and away we go...

i talked with my Mum before xmas about the power of attorney... we both agreed to wait until after the holidays and his birthday to make a move. too much drama, we said (this is a family that thrives on drama, though).

so xmas came and my eldest daughter's boyfriend produced a ring and asked her to marry him. she was at the time 17 years old.

okay, so they would wait to actually marry, they said. good.

so far, no drama.

then new years eve and with it, my eldest daughter's birthday.
she asked if her brother would come.
i called and he said he'd love to, as he had been sober for about two weeks and thought he'd do fine.
new years eve, though, he went to visit his girlfriend in another city. she is two months pregnant with his child. he did not sound so very sober on the phone, so i told him to forget it.

i told my daughter he couldn't find a ride out of the other city (she's the one who cries over his state the most and i didn't want her to know he was drunk or high.).

she knew anyway, she always does.

we had the party without him.

then four days later (a day before his 21st birthday), my mother called to insult my daughter in the worst way.

evidentally my daughter had gone out on a date with her fiance and around seven pm, gone back to his house.

my mother's friend, a crazy psycho snoop, sneaked through his front yard and peeked into his windows to spy on the two of them after she noticed his car in the driveway.

she called my mother to tell her all about my daughter and his love life.

my mother threw her out.

i called my daughter at her fiance's house and told her that my mother had thrown her out. this was to warn her about the drama gathering in the family. when my mother is angry, someone usually ends up in the hospital with injuries. i advised my daughter to have the police escort her to pick up her belongings. even with the cops there, my mother still dropped her laundry basket and lunged at my daughter's fiance...had the cops not been present someone would have been hurt or in jail.

so until very recently, i was fielding phonecalls and emails between my irate mother and my depressed daughter who can't understand how her precious grandmother can 'hate' her (precious grandmother said so, along with screaming about god and hell and harolts and fornication...).

it's enough to send someone screaming into the night.

i just patiently explained to my daughter that her grandmother was not mentally stable and her intentions were good, she was worried, but my daughter should not take what she said to heart, nor should she pick up the phone or go to my mother's church for a while until my mother was calm again.

i explained to my mother that our job as parent and grandparent making rules for my daughter was now over. from here on out, we can only give advice, and offer her our love and support. i reminded my mother that from my grandmother down to me, every one of the women in the family, including my mother, had lived with a man before marrying him and only i had faced the family's vocal and biblical disapproval. now the family wanted to punish my daughter the same way. "why is that, Mum? no one called you or my sister a whore, no one called my grandmother a whore. why did you call me one and my daughter one? it doesn't bother me that you call me these things. it never has. but it sure bothers me and my daughter when you call her these things."...

and so on.

i got distracted from Gnu and his own drama playing out on the sidelines.

i should have been watching him.

well, then, here's what happened while i was trying to piece my eldest daughter's self-esteem and faith in god back together (i'm no christian, but that child has always been one and values her spiritual life very much. i hated to see that torn from her.):

new years, Gnu did indeed party like a rock star.

he partied himself right out of his girlfriend's home, because her mother didn't like his behavior when he was drunk.

so he went to the T--- House, a homeless shelter in the same city as his girlfriend.

she caled him and told him she wanted to go out with him to the T---House for a few days just to spend time together.

so he asked an aquaintence from the shelter directions from where he was to the girlfriend's house. the aquaintance offered to walk him there. Gnu accepted.

when Gnu got to her house, he and the girlfriend left the aquaintance in the living room by himself and they went to her bedroom.

the aquaintance cheerfully relieved them of her grandfather's loaded shotgun...a shotgun Gnu had used with her grandfather's supervision and permission. the grandfather had taught Gnu to shoot with that gun for several months straight.

the girl's mother came home, found the gun gone and Gnu with her daughter and hit the girl.

so the girl, who had already packed her bags for spending a few days away from home, just decided to leave her mother and never come back.

Gnu found himself in the terrifying and frustrating position of being solely responsible for feeding, clothing and finding shelter for another human being. and he sobered up instantly.

Gnu spent all his ssi money procurring meals and rooms at various motels for her, then when he ran out, he borrowed money from friends to support her. they argued frequently about how he would not spend the night with her, but left after 1 or 2 in the morning to go back to his apartment. his landlord had already told him she was not allowed to spend the night there.

finally, about a week later, he slapped her and left her standing on the street in our very urban city where the poor little thing knew not one soul except him and his friends who did not like her. she went home to her mother. he went to the bar.

all along he was calling the secret service as he is supposed to do and reporting what he was doing, where he was at and so on.

the girlfriend called him to tell him there was a warrant out for him.

i checked the online warrants for both my city and her city and found nothing, but advised Gnu to just go dierctly to the nearest police station and turn himself in.

afterall, he had insissted that he'd had nothing to do with the shotgun's theft.

then i called the girlfriend's mother.

the mother screamed and cursed at me about how i ws no 'doing my job' and so on. she was angry that her daughter was pregnant. i agreed that i was not standing in her living room and preventing the two of them from sleeping together, but did explain that i had told Gnu that i believed he and the girl were making amistake by trying to get pregnant. i pointed out that we were talking about two adults in their twenties, not children, and we cannot control other adults. she is from the deepest hills of the ozarks so we did not exactly see eye to eye.

so i just redirected the conversation back to the warrant. "did he hit anyone?" (at this point i had no idea he had hit the girlfriend and he'd told me that he hadn't when i had asked him). evidentally the mother didn't know either, because she said he hadn't hit anyone. she said the warrant was for stealing the gun, as it had been found with both his prints and the aquaintance's prints on it and that she had pressed charges. "oh. okay. thank you very much. i am terribly sorry to bother you, mrs. ----." i said. she screamed a bit more then hung up on me.

eh, so a hick doesn't like me, small loss.

my son called me for two days sometimes several times a day to ask me to check the databases for warrants in both cities for him as he had left his own laptop at the girlfriend's home.

i never did see a warrant for him online.

then he called me up as drunk as he could be tonight to tell me that in his weekly call to the secret service, he was told by officer ---- that there was a warrant and he wanted to meet with Gnu tomorrow at 10 am.

i called officer ----- myself after Gnu said he wasn't sure if the warrant was for hitting his girlfriend or for the shotgun.

the officer confirmed it and suggested that my son turn himself in tonight, because the sooner it it done, the faster the process will go to get him the help that he needs. he said the warrant was because of the shotgun.

so i called Gnu and told him that the officer had told me the warrant was for the shotgun theft and repeated my advice that Gnu turn himself in at the local police station because it would look better then.

Gnu says he will call when he hits booking tonight.



and on top of this i have begun the process of quitting smoking...i smoke less than ten cigs a day and when this pack is gone, it's the patch for me.

if i'd have known new years what was about to unfold, i would have picked an easier resolution, something like 'world peace'...

now where's my blasted lighter?!