When I returned to Washington State in February 2014, my worst fears and gut instincts came true. I don't know why other people's problems so grossly impact my own life, but I find myself in these situations all the time and it has taken several months of therapy to realize why. But I'm going to come to that. This blog is going to be probably the longest so far. So you may want to sit down with a cup of coffee and prepare yourself for one helluva read!
For the sake of anonymity of those involved, I am leaving only their first names. Those of you that live around me know who they are, and the family here in Washington lives their lives as an open book most of the time and really don't care who knows what is going on, but for many reasons, legal or I otherwise can't imagine, I think that keeping identities protected would be a good thing for now.
I had been planning my eventual return to Pennsylvania, or a nearby state, for a permanent move for a few years. I have blogged that my family is changing. My dad will be preparing to retire in a few years, my mother has a great job working as director for the local library, my sister is raising 5 children, my brother is working in Maryland and married with a stepson--everyone's busy with their lives. And then there is me. The gypsy of the family, as my father kindly put it during my last visit home. And he's right. One of the first things I recognized about my life with that description is that I've never lived in the same spot for more than three years in the last two decades! I guess this is why sailing is so appealing to me. I have been a restless spirit for a long time. I need to have constant change in my life and if I get too settled in a place for too long, I end up pulling up my life by the roots and transplanting somewhere else. It is beginning to be tiresome though.
And it comes with a price. It leaves me with few life-long friends, burning of bridges with people from time to time, and not much in the bank or stability enough to have started a family. I have been in more than one situation in my lifetime where people have taken advantage of me and my selfless nature, leaving me feeling isolated while picking up the pieces of my life. I have lived far away from my immediate family for many years and not having them in my support network has been really hard and now I'm in a place in life where I have a hard time trusting people--despite my nature regardless of history. It is probably one of my worst (and best) character flaws (or strengths). It's at times like now where I am thinking about the choices I've made, or the indecisiveness that have shaped my life.
I've been writing this blog entry over several months. In this entry, I am talking about not just the present, but the past and what the future might hold. How does all of this coalesce and from into something new? The last couple of years of my life have been complicated. It's complexity compounded when I started to do my tattoo business as a parlor in 2009. The economy played a big roll in the successes and failures of the business, and though I would love to do another parlor business and start putting my skill-set to good use, I am reluctant to do so because of how unstable life was during the operation of the business. I experienced a lot of drama from various people that became affiliated with it in various roles. When I started my tattoo business in a physical location, I became subject to new regulations, taxes, public scrutiny and direct competition in a very fickle industry--especially once I moved the business to Kitsap County. My business was becoming quite successful in Mason County and I was pulling a lot of business from parlors in Kitsap and this pissed off a lot of tattoo artists in the process. So moving the business into Kitsap was part of made the shop fail. There is no solidarity among Tattoo artists--good or bad--and the politics of owning a business coupled with it made the experience very stressful. I did a blog entry on Facebook in November 2012 titled: "Where to go from here?" The entry (edited and updated for content) is below:
For friends and clients of Atomic Cheetah Tattoo, this is a question that many of you have and I would like to assure you that though the Atomic Cheetah name is gone and the shop suffered an unfortunate demise, I will still be in the area to provide you with answers and solutions. First, allow me to let you in on some information so that you know what led to the destruction of this business.
In April of 2012, I moved the shop to 740 Bay Street, in an effort to bring the shop to more foot traffic after having a 13-month stay at the dying Towne Square Mall. Being in the mall was fiscally ruining the business since foot traffic through the mall was ever-dwindling. Whenever I've moved the shop it had to do with lack of business or landlord problems.
In early June 2012, Gerald Nunez came into my 740 Bay Street location desiring employment and offering to pull the shop up out of a tailspin of issues with our neighboring tattoo shop, American Pinup, and settle some issues with my landlord. After reviewing his art and portfolio and having an extensive interview with him, I hired him. He openly admitted to me that he was a felon. He had a very convincing story to tell about how he became a felon and how much time he had served and with everything he told me I felt there was no need to question him more. Nothing on his background check indicated what he was incarcerated for other than "Aggravated Assault." (At the time of this blog entry in 2012, I didn't completely understand the severity of an Aggravated Assault charge and what hindsight has taught me in the present would not allow me to hire an individual with this on his or her record.)
Today it is easy to be labeled a felon. The courts are about revenue more than they are about justice. Justice is a very "loose term" these days. He said that he didn't want me to contact his probation officer because he was afraid that she would disapprove his employment in the shop. I didn't see the need to do so and that if she ever contacted me then I would discuss any concerns she might have. I should have seen the red flag then. My gut told me to contact her anyway, but I was also trying to avoid any conflict with law enforcement. I wasn't convinced that there would any "blowback" from the probation officer, but maybe there would be from Nunez. Either way, I didn't think that it really mattered. The only reason why I even bring this up here is that I want you to know what my mental process and logic was during situation--flawed as it may be.
Within the first few days, the store went from being asleep to being very lively. Money was being made. It seemed as though the issues with American Pinup were behind me and that I was going to be able to move on. Nunez, aka “Pick,” was very charismatic and able to charm the ladies and be a man’s man all at the same time. He had a “hustle” that brought business. In short time, we were caught up with rent and making headway to better days. For me, this was almost too good to be true. In reality, it was.
Within a couple of weeks of being employed in my parlor, he offered to become a “partner.” Pick didn't have any up front cash. I told him that I would need him to buy into the business fifty percent for a fair and equal share and to split the bills 50/50. (At the time, I was also looking for a way to get out of the shop for my own personal downtime. When working as your own boss, you work more hours than ever. It was really beginning to wear me down--another contributing factor to why the shop ended up in the wrong hands. I was becoming complacent from working to the point of exhaustion and not getting enough rest, therefore, ruining my vision of what was plainly in front of me.)
What he offered was that he wanted to do a tattoo supply and distribution company that would be hosted by the tattoo parlor and that he knew business contacts in Colorado that would be able to supply us exclusively with high quality products in my region. Since he was returning to Colorado to deal with business of a personal nature, he also decided to contact his business contacts there to set up some deals that would also help us to create a tattoo school, the first of its kind in Washington State. (I also learned later that the reason for his visit to Colorado was that he was still having to answer to a rape and assault charge filed against him in Colorado--that one of the conditions of his probation in Washington was that he was to return to Colorado to go through with the legal congress deciding his probable incarceration there.)
With all the new laws that have gone into effect in July 2010, it seemed like a lucrative business to attempt and get state funding for if we were able to get approval from Olympia and become a chartered organization through the state, helping to reinforce the new laws and standards for tattoo and body piercing/modification.
Despite my personal reservations about how the state went about underwriting the laws—and entirely different topic that is politically charged and will have me going all night—I felt that since the state has already passed the law that we might as well capitulate and see if I could recapitalize. After all, we tattoo artists now have to pay a 250.00 tax every year for licensing and that doesn't include liability insurance and shop taxes also.
Then there were other concerning behavior from him when he was around women. He often times would kick everyone out of his suite, lock the doors and draw the blinds and be “indisposed” for some time. He often times would brag about sexual congress he had with various women IN THE SHOP. I told him that I didn't want that going on under my (our) roof. That if I heard about it from him, or other people, I would have him removed. This created an argument that I would only temporarily win. I know that people are going to do "what they are going to do in private" but I still see the shop as a workplace and that kind of behavior is not tolerable. I can think of too many liabilities that could come of it and that could ruin me as a professional FOR LIFE. Also, I've never take much stock in the ramblings of other men’s conquests. I served in the military for the better part of 10 years and since the US Navy is a male dominate career it’s common to hear men brag about women that they have slept with. Ego drives men to do and say really dumb things. I expressed to Pick that he cannot be having sex with women in the shop, even if it is consensual. It opens up to many doors into legal battles I don’t even want to fathom—as you read further, you will learn more.
