(Originally posted to marilyn's all-purpose blog 02/03/11)
So after 19 months Bonnie is moving back home to New Jersey. We'd had a hunch something like this was coming because we weren't as giving with the money and were after her to make a budget and apply for financial aid from PCC.
She'd moved out of the house over Labor Day weekend last year, over to our friend Seal's place in South Pasadena. She worked hard at her job at J Jill, and got all A's in school, but somehow never came over or called or texted or emailed to let us know how she was doing. It was like we ceased to exist after she moved out. But let me start at the beginning.
In January of 2009 she came here for a vist, some "R&R" to get away from the mess that was her home life. She was so respectful and cried and whined about her home life and how bad it was and how she wanted to go back to school. So gullible us offered to have her move in with us, and we'd pay her way through school.
So when she drove into our driveway on July 10th, 2009, we had no clue what we were in for. The mask dropped and we were at a loss to figure out how to parent this kid, never having had kids of our own. She was a mess, both mentally and physically; I took her to have a wisdom tooth pulled a couple of days after she got here. From then on she was draped on the couch, watching reality TV like there was no tomorrow. She didn't help around the house, didn't cook, and was incredibly finicky with food. She spoke with her parents every day, who manipulated her from 3,000 miles away. Her father (who by the way owes us $20,000 that we will never see) wanted her to keep signing over her unemployment checks to him so he and her mother could continue to live. She broke down after she got through telling him that it was fraud and they could all go to jail, and he laid an incredible guilt trip on her. And that was only part of it.
Basically, she drove us nuts. She didn't like the items we'd provided for her (desk, chair, hamper), and so went out and bought her own stuff. Picture frames, vases, fake flowers, a Ralph Lauren sheet set complete with bedskirt and comforter, an $80 hamper from Bed Bath & Beyond, a dresser and desk from Target (and a $99 executive chair), an etagere for her bathroom, a bath rug, pillows for the bed, about a dozen bath towels, facetowels, washcloths, a chest for the foot of her bed, and a rack to hang her extra clothes on. Did I mention that either we or her boyfriend Carlos paid for this stuff, not to mention more than a few pairs of shoes, including a pair of $327 Frye boots.
We didn't like that she was using Carlos to buy her stuff; that was our first inkling that something wasn't quite kosher. I did her laundry in order to save water, but quickly stopped because she didn't want anything put in the dryer (it had to be hung up) and I wasn't about to spend my time doing it. She changed (as she liked to brag) three or four times a day and the laundry pile in her room showed it. It outgrew the hamper and spread to the floor. Her room, basically, was a mess all the time. She kept her door closed.
.
The picture you see above is a partial view of her room just before she moved out. Another one is shown below.
And this completes the view of the room.
With patience, and the help of a good therapist, she began to come around. Then we got on her about finding a job. After all, I am retired and Erica's salary only goes so far. You'd think that someone her age who'd gotten a job and been laid off would be champing at the bit to go find another. But with her it was "Oh, I'll never make the kind of money I was making when I was laid off." That became a mantra, and it took a while for us to get her off her ass and go find something. She finally did, in May, at J Jill, a women's clothing store at the Santa Anita Mall. She really enjoyed retail and according to her was very good at it.
Then it was nagging to find financial aid. Due to the fact that she was a non-resident, the PCC tuition was astronomical. She finally decided to see about it just before she left for New Jersey. Then she came back and told us she was moving back home.
I think this whole move is engineered to take the easy way out, i.e., sponge off Carlos (who has been mostly supporting her) who never questions her and buys her anything she wants. Poor guy. But that's not my problem.
We'd have family meetings with Bonnie because she (or so she said, and we really were) were big on communications. She grew to dislike them intensely because she said we were "saving" things up and using them to bash her ("It seems like it's 'bash Bonnie' all the time"), even when we asked her to give us her feedback she wouldn't do much.
Her excuse for not doing anything around the house was that "M likes things done a certain way and I'm going to screw it up." Basically, that was true. I think she did it on purpose to get out of working around the house. The therapist told her she needed to get out of the house, so she picked up and went driving at any time of the day or night. It's been suggested that she went cruising but I really don't think so.
She comes from a family who loves to cook but she couldn't do it herself. She'd smoke up the kitchen using the grill pan (I finally told her to close the door between the kitchen and the living room because I was afraid the parrot would cough herself to death), and then refuse to eat what she'd cooked, saying that it made her want to throw up.
I took to spending a lot of time at my laptop, away from her, because I just couldn't take her whining about everything. Nothing was right. She had problems with all the service people I got along with so well (Target pharmacy, my endodontist's front office, etc.). It was her Jersey attitude, acting like she was so much better than everyone else.
We asked her to house-sit for a few days one time when we went to New York. It was such a fiasco (she saw a potato bug, called Carlos in New Jersey crying hysterically and tried to kill it but it wouldn't die) that we decided to just have our friend Seal come over and take care of things like before.
There were other things, too. Like her trying to attract Christian, our friend Jen's son, who is our go-to for all the projects around the house. Whenever he'd come over, she would wear her shortest shorts and skimpiest camisole, drape herself on the couch, and act out the death scene from "Camille". He had her number, thank God, and we told her that if she even moved in his direction she would be out on the street. Of course we got all kinds of breathless denials and "what-do-you-MEAN-I-would-NEVER" stuff. We just stood firm.
