Times are Scary

UPDATE: Just when things seem very bad, I turned on the news to see a live feed from the President's fiscal summit. To see all those people, from both sides of the aisle, earnestly working to try to solve our government problems, just made me want to cry, for some reason. I got flashbacks to when our government was first formed and groups met to discuss the course of our nation. It was beautiful. No bickering. No accusations and partisan screaming, just earnest patriots working together like noble human beings to solve our problems. Can make a person jump for joy. At least that was my reaction. Hey you folks, all of you there, REpublicans, Democrats, Independents and special interest group leaders===THANK YOU, for putting our country ahead of all else. Do you feel like I see you, like a bunch of patriots in three corner hats, ringing the Liberty bell? I know that sounds cheesy but that's how they were behaving, I swear, like really good honest intelligent earnest servants of our country and its citizens, rising above. I am proud.

Then, moments later, I see one of the Republicans giving a sound bite at CNBC, saying what Obama is doing has to be fought, and he is going to fight it (possible tax increases on something that might be in the budget), and I realize then, there really isn't going to be people working together. If somebody opposes ways to fix the country, they should also be required to propose alternate means to fix the countries problems. That's my feeling. Anyhow.....

Times are getting scary, at least to me, to read about all the corruption cases coupled with job losses. The latest corruption case I read about is two judges, who were taking large bribes from the Juvinile Corrections to send them kids, often unrepresented by a lawyer. Those judges are going to jail, at least, and hopefully so will those bribing them in the Corrections facility, who wanted to maintain it full.

For every corrupt judge hopefully there are ten honest and ethical judges.

I stopped by the Millersburg colony hoping to spot that very ill and injured cat. I didn't. It was pouring down rain. The now out of work fifty year old came home at that time. She lost her job at an Albany business. She's complained last summer they were hiring illegals and that she was on the outs, since she didn't speak Spanish. They fired her finally and gave her job to a younger Mexican. If you don't think Americans lose jobs to illegals, they do.

But she's always the optimist and talked about maybe she'd find a better job one day. She's got health issues, arthritis in her hands and shoulders, from a lifetime of manuel labor I guess. It's going to be tough for her to find work again.

She likes to tell me stories of her soap operic family life. She started in with tales again. I sat there thinking her family life would sure make a edge of seat soap opera for sure!

She told me her brother's ex wife after the divorce moved back east and dated around, hooked up with some guy going for his doctorate. She too went back to school, to become a nurse. Her son went with her when she moved. She doesn't know who that boys' father is, because, (I'm telling this like I got told it), his mom hung around bars and slept with anyone, when still living in Albany. His father is not her brother, that they know, through DNA testing.

The young woman living out front in the trailer is her brother's daughter. Her brother kicked her out at 18, because she wouldn't do any chores let alone find a job or go to school, which he would have paid for, if she'd gone. She begged her grandparents to let her live in their camp trailer and its' a nice one, out front of their place. They didn't want to, knowing she'd likely just leech off them and never work and they were pretty much right. She had a part time job finally, as a janitor, but got laid off that. She claims she injured her shoulder at work, tore a muscle, this was almost a year ago, and still takes pain meds for it. But she lost the worker's comp claim she filed, so I don't know really what went on.

Again I'm telling this like the woman told me this morning.

So now the exwife's boyfriend moved to Seattle with the military and the exwife herself was angry because she's still in nursing school and figures he's up there cheating on her. So she's moving to Seattle and not taking her son, the 17 year old with unknown father. Now, according to the story teller, the 17 year old (properly unparented) has been dating a 13 year old back in the mid west wherever they planted after leaving Albany. And now he wants to come move in with the Millersburg crew, since his mom is moving to Seattle, although he is not related to them. He's the half brother of the twenty something living in the trailer, is the only relation.

They're trying to keep that from happening because he's been in trouble since before he was a teen and he is out of control and will never work, just leech off them and possibly spend his time in criminal behavior. He's claiming he's coming anyhow.

How's that for a soap opera?

That old couple doesn't need to support another useless kid, but who will, the story teller queiried, stating "nobody wants him because of his behavior." "Well," I said, "it's probably against the law for his mother to abandon him, since he's 17. Turn her in!"

It is sad, all these kids growing up without really any parenting and now basically without any skills at all. I mean skills like how to get out of bed in the morning at an hour that allows them to get to work on time, that kind of thing. But they're all over the place now, such young adults. At least I run into them a lot. But I suppose I see more of this because when people don't fix their cats, there's likely something real wrong going on in the household too.

Like if kids are in the house, they're aren't getting taught any values or lifeskills or responsibility, that sort of thing. I guess I'd say unfixed cats are an indicator of what might be wrong there. That's one thing I've noticed.

Anyhow, she's told me loads of stories about her family and does enjoy telling them. I can't keep track most of the time, of who is who, and who is where, and who was born to who, but I try. I think she should write a book about it. It might be sort of twisted, but I think it'd be a good interesting read and I told her so.

They are worried this kid will show up in Oregon and try to move in with all of them, because of his history and record they're worried, but I bet if he does, they won't say a thing. I think that has been a lot of the problem all along, parents not saying a thing, and look what that got them and all their kin. But anyhow, nothing anybody can do usually by that age, to set a kid on the right path, so they just hope he doesn't show up.

She tells me all these stories. They are interesting, but they're also very sad. If you think about kids nobody wants and kids who have had to raise themselves under extremely difficult situations. That is very sad and these kids, what becomes of them? Who loves them? How do they survive in a black world alone?

That young woman, living in the camp trailer at her grandparents, case in point. The woman's parents didn't give her an upbringing that would leave her with survival skills. Maybe the grandparents are just providing at the least now a place for her to zone out, to exist. Maybe one day, she'll come alive and do something fantastic. You just never know. Maybe that's about the best that could happen right now, the only thing possible really. Maybe she'll come alive. At least she's got a support system in her grandparents and aunt there. Maybe that boy needs that too, somebody who will acknowledge he's alive, love him.

That woman out there, the one trying to go back to school to get a GED, in her fifties, who is laid off now, she could use some help on that trailer she lives in behind her parents place. It need gutters and a window replaced very badly. She says she can't afford to fix it and she can't. I am wondering if there is a way to get help doing that for her.