Once he became comfortable and securely entrenched in my business, his behavior became more aggressive and unpredictable. Also, the money he seemed to suddenly have in his possession to do all the various projects around the building for painting and remodeling was inexplicable. As time progressed, less and less money was being added to the till on his watch, or even from tattoos he was doing--period.
The buzz on Bay Street was that Pick was dealing drugs out of the shop—which would explain the sudden amounts of cash he had. I never saw any of this going on personally so again I chalk it up to hearsay but it does seem to fit the facts. Not only that, but eyewitness testimony from clients indicated that there was evidence of drug use and they would find him passed out on the couch in his lounge area and that he had strange behavior as though he was on cocaine. My own experiences with him made me think he was a cocaine user. He would be up for days at a time working with little to no sleep at all. He also had an explosive temper and would lose control of himself over the slightest issue.
In the following days after “binge working” he would be ill, like he was coming down off of an 8-ball. Pick always had some kind of issue with Vicky, my apprentice, and pressured me into firing her on countless occasions. He said that she was inciting mutiny and insurrection within the shop while stirring up trouble among the other apprentices. Pick had built himself an entourage of eight apprentices, and he would not come to me to seek a mutual approval of acceptance of an apprentice before taking them on. He would just inform me of a new addition. Also, they were all becoming a drain on our resources. I couldn't keep up with the demands of paper products and often times would find my own gloves I used for tattooing were raided due to the fact that the gloves for the shop were gone—just one of the many issues I had when trying to keep up with the bills.
(This may seem like nickle and dime issues, but when a box of high quality niaprene glove cost in excess of 20.00 dollars a box and you have to buy three or four of them for ten people to use, it becomes an expense that adds up. Couple that with the high quality paper products and medical soaps it gets expensive fast.)
The apprentices were not paying me in the office for the money to go into the bank, instead it was used to line Pick’s pockets and since he was not even paying me, I had no idea who was paying for what and with how much. Additionally, I was met with severely hostile reactions from Pick when I mentioned this problem and told him that the utilities were becoming too much for me to take on alone and that the bills were piling up. Making rent at the end of the month out of my own pocket and falling behind on my own personal bills for my living expenses was not the answer for solid bookkeeping—I would tell him.
Pick refused to help pay for a new autoclave. We had to resort to the time-honored method of using a pressure cooker to sterilize our equipment—a method that works extremely well but is now considered a “temporary measure” because lobbyists and the state are not really keen about anymore. This would become an issue that Pick’s former apprentices would post relentlessly about on craigslist.org in the weeks following the closure of the shop. Being ignoramuses about the facts, posting pictures of Vicky and I on the ads and trying to get people to turn us into the health department. Ironically, I never once had an infection—Vicky included—in any of the tattoos I have done. In the last several years I have never had an infected tattoo come back to my shop that wasn't admittedly the fault of the tattooed—usually having to do with the client’s vocational environment. During Pick’s tenure with my shop, he had SIX THAT I KNOW OF that were infected and HE USED ONE TIME USE TUBES!! The method I used to sterilize equipment went beyond the state requirements and federal guidelines produced by an autoclave simply because I used higher pressure, hotter temperatures, longer cleaning cycles and daily cleaning of the container—no spores or buildup of mineral deposit—using bleach products to clean and disinfect. Prior to even using the steamer, a chemical bath of the instruments using 91% isopropyl for a period of several hours if not days and thorough gloved-cleaning by hand was standard procedure. An autoclave was just a formality. I've had my own tools used on my tattoos on my own body. I trust my methods and would NOT use equipment or instruments I could not trust on another person. Also, I would have to tell the apprentices over and over and over again not to put food items or use the sink in the clean room for food, leaving dirty dishes in the sink, etc. etc. etc., so they are the pigs! I had to threaten to fine them 20 dollars for each item left in the clean room. Bottom line is that anyone that says instruments that come out of a pressure cooker are not adequately sterilized is a liar and might as well tell their moms and grandmas that their canned goods are contaminated also. And if you look up autoclaves on ebay, many of them are EXACTLY the same thing as a pressure cooker—the difference being the heating elements, timers, and the unit are combined.
Pick would spend huge sums of money on other projects in the shop that could have waited until later in the year after we had been settled and established; even giving us a chance to do the projects in the slower part of the season when we could shut down and have the mess over with little impact on customers. I called it “putting the cart before the horse.” Many times I would find these projects were started while I was out of the building without any statement of Pick’s plans. He waited for me to be out of the building because he knew I would protest.
Meanwhile, his apprentices were becoming more and more hostile and conniving by baiting Vicky into bitching conversations where everything she said was twisted around in an effort to make it seem like it was her that initiated a confrontation and Pick would again create more animosity by telling his apprentices not to talk to her, or to me about anything pertaining to the shop, tattoo, or even just general questions—claiming that I was weak and unable to make decisions.
He went as far as to take them all out to the Pizza Factory and discuss his plans for a “regime change” in the shop and outlined how much better it was going to be once I was fazed out of the business. All the while, he was unaware that he was dragging the reputation of the shop so far into the mud that people in Burien, WA were talking shit about Atomic Cheetah Tattoo. The word all over the Seattle area is that Atomic Cheetah was full of kids that didn’t know anything about tattoo, that it affected the work coming out of the shop.
Other issues in the shop were his trading work through the bartering process without consulting me first. I’ve had this happen with artists in the past and I told Pick that this was not acceptable in the shop unless I know who, what was being traded, and for how much. The shop is supposed to be paid for every service that is provided and tangible property is not always capable of being traded for the value that it’s worth.
Everything came to a head September 14th, 2012. The previous night, it came to my attention that Pick had inappropriate contact with a woman he was working on. As it would turn out, she is now afraid to enter the building because of her experience, and expressed this right in front of the building and under my office window. What I heard was confirmed by my apprentice. (Earlier that day, Pick had his apprentices come into my office and tell me these stories about how Vicky said various things that were “backstabbing” and causing drama in the shop among the other apprentices. So how the next couple of days played out is key and rooted in this conversation with Vicky.)
Vicky told me everything that had happened and when I questioned her about the “issues” that the other apprentices complained about she told me—in exact detail—the way the conversations went. The only difference was the spin that was put on the details and what Vicky had to say was more credible to me. My suspicions about Pick’s motives were confirmed. After having an very enlightening conference about Pick’s indiscretions with women in the shop, I asked Vicky why it was that nobody told me anything about what was going on because at this point it was going to be very hard to be able to do much about it all.
The general consensus was that with all the stress I had been under for the last several months, I was not approachable and failed to do what was needed to get the situation under control. I asked one of the women that came forward the following Sunday why she didn’t tell me about Pick’s unwanted sexual advances and assaults she said that her appointments always were at times when I was not in the building or just leaving.
On Friday, I had Vicky drive me to Wells Fargo on Olney Rd in Port Orchard. I told Pick in July that I didn’t want the company to bank with Wells Fargo that I had made plans to bank with Kitsap Bank right down the street from us. He was really insistent on banking with Wells Fargo and had even opened an account with my registered trade name without my permission. I spoke with the bank about it then and told them that the account was opened without my authorization and that I did not wish to be added to it. I told Pick that the account needed to be closed out, or at least have Atomic Cheetah’s name taken off of it.
