First, the weekend:
Saturday, Melissa and I went to see the Dropkick Murphys at Avalon. What a great show! We found a nice spot to stand by the side of the stage and had a great view. Avalon was packed with a bunch of singing people - lots of Irish guys in newsboy hats. And I got a cool sweatshirt.
The Dropkicks kick fucking ass.
Yesterday I had an online fantasy baseball draft. I did ok - I got Miguel Tejada, Mariano Rivera, Hideki Matsui, Roy Oswalt, among others. Took too long, though. And my stomach was bugging me for most of the day. Not fun.
Now for the weird:
My dad and Judy - the drama continues. Before I explain what happened, I'm going to cut and paste from my old journal bits and pieces about the history of Judy.
The beginning:
"Things were cool living with just my dad, but then in June of 1998, after a vacation to Florida, he met this woman named Judy there, and she came back to Brooklyn with him. And she started living with us. She was younger than my dad by like 2 years, but she seemed so much older. Like grandmother old. She used to prance around the apartment in my dad's shirt, underwear, and nothing else. It was not a pretty sight. I got into fights with my dad about it, and I refused to be friendly to Judy. It was like she came in and invaded my space."
And from November 2003, after visiting my dad in Brooklyn:
"And now, onto the weird shit. I don’t know how Melissa and I can ever stay at my dad’s ever again if Judy is going to continue to “live” there. I have finally reached my limit with her. Judy seems to get weirder every time we see her. When we got there on Saturday, she wasn’t there, as she went to see her mother. She asked my dad if he wanted to go with her, knowing that Melissa and I were showing up soon. Weird...
When she was home, she holed herself up in my dad’s bedroom, which has all of a sudden become her room (my dad now sleeps in my old room). She’s a pack rat – she has tons of bags piled up all around the bedroom, so bad that you can’t even get to the closet and you can’t even open up the bedroom door all the way. We don’t even know what is in these bags because she won’t let anyone near them.
She’s on the phone all the goddamn time. Even sometimes after midnight. With who? Who can put up talking to her for that long?
It gets weirder.
Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep until around 2 AM. Melissa and I slept on our air mattress we brought with us in the living room, which is right next to the kitchen. The second we shut the light off to go to bed, and my dad went to my room to sleep, that’s when Judy emerges from the bedroom. She takes a shower (this is at 11 PM), and when she gets out, she goes into the kitchen, turns the light on, and lights some candles. I don’t know what else she was doing, as I did hear some rustling in there, but I got up and asked her what the HELL she was doing. She wouldn’t answer. All she said was she’d be done in a little bit. She wasn’t done for another twenty minutes. She was just sitting in there, staring at these candles (that didn’t even smell that good), crumbling things, walking back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom. Does she have no consideration? Maybe she doesn’t even know what she was doing, because she’s mental.
When Melissa and I got up this morning (my dad already left for work), we showered, got dressed, packed up, and just left without saying anything to Judy. And I hope I don’t have to see her for a long time, if ever again.
Now Melissa and I have been so patient with her. We know she’s weird, but she’s been living with my dad so we tolerated her. We didn’t like her, we just tolerated her. After this weekend, and especially last night, I don’t want to have to tolerate her anymore.
But what can I do? All I can do is tell my dad exactly what I feel, and tell him to grow a set of balls for once.
My dad has been a pushover forever. He lets his so-called “friends” scam him out of tons of money. He puts up with Judy’s shit for five years now and hasn’t done a damn thing about it but complain every day. If he really wants to get rid of her, he should be serious and do something about it. And it is possible. I love my dad, but he has to stand up for himself for once in his life."
That was then, November 2003. This is now, March 2005.
Things are worse. Like an idiot, my dad lent Judy a lot of money. A LOT. Why? She says she had to exhume her husband, I think because his family buried him somewhere and she wanted him moved so she could eventually be buried next to him. She has promised to pay my dad back for a long time now, more specifically, since January. But she keeps putting it off, with excuse after excuse. He keeps threatening to take action, but he never does anything. He's like a big bulldog with a loud bark, but no bite at all.
Her last excuse wasn't really an excuse at all... now she says she's not going to pay him back because "he ruined her life" and "he's a gigilo who is only after her money." I don't even think she knows what she's talking about. My dad has never taken a dime from her, and she's been living for free for almost eight years.
Then yesterday, they fought again. Of course, my dad had to call me right in the middle of the fight to yell. But he called me a second time after a startling discovery: Judy was on the phone bitching to someone, my dad takes the phone from her saying he's gonna cancel the phone... he gets on to see who it was, and it was Claire.
Now I need to explain this part of the story seperately:
You know how I mentioned before about his so-called "friends" who scammed him for a bunch of money? Well, those "friends" are Dennis and Barbara. Dennis and Barbara used to be married, and my dad met Dennis in Vietnam (he was also friends with Barbara too). They were good friends for awhile, even though they were always weird. They used to borrow money from my dad all the time... a few hundred bucks here and there, to pay bills or stuff for their baby that they adopted. My dad should have realized that they'd never come into any money, and that he'd never get that money back. He ended up being out about $3,500 from Dennis and $1,700 from Barbara.
There was another friend of theirs who lived in Dennis and Barbara's building, Claire. My dad stopped talking to Dennis and Claire after he found out that the two of them were having an affair and were badmouthing my dad. And he stopped talking to Barbara after he found out that some money that she borrowed supposedly for bills and/or the baby she ended up using for something else, like a new air conditioner.
Back to the present:
Judy was on the phone with Claire. And it seems that Judy has been keeping in touch with her for awhile now. My dad even heard Dennis' voice in the background, cursing. My dad could not believe it... he hadn't spoken to them in years. And Judy talking to them? I get this strange feeling that Judy has been telling them everything that has been going on, and that they've been egging her on to take whatever money and not pay him back. Judy even had the nerve to ask for MORE money from my dad, just this morning.
It's just a sad, sad situation.
And what also sucks is that my sister is still a bitch. I called her today to wish her a happy birthday (it was last week) and to try and talk to her about this situation. And she seemed annoyed at me that I even brought it up. She didn't want to talk about it because "it's his own fault, it's too stressful, it makes her too nervous to think about, and she can't do anything about it anyway." If she loved him, she'd at least talk about it with me and think about what can be done... she just really rubbed me the wrong way.
So who knows what will really happen. My dad needs to get rid of her in the worst way. It's a shame to think that he's never going to get his money back, because that is a real possibility. But he has to get out of that situation as soon as possible.
