My Dear Cousin - Utilities

21st June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

The day after my brother left I lost my job. I was having trouble staying awake because of my injury and to be honest my boss wanted me gone to limit liability. The injury had happened at work.

This was the height of the pandemic and the unemployment benefits were good money. I took the time I spent sheltering in place cleaning the house with nothing better to do trying to make the place better for  (Pickle) and me. I thought (Pickle) would come home. I was even using headphones when on the computer.

I went out and replaced his punching bag with a larger one. Years ago, my old man had gone out and gotten a punching bag stand fit for a professional boxer but a punching bag made for a child. It shook the roof when we used that bag.  I got the biggest bag I could find and it meant that Paul or I could take out our anger on the bag next time things came up.

I was even going to install padded flooring in the garage where we keep the bag. The house was all cleaned up and I was feeling rather good about the whole thing when I got a notification letting me know that the utilities  (Pickle) had been paying were now being shut off.

That’s right, without warning my internet stopped and I found out that the water was getting shut off. I had to scramble to get things right before I found myself without something major and I lost the phone number I had for thirty years.

This pushed me into a great depression. I finally had to admit that family was over for me. I mean, to be honest I don’t miss the man. I have nightmares about him coming home. I was always afraid of him coming after me in my sleep anyway.

One of the great facts of life is that no one is coming to save you. Well, no one ever came to save me. The Lawsuit is still pending and my life is much as it always has been.

Stay safe,

 

Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - A Car Hit Me

18^th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

At some point I was hit by a car. This may feel off topic given my last letter, but it fits into the overall narrative to my life. You see, I was changing a tire when the car shifted and fell. It wasn’t my car and the owner had forgotten the parking brake.

So the car fell and clipped me. The car clipped me on the side and left a five percent bend in my spine. This placed me in the worst health of my life. I ballooned up to four hundred and fifteen pounds and I had trouble cleaning myself. It made me a diabetic.

The chair in my work room couldn’t take the weight, and it bent causing me to get another one. The only thing was that my work room was so much a mess that I had trouble getting the old chair out and the new chair in. I couldn’t stand for more than fifteen minutes at a time without major pain.

I came home one night and one of my cats was missing. I asked (Pickle) where he was as the cat was never supposed to leave the house. (Pickle) said he let him out and didn’t feel like chasing him to get him back in.

 Well, a few days after that, it could have been a week or two now that I think of it, I was still trying to get my chair back in my work room and I sat down on the couch and was watching something on my phone. I had my laptop set up in the living room at the time which was something I take to work every day.

(Pickle) freaked out and started screaming. He thought I was transferring things to the living room from the work room I think, but he never talked to me about it. He called (Pony Girl) and started complaining. You have to understand that (Pickle) has sensitive ears. He kind of needs to live in a quiet house.

I was furious; I ran up to him and said “Give me the damn phone.” I told (Pony Girl) I was upset over (Pickle) letting the cat out and him never returning. I felt he had gotten the old cat killed and that looks to be true. (Pickle) winced when he heard that, he knew he was in trouble.

(Pony Girl) said “are you saying you want to sell the house” and I said no. The details of the argument are a little fuzzy at the moment but I believe (Pony Girl) came and picked him up. I never saw him again.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - Money Doesn’t Run

16^th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In my last letter I told you that I had gotten a lawyer to address (Yule)’s estate. (Pony Girl)’s lawyer stated that he had no estate of any kind. She said the man was flat broke when he died. This would lead to the question of where the check for five thousand dollars came from that (Pony Girl) had given to me. What happened to the house under living trust is still something I don’t know, and what money the old man had is still being researched.

(Pony Girl) has been demanding that I pay her rent for the house I live in. The house I live in is under trust and only the trust can make that demand. I think this has just been some kind of scare tactic but if the trustee dies I think she can force me to sell the place. I don’t know.

At some point (Pickle) said that (Pony Girl) was going to sue for her part of the house. When I asked why he said that she was going to sue me for her part of the house if I sued her for my part of the old man’s estate. I may point out here that this means that (Pony Girl) not only committed perjury in court, having said there was no estate, but felony larceny as she had taken the money to deprive me of it.

Further, I had at this point spent more than ten thousand dollars on legal fees and (Pony Girl) was dragging this out to try and outspend me. Jokes on her, the lawyer is following the money and wants to get paid for their work. They believe that in the end there will be money and are letting me slide on the bills.

I guess this just proves what I knew the whole time. Blood is thicker than water, but money doesn’t run.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

 

My Dear Cousin - Get a Lawyer

14th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

After the death of my old man it came to me that he had to have left an estate. Well, it came to me that as (Pony Girl) was his power of attorney she would have put all his money in her bank account and I would have been left high and dry. There was a living trust at some point so I was entitled to something.