Wells Fargo confirmed that the account was still active, but it had a zero balance in it. They put a debit freeze on the account and stated that they did not have the UBI number for my business, that Pick had opened the account number using a different federal tax id. When I showed them my business license and that they had opened the account with my registered trade name they were shocked. It has put them in the position to be sued.
That Friday night I tried to fire Pick, only to have him tell me that he had me pulled off the lease—which Gabrielle Freeland (our landlord) couldn’t legally do—but he was threatening me and getting increasingly agitated and with his apprentices all sitting around watching all of this and having a couple of his key lackeys chiming in and talking shit I figured it was better to exit the building than to remain. I was not sure what to do at that point and since I had already called Gabby and told her what I knew at the time and that I needed him out of the building and that I might need her help; she was quite adamant about not getting involved. So when he showed me a text message strand on his phone that was between Gabby and himself stating that I was taken off the lease, I didn’t want to risk getting the police involved yet. I had already been in touch with them and they were reluctant to get involve. If he and I are both on the lease to the building then we have 50/50 rights to be there and they cannot escort him off the premises. This was the loophole that Pick was using to entrench himself in the shop, and since the courts were not even open until Monday, that gave him the weekend to entrench himself further into the shop and do whatever damage he and his lackeys could do to damage the Atomic Cheetah name even further online through facebook.com and craigslist.
On Monday morning, Pick falsely represented himself as the authorized business owner and had my truck impounded, had the locks changed on the building, and took down the signs for the shop. On Monday morning, I learned that Pick was a level II sex offender and confirmed it on the Kitsap County Sherriff’s website. Meanwhile, one of the women that has stepped forward about Pick assaulting her went to the police and filed a report.
At this point, damage done to Atomic Cheetah Tattoo is beyond repair and I am now seeking legal action against Gerald Nunez, Wells Fargo, and possibly the landlord for the building. I was illegally locked out of my business, the building that I paid rent for in good faith, and my reputation as a business owner has been damaged. To make me whole again is going to take a long time.
In the meantime, I am unsure how to proceed with work that has been unfinished with my clients other than to have them send me individual emails to brian.hess72@gmail.com for details on a case-by-case basis. I have decided NOT to open another storefront for some time, if ever. I will probably open a private studio and operate through word of mouth from now on. The drama I have had to endure is putting my personal health and well-being at risk and I can no longer justify the expense or grief it has caused me. I need to focus on me for a while and pick up the pieces of the last three years of my life that have cost me in excess of 45,000.00 dollars—and that is just a rough estimate.
I am also urging any woman that has been harassed by Gerald Nunez to contact the Port Orchard Police Department. If you do so, I would ask that you also contact me directly and I will be sure to keep your anonymity for your safety and privacy.
Landlord problems: To put it in a nutshell I've been having to deal with poor business practices from landlords who seem to think that it is okay to go back on their promises of increased business, circumstantial arrangements/agreements, building maintenance, and general harassment about rent (regardless of payment history.) The general attitudes of most landlords I've experienced in WA have been emotionally unstable and economically unfit for business. Emotionally unstable due to the yelling and screaming or having confrontations in public places. Fiscally unstable because they don't have the money to run their business properly or use due process and procedure to collect rent or other fees. There is a lot of backward methods to doing business and WA doesn't have laws that govern landlord/tenant rights in commercial contracts saying that they use "residential" as a go-by in the courts.
I chalk much of this up to the conditions of the national economy and its impact on the local businesses but poor business practices leading to emotional outbursts and tantrums are a breach of contractual agreements. It’s not my problem if a business is desperate because of economic hardship. If I’m having economic hardships, nobody cares about me—so why should I stick around for more abuse?
(I eventually decided that pursuing legal actions against any of these people was not going to be affordable or equitable in the long-term and the impact that the shop had on my health was not good either. It was then that I decided backing away from the situation would be of less of an impact on my financially and on my credit than if I were to fight it out in the courts. Sometimes it is best to not fight, and to just move on. Picking battles that are winnable is time better spent if it doesn't cost more than what you are fighting for. I've been criticized many times for this by people who don't have all the facts. Even now, going on three years after the fact, I sometimes get wind of the rumors floating around Port Orchard around the demise of the shop. And there are more things that happened to the shop after they changed into "Gallery Tattoo" that I won't get into because it is hearsay and I'm not sure how much of it is actual fact. What I do know, is that the city was pressuring the landlord to not renew their lease on the building. My friends plastered the downtown area with Pic's sex offender profile in the form of fliers in an effort to do damage to him in retribution on my behalf. When you are in a crisis, you soon learn who your devoted friends are. And those people know who they are and that I appreciate what they did for me. It made the blow against me and the loss of the business have less sting. It's one of the reasons why I haven't looked back or dwell on what happened. Yes, I still have strong and unpleasant feelings about that situation, but it is now just part of me and helped me to walk away with a greater wisdom about people. I am a bit more enlightened by this experience. There actually has been some good to come out it.)
So in the two years that followed, I lived with Vicky and her family on her dad's ranch. We had an arrangement that was mutually beneficial for a time and it included helping her take care of her dad. He has few friends that understand him because of his eccentricity and he has many of the same interests as I do. So we were a good match to become very close friends. Despite this there were underlying issues that had been brewing for many years, but I will get into that a bit later in this blog entry. But I stayed with this family for the better part of two years, and I took away from this a lot of healing, but then a lot of new wounds too--typical things that happen to people when they live together under the same roof for any stretch of time. We tend to learn more about people than we care to when spending a lot of time together.
During this time, it was also apparent that I needed to consider the long term plans for my own life. I want to sail, and I want to move back to the East Coast to be nearer to family, if not just move back to Muncy all together. I've had this sentiment for several years, since my divorce from Kaylena in 2006, but the economy and the distance have been a major factor in creating my indecisiveness.
My visit to Pennsylvania in 2013 was probably the best one I've had yet. My parents and I have reached a stage in our lives and relationship of understanding and acceptance. I felt peaceful there. There wasn't any stress. The house was warm and full of memories. I think that there is a time when people have realized their mortality and see life as being a precious thing that cannot be wasted on frivolousness and anger.
My mom still has some issues with her sister, that will probably never go away. There were some conversations that I had with both of them, although during the entire 4 months I was at home I didn't see my aunt once! Although my Aunt Gerry from Ohio came all the way out to see us, knowing I was home. So I guess you can see where some people's priorities are and where they keep their hearts. I love my aunts, both of them. Aunt Gerry has been divorced from my uncle (my mother's brother) for many years, but she is still a part of our family and has made every attempt to be a part of our lives also. So there are people that are unselfish and lovely in the world. They are few and far between, but when you run into one and they become part of your life, you should hang on to them.
Families feud about many things. Most of the the time it's about money or in-laws. Sometimes it is based in sibling rivalry. I think that the sibling rivalry is a natural course of things. It is what nature puts into all of us to ensure that we scatter our seeds across greater distances. So sibling feuds are really common. Sometimes they come to an end later in life and friendships are forged when it's realized that the parents are getting older or are already gone, and family that remains is all that is left. Sometimes it still doesn't make a difference and the feuds continue to the end. My siblings and I don't really have anything to feud over. I think we were lucky in that respect. I think we have our differences, but don't get mad or stay mad deliberately. We already have a great deal of distance between the three of us. My sister is seven years younger than I am so we never really grew up together during the formative years of adolescence. My brother is four and a half years younger than me and we had a large enough gap age-wise that as he was entering high school, I was graduating. I left little time between graduation and boot camp in the US Navy.
My sister and I never fight. My brother and I sometimes argue, but I get over it. So does he. We soon learn to agree to disagree. Even my parents and I have done the same. We sometimes get into disagreements or argue a bit, but nobody stays mad. We have learned to grow from it all. So why is it that some people find it so difficult to get beyond differences and continue the same arguments for years, decades, or a lifetime?