So after 19 months Bonnie is moving back home to New Jersey. We'd had a hunch something like this was coming because we weren't as giving with the money and were after her to make a budget and apply for financial aid from PCC.
She'd moved out of the house over Labor Day weekend last year, over to our friend Seal's place in South Pasadena. She worked hard at her job at J Jill, and got all A's in school, but somehow never came over or called or texted or emailed to let us know how she was doing. It was like we ceased to exist after she moved out. But let me start at the beginning.
In January of 2009 she came here for a vist, some "R&R" to get away from the mess that was her home life. She was so respectful and cried and whined about her home life and how bad it was and how she wanted to go back to school. So gullible us offered to have her move in with us, and we'd pay her way through school.
So when she drove into our driveway on July 10th, 2009, we had no clue what we were in for. The mask dropped and we were at a loss to figure out how to parent this kid, never having had kids of our own. She was a mess, both mentally and physically; I took her to have a wisdom tooth pulled a couple of days after she got here. From then on she was draped on the couch, watching reality TV like there was no tomorrow. She didn't help around the house, didn't cook, and was incredibly finicky with food. She spoke with her parents every day, who manipulated her from 3,000 miles away. Her father (who by the way owes us $20,000 that we will never see) wanted her to keep signing over her unemployment checks to him so he and her mother could continue to live. She broke down after she got through telling him that it was fraud and they could all go to jail, and he laid an incredible guilt trip on her. And that was only part of it.
Basically, she drove us nuts. She didn't like the items we'd provided for her (desk, chair, hamper), and so went out and bought her own stuff. Picture frames, vases, fake flowers, a Ralph Lauren sheet set complete with bedskirt and comforter, an $80 hamper from Bed Bath & Beyond, a dresser and desk from Target (and a $99 executive chair), an etagere for her bathroom, a bath rug, pillows for the bed, about a dozen bath towels, facetowels, washcloths, a chest for the foot of her bed, and a rack to hang her extra clothes on. Did I mention that either we or her boyfriend Carlos paid for this stuff, not to mention more than a few pairs of shoes, including a pair of $327 Frye boots.
We didn't like that she was using Carlos to buy her stuff; that was our first inkling that something wasn't quite kosher. I did her laundry in order to save water, but quickly stopped because she didn't want anything put in the dryer (it had to be hung up) and I wasn't about to spend my time doing it. She changed (as she liked to brag) three or four times a day and the laundry pile in her room showed it. It outgrew the hamper and spread to the floor. Her room, basically, was a mess all the time. She kept her door closed.
.
The picture you see above is a partial view of her room just before she moved out. Another one is shown below.
And this completes the view of the room.
With patience, and the help of a good therapist, she began to come around. Then we got on her about finding a job. After all, I am retired and Erica's salary only goes so far. You'd think that someone her age who'd gotten a job and been laid off would be champing at the bit to go find another. But with her it was "Oh, I'll never make the kind of money I was making when I was laid off." That became a mantra, and it took a while for us to get her off her ass and go find something. She finally did, in May, at J Jill, a women's clothing store at the Santa Anita Mall. She really enjoyed retail and according to her was very good at it.
Then it was nagging to find financial aid. Due to the fact that she was a non-resident, the PCC tuition was astronomical. She finally decided to see about it just before she left for New Jersey. Then she came back and told us she was moving back home.
I think this whole move is engineered to take the easy way out, i.e., sponge off Carlos (who has been mostly supporting her) who never questions her and buys her anything she wants. Poor guy. But that's not my problem.
We'd have family meetings with Bonnie because she (or so she said, and we really were) were big on communications. She grew to dislike them intensely because she said we were "saving" things up and using them to bash her ("It seems like it's 'bash Bonnie' all the time"), even when we asked her to give us her feedback she wouldn't do much.
Her excuse for not doing anything around the house was that "M likes things done a certain way and I'm going to screw it up." Basically, that was true. I think she did it on purpose to get out of working around the house. The therapist told her she needed to get out of the house, so she picked up and went driving at any time of the day or night. It's been suggested that she went cruising but I really don't think so.
She comes from a family who loves to cook but she couldn't do it herself. She'd smoke up the kitchen using the grill pan (I finally told her to close the door between the kitchen and the living room because I was afraid the parrot would cough herself to death), and then refuse to eat what she'd cooked, saying that it made her want to throw up.
I took to spending a lot of time at my laptop, away from her, because I just couldn't take her whining about everything. Nothing was right. She had problems with all the service people I got along with so well (Target pharmacy, my endodontist's front office, etc.). It was her Jersey attitude, acting like she was so much better than everyone else.
We asked her to house-sit for a few days one time when we went to New York. It was such a fiasco (she saw a potato bug, called Carlos in New Jersey crying hysterically and tried to kill it but it wouldn't die) that we decided to just have our friend Seal come over and take care of things like before.
There were other things, too. Like her trying to attract Christian, our friend Jen's son, who is our go-to for all the projects around the house. Whenever he'd come over, she would wear her shortest shorts and skimpiest camisole, drape herself on the couch, and act out the death scene from "Camille". He had her number, thank God, and we told her that if she even moved in his direction she would be out on the street. Of course we got all kinds of breathless denials and "what-do-you-MEAN-I-would-NEVER" stuff. We just stood firm.
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