soon as I'm home, I promise I'll fly through the designs just as quickly as I can.  Again I'm so sorry for the delay.