Getting on the plane to come back to Washington State was hard. I was not ready to come back. I don't believe my mom and dad wanted me to leave yet either. In retrospect, I think if I would announced I was going to remain in Pennsylvania, they would have been more than supportive. But I've been living in Washington for almost 20 years and I have a lot of loose ends to tie up. This has been my reason for staying in Washington for all these years since my divorce in 2006. I should have moved back then-again in retrospect. But the cliche says "hindsight is always 20/20." I hate cliches.
Not as much as I hate stress though, and I've been dealing with a lot of that over the past several years and since I returned to the Kitsap area, it seams that there are a lot of things that still have not changed from the first time I lived in the area prior to my divorce. So I have this history in Washington--a history with an affect in the now--not knowing how to get away from it as I have felt trapped by it. Otherwise, human drama aside, I love the region. The sailing and outdoor life here is amazing. I have access to many other places for exploring. This is one of the big magnetic pulls on me, my soul. I feel drawn to the water and living in a place that has tidal fjords and estuaries is amazing. I feel at peace when I'm on my boat. That is the second great big thing on my plate that keeps me here in Washington.
I have worked very hard to have what is mine. I've been very patient and have planned carefully how I want to live my life for the long-term. I have been VERY careful about how I want to do this. So I do my research and read everything I can, watch as many documentaries as time will permit, and spend time on the vessel putting the research into practice. Meanwhile, my heart is aching for the desperation I feel when I am at home, surrounded by intensity and stress. I already have issues with depression and complications from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and for a long time I didn't even know who to contact, what to do, or how to start to deal with any of these things. My support network here in Washington is through the Veteran's Affairs--and we have all read or heard about the medical care of socialism at the lowest bidder.
I recently started to see a therapist to determine why it is that I have this cycle of events that have me on a repeat performance of the same situations. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again but expecting a different outcome each time. I ask myself, "Am I insane?" As I sit here in a downtown coffee shop in Bremerton waiting for my therapy appointment, and with all the events of the two weeks since my last session I often asked myself this question. What I have learned about myself is that I care too much about other people. That my coping mechanism is broken. That I have a great deal of empathy to the point of taking in other people's problems as though they are my own. That the PTSD has helped to construct a person that lives a lifestyle that leads to being a hermit to get away from problems. I do better when I am away from people. I abhor drama, but somehow it finds me. From the moment that I let people in, I find myself having to cope with critical mass--the long build-up to an explosion of problems followed by the unsettled calm in the wake of aftermath only to have it re-coalesce and begin the process again. So my life is really not much different than many other human beings, the true nature of the universe as we are all creatures of that universe--RIGHT?
I have figured the Critical Mass Theory of Life based on what I have experienced and seen on the Discovery Channel. I have written about this in blogs long ago, that no longer exist online. Here I am again, writing the same thing--another peg of insanity. What will the outcome be this time?
I always felt that family is who you surround yourself with, but sometimes there are issues that arise that make it impossible to remain in a patchwork household. People's lives change all the time and despite how close you may be with a person, my life experience has been that blood is thicker than water. Unfortunately, that is not always true in families I've met in Washington, where brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, will throw each other under the bus for what ever end serves them. The human condition of screwing each other over for a percentage--what separates man from beast.
However, my real support network in Pennsylvania is 3200 miles away--my real family.
I have been living in this Port Orchard household and ranch since September 2012. It's been almost two years, and I'm nearing that upheaval time. But this time it isn't because of my own choices. Seven years worth of drama and frustration has come to a head with this family, recently, and there are a lot of things that have come to light to me in leau of recent therapy and how this is affecting my life. My sense of loyalty and justice has prevented me from being able to say "NO!" an instead has me doing a lot of things to "help" with the situation where I shouldn't have any kind of responsibility or sense of duty for.
When I came back to Washington, I noticed that Victoria's dad, Arthur, was doing worse than before I left. Arthur is an eccentric man with many facets to his personality, but one thing that binds them all together is that he is a hedonist. He is addicted to what feels good to "Arthur." Saying this, I realize that I'm a bit of a hedonist as well, as everyone in this household. Most people are hedonists. But Arthur is such a hedonist that he will do anything in his power to avoid doing anything that he views to be unpleasant. He also tries to make everything going on around him to be about him by redirecting the focus on himself. This takes the definition to a level of selfishness that despite how ridiculous it may be, sometimes goes unnoticed by a family of hedonists. Comical right? Also tragic, in more ways than you may think. Arthur's history of hedonism is such that it can be described by how he was raised, his short stint in the US Army, his quick and convenient romance and marriage to his late wife, and all the dynamics of his life to this day.
Whenever he is faced with something unpleasant, he either shuts down and has a cardiac episode, or he runs away like a little kid. He also is constantly looking for shortcuts for long-term problems. Shortcuts that feel good in the present and lie to him about the longevity of the pleasures. So, without going into graphic detail about Arthur's past and what molded him into the 71-year-old kid that he is today, just understand that because of the complexity of his eccentricity, it is hard to see his dementia when it manifests itself.
Before I left for Pennsylvania, Arthur had a a couple of cardiac episodes, strange behavior at both home and public places, continued to display signs of self-neglect (one of many stages of dementia). He fixates on things and will obsess about them for hours, sometimes days or weeks if you let him. He will watch the same episodes of "Monk" to the point of having the dialogue memorized--much to the distaste of the rest of the household once they have memorized them too! Then, when members of the house complain to him, in effigy he will then watch them backward without sound. He has been found staring at a blank television and when asked what he is doing, he says that he is "watching the television." Literally, watching THE television.
He has wondered around the property with mayo and mustard spiking his hair and beard, freaking out the family and friends/associates all wondering if he has finally fell of his rocker. He can't be trusted to be left to his own devices for long at home, otherwise we would find he had eaten entire 10-serving yellow cakes from Albertson's grocery and their empty-container-evidence hidden in a bathroom drawer. One time he ate 27 dark chocolate candy bars in a day and put his arrhythmia in such an erratic state that it landed him in the hospital.
Now all this may seem comical and even cute, but actually it is really alarming. I told Vicky then, that she needed to have him evaluated, but since he refused to go to appointments she responded in kind by saying "HOW?" I told her then that he is probably suffering form dementia. Add to that he still mourn's his late wife after seven years, and he refuses to bath or keep up himself. One time he took all his heart medications and threw them away and replaced them with jelly beans. Why? "Because they are my happy pills and they make me feel better when I take them so I don't need those other chemicals in my body!" This is not the quote of some ordinary demented individual, but that of an EXTRAORDINARY demented individual!
My flight back to Seattle was bittersweet. I had recently taken possession of SV Triton, a Camper & Nicholson 33 Racer/Cruiser Bermuda rigged sloop. I sailed it single-handed from Bainbridge Island into the far end of the Hood Canal in November 2013, prior to leaving for PA. I was anxious to get back and get the boat ready for a sailing season of fun on the water. But, I didn't get much use out of the boat this last summer. Things with the clan in Washington was brewing to a thick foamy head of issues. Three months into my return to WA, it was very obvious that the family was having financial problems that goes back to the seven-year-old argument that Vicky needed to have Arthur give her a limited power of attorney to deal with the finances of the household--the mortgage in particular.
