Something to look forward to

Things are still overwhelming.

Incubator is holding our belongings hostage in an attempt to get me to drop the ex partes against her and Step-Monster. Which is illegal and actually coercion which is grounds for a restraining order as well. I'll be taking this issue to the police and court as well.

The van is just trashed. I mean they just trashed it. Years of harsh abuse and neglect have made it unsafe, but it's the only vehicle I have to drive when B isn't home.

Took Gran to the store on Tuesday. She realized for the first time just how bad her vehicle has become.

I remember the day she bought it, Halloween, 2003. It was the first brand new vehicle she'd ever bought for herself, and the first brand new vehicle she'd ever owned since her Papa gave her a freshly manufactured 1967 Camaro.

Gran was so happy, excited, and proud when she brought the Venture (the van) home. And I just keep thinking about that, and the expression on her face, and then I look at what they've done to her van, and I just start sobbing. It may be twelve years old, but it was still a great vehicle (despite Incubator's best efforts to destroy it) until Step-Monster started driving it around about five years ago.

Gran cried about her van and what they've done to it.

She cried out how trashy the outside of our house looks. Every year, from snowmelt to snowfall, my gran would be outside every single day, working in the yard and keeping our house looking great.

Now our house almost looks abandoned. It's trashed, inside and out. They ripped out the large dining room window, dumped the glass panes and fittings into the yard. Put a window AC unit and plywood where the window used to be.

They illegally converted the garage into a bedroom, but never finished it. So now there's no garage (garage door was removed, wall was put up) and there's an unfinished, unusable room in its place.

The bathroom wall has rotted out.

We only have freezing cold water because the plumbing is so jacked up that we can't use our hot water at all.

They have our washer and dryer, holding them hostage, which means we have to try to find the time to go to the laundromat on top of all the work we're doing on the house.

The smallest bedroom (which we've always referred to as the little bedroom) has black mold growing deep into the white oak wood floor. I may have to actually rip up part of the once truly beautiful flooring to get the mold out.

Luckily, my friend's mom is licensed to sell high quality air purifiers, and loaned us a very expensive purifier to purge the mold from the house. I'm very grateful. Got it set up about nineteen hours ago. Almost no airborne mold spores in that room at the moment. Will make cleaning it much safer for me, and I won't have to banish B and Gran from the house when I clean it.

So, trying to make the best of a bad situation and keep the house from being condemned and having Gran taken away by social services, I decided to throw a house cleaning party.

Basically, I invited all my friends to come over this weekend to help me clean, and to be rewarded with booze, pizza, and home-fried potatoes.

The friend that's been helping me (the one with the mom that loaned us the air purifier) is sick right now. Tonsils are infected. Hoping she recovers soon, and that if she needs her tonsils removed, if the house is clean enough by then, I'm gonna invite her to come stay here and take care of her.

I got my tonsils out six years ago, at the age of twenty. It was horrible. My surgeon said that the older you are, the worse it is. My friend is two months away from turning twenty-six.

So! A bit off topic, but I remember seeing all the pictures of the process last year. How exactly do you go about maling that strange, time-consuming, traditional Christmas cake I saw so many Europeans making last year? I'd really like to try my hand at making one this year, but I don't know the name of the cake and the closest I can find seem to be very Americanized, and much faster to make.

Um...I think you rehydrate some sort of fruit in booze to put in it?

Anyways, it's 4:43am and I really need to try to sleep. I have to go to the doctor because I only have one heart pill left (which I'll be taking in the morning) and I may have to syphon oil out of the van before going to the doctor because the reservoir appears to be overfilled to the point of risking severe engine damage by driving it at all.

So, off to try my tea and to read Jane Eyre until I fall asleep.

Hope you all are doing well. Take care. Love you all.