I mentioned this to (Pickle) and a five thousand dollar check arrived in short order. I then asked for an accounting of the old man’s estate and was ignored. I then said if I didn’t get an account of my father’s estate I would need to consult a lawyer.

Somehow, I found myself talking to (Pickle) who was talking to (Pony Girl) over the phone. I said “am I getting an accounting or a lawyer?” (Pickle) said “she said ‘get a lawyer’”, and I did. It’s funny that the check for five thousand dollars went to the lawyer, and I may not have been able to retain one without that money.

(Pony Girl), of course, already had a lawyer who was doing her best to make my life hell. This was the same lawyer who ‘accidentally’ drew up paperwork to have me sign away my part of my home. I think I have the better lawyer being that mine specializes in estate law.

You should have seen the lawyer I hired. He volunteers as an armed guard at Synagogues. You would swear he’s Rodney Dangerfield’s brother. He has one hand that is missing a finger, but the old man is the kind of person that puts you at ease.

There is a part of me that felt a cold wind in my soul over all this, because I never believed that (Pony Girl) would take it this far. Well, no, I knew she would take it this far but never wanted to believe she would.

Some people, am I right?


Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - Pray for that Child

8th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

I should mention at some point that (Pony Girl) had a child. I guess you know that, but I’ve never met him. She didn’t want him and her chances of having a child were always low, but what can happen will and she had a son.

(Pickle) has told me that he looks just like me. Or rather he looks just like I did at his age. He is the picture of our kind. It’s funny how my roots come clear at times. I wonder what he’s like or rather what he will be like, but then knowing my family he’ll turn out broken like the rest of us.

(Pony Girl) has never spoken of him to me and only (Pickle) has mentioned him and is love for the boy is somewhat worrying. (Pickle) killed mother’s chickens in play and burst blood vessels in his dog’s ears. He can be a dangerous man to be around.

If the boy knows of me at all, or ever will, I know (Pony Girl) will speak ill of me and so poison him against me. It is better that he never know me. Let me be a ghost in his mind even if he thinks of me as some demon.

I do recall once (Pony Girl)’s mother in law coming to my house and babbling on about if I wanted a choice in anything I should pay for my own repairs. I doubt she was told that I had been promised money for college and was only trying to get what was mine. I know no one told her that I had been told I would never get my money out of the house.

You can turn anyone into a villain if you don’t tell the world what you did to them. (Pony Girl) can really spin a yard of how horrible a man I am if you don’t mention the fact that she tried to turn me into her servant. (Yule) told the world what a bad son I was without mentioning how little he did as a parent.

So I will never see my nephew, and he could be better off without me complicating his life. Being an only child he could become a narcissist like his mother.

I remember that I once found a cat that (Pony Girl) adopted. She took the cat when she moved out and once brought it back when she went on vacation. That cat had been a loving animal when it left my home. The last time I saw her she was mean and would hiss at anyone who touched her.

Pray for that child,



Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - Unclean Home

30th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

Where was I? In my letter of the 28th I had talked about the mistake I made trying to get the money I was promised for college. Expecting it to go towards the repairs to my home was half the issue, and the other half being a bad contractor who did the work with the cheapest crap he could find.

I’m going to have to say that one take away from that is that your home should be very clean before you call a contractor. I don’t know why, but I think my home being that much of a mess attracted that fellow. It could be that slobs are seen as gullible or that people who live in messy houses rarely hire contractors and don’t know what they’re doing. It could also be that I’m wrong.

One of the points I have to make is that (Pony Girl) said that you could get the whole house remodeled for what we were paying. This is not true, not done right in any case. If you know someone and don’t mind half ass work that takes forever to get done that could be true. I’m told she also has a bathroom that has been in the worked on stage for years.

The re-piping was ten thousand dollars which is what it was going for at the time in California. We had galvanized pipes which are the kind of pipes responsible for all the brown water you may have heard jokes about in sitcoms about poor people. That brown is rust from the pipes braking down.

I think maybe half a dozen times (Pickle) screamed at me “we didn’t need to get the house re-piped”. I would explain that the old pipes would have rusted into the valves and made the whole thing brake down. (Pickle) never believed me, but I told him to ask any contractor and he finally stopped bringing it up.

I made a mistake and got taken by a scum bag. It happens to all of us to be honest. I think to this day (Pickle) is still angry with me about it but that runs in the family. The last time I heard my father’s voice he was complaining about something I did when I was three and I was twenty six at the time.

Best,



Richard Leland Neal