I wasn't worried about the state of the ranch so much as I was about the state of Arthur's mind. I spent a lot of time with him alone. Loosely speaking, I was his "live-in assistant and companion" of sorts. We would go to a weekly Key Peninsula Writer's Club meetings when I didn't have therapy session in Bremerton, and also attended a literary book club in the Port Orchard Library on the second Tuesday of each month. I also made sure that he took his meds, monitored his sugar intake, kept him engaged mentally with conversations about music, art, the cosmos. . . . whatever the topic was, we had grown very fond of each other. Despite the fact that we are both selfish individuals, I kind of saw a future version of myself in him.
We had many conversations. Everyday. Then came the talks about finance. One day when we came back to the ranch after an afternoon of routine errands and writer's group, there was a notice that was taped to the gate. It was a notice of an impending foreclosure on the ranch. The mortgage payments were not being made, despite the fact that it would appear that there was a lot of money going out to various farm functions, groceries, and the occasional dining out. To someone unfamiliar with the amount of money coming in or out of the household, Arthur didn't seem to concerned about how much money he spent. Vicky would tell him to keep receipts of his transactions and to not spend so much and to keep it within his $100.00 per week allowance for his own things.
Seeing this notice struck a resounding tritone chord with me. I handed Arthur the letter, as addressed to him by Timothy Acker, and told him "You need to address this with Vicky A.S.A.P.!" He took the notice and continued through the open gate, then proceeded to give it to her.
In conversations that soon followed, I learned that Arthur had not been keeping up with the mortgage payments, blaming Victky for not making them. Arthur told me that he had her in charge of accounting for the farm and that it was her responsibility and that he could not understand why the house was not paid for. I said to him, "Then you need to take control of your finances. You are the one that is ultimately responsible for the payments on the house. Didn't you give her power of attorney?"
"No, I don't want to sign over my life to Victoria, I'm afraid that what is mine will no longer be mine." This was his answer to everything, quickly followed up by "The other two daughters would be cut out of everything." Arthur has always had this hopeless dreamer idealism about his three girls reconciling and being in his life. I suppose that one can hope for the best. But the reality of it is that they have a sibling rivalry that goes back through a lifetime of screaming and yelling--and somehow Vicky winds up getting kicked out of the house, to the curb, or her personal belongings get stolen followed up by an assault or some other kind of violent and angry altercation. And each of them have the memory of an elephant, never letting go of the past. The other two sisters have not been in touch with either Vicky or Arthur in excess of six years--even though the youngest one lives in Seattle just a ferry ride away!
Both of the sisters made it very clear that they wanted nothing to do with the family. So Vicky is left holding the bag and shouldering a huge burden: Arthur.
The mortgage company will not talk to Vicky unless Arthur is there in the room and privy to the conversation, so in between cardiac episodes, treats of foreclosure, or Vicky threatening to leave him high and dry to figure it out on his own, there are few moments when Arthur is of the right frame of mind to deal with the situation. So the mortgage was worked out eventually, but it meant that Arthur had to move almost 45,000.00 dollars from his retirement account into the mortgage to save the house from foreclosure. Again, Victoria was able to point him in the right direction to avert the sale of the property from auction the day before the scheduled foreclosure date.
Whenever something traumatic happens with Arthur, he begins this process of pining for the other two daughters, as if they are some kind of salvation for him. Or he will start talking about contacting Margaret's family in Germany--as if they are going to send him money to bail him out or offer some kind of advice.
The one time I was able to spend a few days on my boat--moored in Tahuya at a resort on the Hood Canal for the summer--he came to pick me up the Thursday before the date of the foreclosure. He proceeded to tell me that "we might be living in cardboard boxes tomorrow but I think I have bought us time on the foreclosure proceedings." He began telling me about the amount of money had moved into the mortgage account, about how Vicky was "being the Gestapo about spending money and to expect pretty high financial demands from you (me) and that things were going to be much different in the foreseeable future." He then began to fixate on the expense of the rabbits in the rabbitry.
Vicky and I both raise rabbits and are partners in the rabbitry, with two other people (were). I raise three types of rabbits and Victoria has several. The rabbit expenses were seasonably high as we were raising litters from the spring and getting ready to do a mass-culling of unwanted animals that didn't suite our breeder-needs. We butcher many of them, skin them, process the hides, meat, and freeze everything. The cost of our feed bill was pretty high, many times Arthur and I were tasked with getting feed from Cynex and loading the car down with about 150 pounds worth of food, that would last about 3-4 days. When you have a large number of rabbits, they can go through pretty insane amounts of food. But this usually only happens about two months out of the year in the beginning of the summer. Once we have processed and eliminated meat rabbits, the numbers get to a more manageable number. With the advent of the farm facing imminent foreclosure, Arthur was getting really sensitive about the rabbit bill.
I was more concerned with other issues regarding keeping gasoline in the mowers and lawn tractor. Every time we spend $20 dollars on the gasoline, it was gone almost immediately.
This leads to the issues of co-mingling expenses on the farm. I've come to understand that the common sense in keeping business accounts separate from the family farm was a moot conversation with Vicky because any effort she had made to make that happen was shot down by Arthur. He wouldn't see the bigger picture when it came to buying feed in bulk. She wanted to buy the right licensing to operate the farm as a business, and that would have reduced the money spent on feed for ALL the animals on the farm, but he would only see the $700.00 on an immediate bill for SEVERAL WEEKS worth of feed. Instead, spending 250.00 every week on feed was somehow more appealing to Arthur because he couldn't see the benefit of bulk spending. Obviously, Arthur was demonstrating that he was not very industrious or had any kind of head for money, business, or finance.
So, living here on the ranch put me in a position of knowing WAY TOO MUCH about their family finance. It put me into conversations with Arthur that sometimes would put me at odds with Vicky and her husband, making me think that maybe they were, perhaps, the "predatory adults" that Timothy Acker was labeling them. I generally try not to be judgmental or quick to make a decision about anyone.
I tend to believe what I see, call it for what it is, and don't hide what I feel from people. I also don't just open my mouth and say anything until I am sure that I have most of the information and facts. Maybe it has something to do with my sense of justice that is cultivated by my journalism experience. I know that my parents raised me with a sense of purpose, justice, and ethics. I also learned that life is never as it appears on the surface. Many of you that know me personally, know that I wear my feelings on my sleeve and that I have no hidden agenda. Some people call me an asshole because I may be cranky or sometimes nasty when I am incensed by injustice. Again, it's the PTSD and coping mechanism putting me in a cycle for critical mass by making my auto-defensive posture go into overdrive.
Another conversation I have had with Arthur has to do with Timothy Acker. Mr. Acker is an attorney that did Arthur's estate planning and will. Arthur has told me many times about how he had so much disdain for this man and that he couldn't believe him when he said that Vicky and Jason (her husband) were predators stealing all his money. Going back to 2007 when the family moved from Los Angeles to WA after Margaret's death, Mr. Acker makes it sound as though Vicky had stolen $700,000 of Arthur's estate through misappropriation, fraud, and grand larceny. It is true that Margaret's insurance paid out over $1,000,000, but the money was already spoken for. There was the purchase of the ranch in WA, the house in Los Angeles was mortgaged to the hilt and still needed to be paid while it was on the market. Once the house in CA sold, there were closing costs on the property in WA, the cost of the move, the cost of what was owed on the house in CA, and many other things that added up. So when it was all said and done, there wasn't much left. Arthur didn't even know much about his own finances, as Margaret did all of that for the duration of their marriage.
Vicky told me everything, and once they were settled in WA, two weeks later, Arthur ran away to South Dakota to be with the other daughter. He returned two weeks later complaining that the other daughter was "mean to him and that he picked the right daughter to be with."
Now, fast forward to the present:
About a week after the foreclosure was overted, Vicky pressed Arthur about power of attorney. She also was looking at ways to turn the ranch into an asset. Victoria had already begun the slow process of reducing the number of horses on the property from 30 (full sized breeds and miniature horses) and downsizing the feed bills and other expenses. She set a goal of only keeping the animals that were boarders or working for her in the show arena and student riders. The horse population went down to less than half in matter of six months. Meanwhile, the rabbit production increased as did our participation in rabbit shows around WA. The sale of rabbits and horses also increased, bringing in money to support the other animals and the farm itself--part of the co-mingling of finances. Victoria brough in the mother of one of her riding students--a local real estate agent--who has connections with various real estate and family law attorneys. They (Arthur, Vicky and the agent) would have meetings frequently to discuss options. Since it was obvious that Arthur was not ever going to comply with Vicky's requests for limited power of attorney, she started looking at what was needed to get the farm on the market and help her dad recover his equity. Meanwhile, she and Jason were going to look into buying or renting to own a property that had more manageable size for their needs long-term, keeping Arthur's needs in mind and maybe setting him up with a small domicile on the property.
Knowing Arthur may actually be suffering from dementia because of his inability to take care of himself, he needs someone to be around him 24 hours a day. He has needs that must be addressed that he will not do on his own. And though Vicky never openly voiced her innermost thoughts about how long she and Jason would be able to take care of Arthur, she did know that she didn't want to put him in a position where he would become a ward of the state when the time came. Eventually, they would not be able to continue to care for him as time would demand of her. That is part of the reason why I was living there in the house--and I made it known that I had initiated my exit plan.
I announced that I would be leaving at the end of the summer as the boat I now own is large enough that I can live aboard comfortably. My involvement with the rabbits would be maintained until such time I decided I needed to sell-out of my herd--which would give Vicky first pick of what she wanted as she and I co-mingled our resources. So even Arthur's frustration over paying for rabbit feed at Cynex was not necessarily a warranted issue. The partners in the rabbitry all contributed money for food and boarding the rabbits. I spent several hundred dollars a year in cage materials, time building the cages, food, and animal sales/purchases over the past two years. I went as far as to ship two rabbits from New York in an effort to get a better genetic line to improve the quality of animals I was breeding, therefore bringing economic value to the rabbitry.
So in the process of talking about selling the farm in favor of a more manageable situation that could help EVERYONE in the family, Arthur begins his tradition of pining for the other daughters. To Vicky's frustration and everyone's disbelief, he complained that he had no contact with his family in-laws in Germany, that they have been trying to get in touch with him and left him a voice-mail on his cell phone. I found the message and played it for him, because Arthur feigns that he doesn't know how to check his messages--despite countless attempts to show him how to use it. He is the same way about his Mac Book--a computer that he has had since new for the past 8 years. We usually chalked it up to him being technologically challenged like any typical septuagenarian. I suggested that we go buy a calling card or if he was willing, he could use my phone if he wanted to charge up my account for the international dialing--my service will provide it on a prepaid basis and it's easy for me to help him do that. But he never followed through, always having some excuse or self-defeating or self-deprecating reason why. Then he starts pining for the other daughters, saying that they should be made privy to what is going on. Vicky, exasperated by this suggestion, says that she doesn't have the time or the energy to cultivate a relationship with her estranged sisters that have had no contact with her for almost seven years.
As if on cue, Alex, the sister in South Dakota, calls Arthur's cell while we were out doing our Wednesday rituals. The conversation was mostly one-sided with Alex yelling at Arthur and he doing mostly "yes, yes, yes" and stuttering. Arthur generally falls apart whenever he is confronted with conflict. He melts on the phone. And with his short term memory beginning to show signs of failure, he is having complete meltdowns and his brain turns off. He just gets overloaded. I had him put her on speaker phone where I proceeded to tell her "you have no reason to yell. You have to understand that there is a lot going on and that yelling at your dad is going to just shut him down and that same thing goes for your sister. If you want to have a dialogue with either of them, you need to understand that there is a lot more going on than you know."
Alex spent most of the conversation going on-and-on about how the family in Germany got hold of her in a panic because they had not heard from Arthur and were concerned. . . gravely concerned. She went on to say that Victoria is squandering the family money on her "horses and ponies that she plays with" and on she went with crazy accusations of theft, lies, and all the Seven Deadly Sins--essentially. At that point, I was now caught waist-deep in a family feud that I should not ever have been privy to or part of. But because of my sense of justice and ethics, my fondness for Arthur and his family, and my own coping mechanism compromised--here I am again in the beginning of another critical mass.
Within two weeks the events that took place were so unbelievable that I saw sides of people I thought I never would see. Vicky, justifiably, had a massive meltdown to the point of almost a psychotic break. The very mention of Alex's name just sent her over the top. Alexandra and Victoria has had a history of violence, anger, and have even police involvement due to Alex assaulting her. So Vicky suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of her younger sister. So naturally, the idea that Alex is going to get involved in the middle of all this drama that has been growing and festering all this time, Victoria was worried that Alex was going to really upset any kind of stability that they have managed to create by saving the house from foreclosure.
This created a very uncomfortable environment for me because I could feel empathy for what was happening to Vicky. She has never been the kind of person that would necessarily put her needs before her dad. Most of the time she was worried about how things are going to work in the long term so that her dad didn't end up being a ward of the state. So when the foreclosure had been stopped, and the house was given some more time before they had to make any decision whether to put it on the market or not, she had been in contact with her real estate agent friend and they were entertaining the various options there are to regain some of the equity if they sold the property and then that way he could be put in a better situation that could cater to his needs.
Meanwhile, Alex was secretly calling Arthur's cell phone--the two of them thicker than thieves. Arthur was not telling anybody that he had been in touch with Alex, and I did not tell Vicky that Alex had contacted him the previous Wednesday because it was not my place to get into the middle of that conversation like I had in the first place let alone get Vicky involved in it without Arthur confronting her on his own. That was a dynamic of the family that need to be dealt with internally.
I told Arthur that now that he had contact with Alex that he should take that relationship with baby steps. Instead of running to her with wide open arms and the desperate pleas for attention that he hadn't gotten from her in almost seven years, I told him that would be better and wiser for him to take it one step at a time and get to know her first. Especially since she would scream and yell at him about how she wanted him to pack up all his valuables into a u-haul and come running to South Dakota to stay with her. It was very obvious to me that Alex has it in for Vicky because all she did was scream about how Vicky had stolen over a million dollars and squandered it on her toys and her animals "playing with her ponies and horses and continually exploiting their dad like he was a walking atm."
Sometimes I felt this way, not knowing all the ins-and-outs about the farm's budget, but family farms aren't run like a well-greased machines. Sometimes it takes creative accounting to get things to happen. So I decided at that point that the least I worried about whose money was paying for what the easier it was going to be on myself or how I felt about other people in this situation. So when Alex called and was yelling at him on the phone, I did not offer up any information to Alex that could possibly give her a munitions against her sister she hadn't talked to in 6+ years. I just kept emphasizing to her that yelling at people was only going to shut them down and that if she wanted to talk to someone who was neutral she could talk to me as long as she realized that I was going to be loyal as a friend to Vicky as well as a neutral party if it was even possible.
So a couple days after the initial contact from Alex, Vicky and Arthur had an enormous explosive argument that even concerned the next door neighbors. I saw a side of both of these people that I never thought I'd ever see. Vicky was so angry and saying some of the most heinous things to her father out of anger and frustration, the culmination of seven years of anger and frustration, that I actually called some friends of mine from Marine Corps League, in case I should actually make plans to have them come and pick me up and all my possessions and get me off of the ranch. I suddenly felt as though it was an unsafe and very volatile place to be.
There have been very few times in my adult life for ever felt this way. And what really killed me was that these are people that I have come to love almost as much as my own family. And it really hurt me to see all this happen. But I was angry with Arthur, despite his dementia. Because a lot of what was being said was absolute truth. We kept telling him to take it a step at a time and not to go running off to Alex without knowing anything about what he would be running into. How can you after 7 years of no contact call your own parents and scream at them to do anything?
But, after the initial screaming stopped, it was agreed upon that Vicky was to go to her corner and Arthur to his and that they needed to diffuse, or decompress. I told Arthur that I thought he is being a coward for not standing up for himself and taking responsibility for his own finances. He is 71 years old and he should know how to do his own finances by this point. There is no excuse for missing two years worth of mortgage payments and then blaming his own daughter. That's just ridiculous! And the more than I learn about the actual fighting isn't so what was actually really have any of the ranch it just made me that much more disappointed and angry at him! This is a person who is brilliant and has the ability to take care of himself but then refuses to do it because it's easier to put that responsibility on someone else and then blame them when it doesn't get done. So I walked away from the situation only to have him follow me to the barn insisting that he talk more to me about this or better yet, talk at me. I told him that there was nothing more that needed to be said.
One of the things that Arthur kept yelling about was that he was afraid that all of the family heirlooms are going to be sold and that the money was going to be used for things other than the farm. He also kept insisting that the other two daughters should be made privy to what was being sold because it was also part of Margaret's legacy and that was part of their inheritance. But when we come down to the actual subject of an inheritance, it gets more complicated than that. Arthur is still alive so all of her assets automatically default to him. After all he was her spouse. That was their combined a state. The daughters wouldn't get anything except at Arthur's discretion and that should be over her personal items like clothing, jewelry and heirlooms, and perhaps not until after he is gone. But the story goes that Alex was given $30,000 from her mother because she demanded it from her on her deathbed. She insisted she needed to have the money to go purchase her acupuncture practice in Sioux Falls, and that it was such an impending mean, that she wanted the money right then and there and didn't even want to wait until after Margaret had died!
Freddy also took money also from Margaret and has since never spoken to the rest the family even though she lives in Seattle, only a stone's throw away across the water from the ranch! So these two daughters went about their lives and never even bothered to keep in touch but as soon as the word gets to them that Arthur is failing in his health or having financial problems and that Vicky is still living in the house, now Alex wants to manipulate the situation. And manipulate it she did!
So all this took place within a three day period between Wednesday and Friday of that week. So the following Saturday everyone has agreed to let Arthur alone about the situation and we even went as far as to take his cell phone and his keys from him for just a 24 hour period to allow him to decompress and to prevent him from doing anything foolish and that included talking with Alex or driving his car to go wherever it was he wanted to go. It wasn't to be done in a way to penalize him for anything. It was done because we knew that he wasn't in the right frame of mind to go to driving a car. And we also did not want him being in contact with Alex because we know how manipulative she can be. And Arthur was an end pretty fragile state of mind and we were afraid that he was make some irrational decision through manipulation by Alex.
On Saturday evening, Arthur and I were alone and and I made him dinner. And I asked him if we can have a calm but serious conversation. By this time he had been calmed considerably and I think he wanted to talk about what was going on and not get into a shouting contest. And some of the things that he said in regards to the other two daughters were the same things he keeps saying about them. He wishes that the other two daughters would be a part of his life and that they would get along with each other. He feels that Vicky wrongly hates her sisters, that it has to do with jealousy. He said that Alex has this great education and could do all these really incredible things and that he had a lot of respect for her. He also said that Victoria sees Alex as a threat because of this. He says the Victoria feels inadequate because she doesn't have the same level as of education as her younger sister. And I asked of Arthur "how do you know this? Did you ever talk to Victoria about this? Because this sounds to me like something that you should talk to her about it and not me. The conversation I want to have with you has nothing to do with the other two daughters beyond the gate to this property. My conversation I want to have with you has to do with your long term care. Which leads me to this question Arthur, how do you expect your family to take care of you as you get older? You could very well easily live another 30 years. Victoria and Jason are already on the cusp of their forties. Jason almost 42 years old, Victoria will be 40 in less than a year, and if you live another 30 years they're going to be your age by the time you've passed on. Is it fair to expect them to take care of you for another 30 years? With that being said is it even possible for you to live in apartment by yourself without there being any supervision because let's be honest, you can't take care of yourself because you don't do very simple basic things that most people do. You don't wash your clothes, you don't cook your own meals, you don't monitor your own sugar intake or your dietary requirements, you wouldn't take your medication unless we're on top of you about taking care of yourself. And I'm not saying all this to you to be mean. I'm telling this to you because it's fact. For as smart as you are, you do not take care of yourself. If you were left to live on your own who knows the consequences and how long you would last? I have been here for 2 years and I have watched your situation follow a path of steady decline. This is not a sustainable future for you or your family. You need to seriously consider that you should be in some sort of an assisted living facility or an apartment complex. I'm not saying that you need to go into a nursing home, I'm not saying that you need to do it right this minute, what I'm saying is that you need to consider the possibility that you should be in senior assisted living where you can have access to your daughters on neutral territory. Not only that but all your needs would be met, they would come in and make sure that your meals were made, that your clothes were washed, that your medications are made available to you as you need them, and he would also have access to other people your own age with similar interests and he could still socialize. You might even be able to still maintain your driver's license if they see that you're capable of driving without incident. So your freedom would not be compromised. If anything your life would be greatly enhanced. It also would take a huge amount of stress off your daughters. All three of them. I think the reason why Alex has a problem with you is because you refuse to take responsibility for your own actions and its you rely and lean far too much upon Victoria. I think the animosity between the three sisters has to do with you specifically. Childhood problems aside, personality conflicts side, I think it has more to do with your long-term care than anything else. Now I realize that this is a major dose of reality for you, and that you might find this to be a shocker, but I think that you know in the back of your mind that what I say is true. I think that you know that this ranch that you bought is on the decline and that you're not going to be able to stand it much longer. And it's unfortunate as that is, I think that the sooner that you unload this ranch and get the equity out of it as you can and settle your personal accounts before the ranch has a negative impact on your credit, you'll still have enough money to be able to live off of for the rest of your life and be in a much better position to have a relationship with all three of your daughters if they want to. One of the problems that you have right now is that since the death of your wife, you have now had to rely upon your daughters to take care of all the same things that she did. And now that she is not here to take care of you and to make sure that your schedule is maintained everyday, the reality has been made known to your daughters as to how much care you require. It is unfair to expect them to take care of you until the end of your life.
Meanwhile, you keep singing the tune of, 'But we're family and we'll be together, that's the most important thing.'" And I continued with, "it's not about being together 24 /7. It's about being together as a family with the ability to live in separate houses and appreciate one another at arms distance because that's the natural way of things. Children are not supposed to live with their parents indefinitely. Your children are supposed to go out and repopulate the Earth. Makes sense, don't you think?"
I told Arthur that he didn't have to make a decision right away. I re-emphasize that quite a bit. I told him that to make a decision like this is a life altering decision and that it was important that he think it through and then bring it up to Vicky and Jason, and if he wanted to include Alex in on that decision that was entirely his right to do so. I made the very important comment to him that he needs to be the neutral party between his daughters. But running with open arms to Alex to South Dakota again, like he did in 2007, would only damage his relationship with the people who have supported him for so long in Washington. That if he runs off to South Dakota, then his decision will stay where his priorities are. But if he decides to take off and go to South Dakota, nobody. At that point I gave him back his cell phone and his car keys. And when I did so I told him that nobody is trying to keep him in the house as a prisoner.
The next morning it was planned for Vicky to go to a rabbit show in Monroe. But rather than go to the rabbit show, she was not feeling very good so she decided to stay home. I think the stress was kind of making her a little sick. I know that everybody in the house had been coming down off of the stress from the previous week and that there is an awful lot of bad stuff going on. So nobody really felt motivated to do anything.
I was up pretty early that morning and decided to come upstairs and play around on the computer for a little bit. At this point Arthur had already gotten up and said he had taking a bath and was walking around the house. He was acting a little bit strange but not any stranger than usual. But then he said to me that he wanted me to look up Alex's website for her business. And so I did. And there is a picture of Alex on the website. And then he asks me "does that look like the face of a fire breathing dragon to you?" I reply in kind, "well Arthur, I don't judge people by the way they appear in a photograph. Because it is how they treat their family and that can be a completely different scenario. I've had my own personal experience with that in my own family."
About 20 minutes later, I was out on the deck and I could see Arthur getting into his car and he had his little dog Betsy with him. And I asked him, where are you going? And he responded by telling me that he is going to go look for boxes at one of the U Haul offices so that he could pack up some more stuff. But, I knew better than that, because not only did he have his little dog with him to go to do this but also a bag with, I suspected, his laptop and it looked to me like he was wearing several layers of clothes as he was getting into the car. So I just very nicely said "okay, we'll I'll see you later."
As he was pulling out I went back to his room to check on the status of some of this stuff and my suspicions were confirmed. He was running away from home. So I woke Vicky up and I told her what was happening and we waited a little while to see if he would call one of us or change his mind. After about an hour of not seeing him and him not answering his cell phone, I called State Patrol through 911 and I told them what was going on. And then I handed the phone off to Vicky where she completed the rest of the story. Afterward, she contacted Alex in South Dakota and had a conversation with her. Strangely, that conversation was not at the same volume anger that Alex was having with Arthur the days prior. It was civil!
Vicky told Alex everything about what has been going on for the past 7 years. She told him that her dad was having health issues that she was afraid that he wasn't taking care of himself and that she is having so much trouble getting him to do simple everyday self-care things that she was not sure what to do about it. Alex and ask her why she didn't get executor-ship over him or call some other protective services for him and Vicky's response was "well, he's my dad! As I wasn't sure what to do because when we talked with his doctors about what's been going on they would set up the appointments for him to be evaluated and then he would totally blow them off and not go." She tried to get him to go to appointments. She tried to guilt him into going to the appointment. The bottom line is he has to be willing to go to the appointment.
So they went for the better part of a week not knowing anything about where he was going. And there was no contact with anyone in Washington about what was going on with the exception of a couple of mutual family friends and all he said was that he was having someone meet him halfway along his route to South Dakota to help him get there to Alex's ranch. So we knew that he was heading towards South Dakota. As for how much truth there was to him the meeting someone else on his way there we were not sure of that. There were rumors and hearsay that Freddy was involved in this but when Vicky confronted Alex she denied Freddie had any involvement whatsoever. Freddy refuses to have contact with either sister. Freddy refuses to have contact with anybody in the family. She has completely disowned them. I got some information from friends in the writer's group that he had been in touch with some of them and told them that he was going to visit Alex in South Dakota and was not sure when he is going to return to Washington.
Once we were sure that he was not going to come back to Washington anytime soon, things on the ranch continued to go about the standard routine. Vicky and I had several conversations during that period as to what we might do to try and help the situation. And also to figure out what she needed to do to cover herself. I told her that she should probably consider getting a family attorney. We were not sure if Arthur was going to make any mortgage payments while he was gone. With him not being present is going to make it that much more difficult to get things accomplished. Vicky wasn't sure if she should just continue to make the mortgage payments without him being there, what to tell the bank if they call that the payments were missed, and what to do about the farm in general. Jason, by this point, was so upset and hurt by all this but he told her that they needed to just find another place to live and move out of the house entirely and to screw Arthur. Let him think with the ship.
Because Arthur just abandoned everyone has been taken care of him for the last seven years without even so much as a "by your leave." I can understand why Jason would feel this way. I think I would feel that way if it were me. I don't think that's an unreasonable feeling to have at this point. But all personal feelings aside, I told Vicky that we need to figure out who to contact within the state about his problems so that we can ensure that he gets the right care while he's at Alex's house. And knowing Alex's history and how that she's been screaming at him over the phone who knows what would be going on while he was under her roof.
So I talked with my therapist in Bremerton about what's been going on that's I had been doing all along. And my therapist gave me the numbers for various resources through the state they could help with elder care and how to deal with these issues. If there is even a way to take care of Arthur at this point. Because who knows what's going to happen? So I contacted DSHS and I got hold of the elder care people and I basically reported to them that Arthur's was a case of self neglect which is a form of elderly abuse. I told them everything about what was going on and I also told them his whereabouts.
The caseworker I spoke to you wasn't sure if they would be able to do anything to help him, but she would get back in touch with me after she spoke with her supervisor because this was a pretty serious case. Normally what they would do is if he was still at the ranch they would just send somebody else out to the location and have him perform various tests so they can figure out just how profound his dementia is. Since he was not in this state, they might have to get in touch with South Dakota's equivalent agency in order to reach out to him and find out how he's doing. It isn't customary for the agents to do call backs to the person doing the reporting of an incident. But because this case is a bit different from the norm because of the circumstances she made an exception and then called me back the following week. But before I get into that, something happened at the very same moment that I had hung up the phone with the agent after speaking with her. And this is where the story takes a down turn for the worse.
To our surprise, Timothy Acker showed up banging on the front door the house. This is the same attorney that Arthur had so much disdain for because of the allegations that he made about Vicky claiming that she and Jason are predatory adults. This is the same attorney that Arthur had to hire another attorney to write a letter telling him to stop going after his daughter and making these false accusations. He did so by spending $2000 for this other attorney's services. There have been a couple of occasions when Mr. Acker has made this accusation even since then, where a sheriff's deputy have come out to the house asking Arthur if he's being abused. And of course, Arthur denies being abused by Vicky or anybody on the property. So rather than being confrontational with this man, she gave him all the things that were on his list, cooperating with him, meanwhile Mr. Acker was talking all kinds of trash about how everybody in the house is going to be arrested and everyone was going to be kicked out and that we had less than two weeks to get. He also said that all the horses bought Arthur money that all the animals were Arthur that they're going to have animal control calm and collect all of them and re-home them at Vicky's expense. He was making all kinds of wild accusations and just being a general asshole. So I told him, knock it off you're getting what you want leave her alone shut your mouth. Looks at me and says all I need to call the sheriff because you're being combative. I said to him go for it! At this point Vicky intervenes and said that nobody is going to hurt anyone here just hang on I'm getting the stuff together and then you could be on your way.
She then says, "besides the horses that are here belong to borders and there are also some horses that we brought up here with us from California. All the other horses were brought here either as rescues were paid for with money that was made or earned from lessons. My dad never paid for any of these animals."
Since she hasn't even been in touch with her dad for some time. And she wanted to know if he was doing okay as her sister wasn't being very forthcoming with any information. Acker was just threatening her the whole time about how he was going to have his day in court and that she is going to go to jail for a very long time because that's where she belongs.
After Acker left with the valuables on his list, there was no further word for longer than a month. There was no further contact with Arthur. Meanwhile, Vicky and Jason began the process of moving out, packing up what they were keeping that belonged to them, consolidating the house and getting ready to move to another location not even a mile away.
The process was slow and took about three weeks to complete, and it would have been faster if Alex and her husband hadn't shown up unannounced at the ranch.
to be continued. . . . . . .
