Funny but crazy true stories about my mom

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My wife says my late mom could be a sitcom character, but people would find the character too outlandish to be real not knowing that it is. Whatever I prefer to laugh at this point, still bitter about the abject wasting of money though considering my “call CPS!” upbringing and bitterness about spending a dime on me.

The following tales are funny only, leaving out the sad or tragic that is inevitable with such an illogical and bizarre person.

My mom had a rental property that had a gas furnace for heating, the renters complained it wasn’t working when winter rolled around. We went over to the house, my mom told them she would call a repairman but I went in the attic against her protests. The ignition switch was off, I turned it on and went downstairs and turned on the thermostat, huzzah heat! Tenants happy! Went outside and told my mom the heater is not broken, I turned it on and there is heat and the tenants are happy lets roll.

Nope, she didn’t care about me “messing things up” she was still going to call a repairman, found one on some ad called and said the heater was broken. She wanted me to warn the tenants to leave the house because it could explode(there is a whole back story about her being terrified of gas, very illogical) but I refused. Waited, guy came and he walked in the door and said uh there is heat in here, went in attic I went too and he literally shined his flashlight on the unit and that was it and we came down and he said everything is fine. His expression was dumbfounded:confused: My mom paid him and said I just wanted to know it is working or my son didn’t mess it up, he still looked dumbfounded and seemed to expect a prank or something.

tldr my mom paid a repairman handsomely to “repair” a perfectly functioning heater.
Same rental property, she paid for a tree in the backyard to be cut down for a reason I can’t remember but it was stupid. It was 50 feet from the house. Anyway she was shocked they refused to haul off the wood and logs, so she called around and told me it would be $200 for a professional environmental management company to haul it away. I was far away, but thought I’d help and was sick of her wasting money so I put an add on craigslist for free firewood. Got a nibble, gave the guy the address(the logs were piled at the curb but the garbage pickup refused to take it) and told him to take it. He emailed me back to thank me for the large amount of free firewood, I told him to enjoy!

I wasn’t even going to tell my mom I helped her out but she called me breathless saying she was waiting for the cops to show up, yes she called the police because she knew the garbage company wouldn’t take it and she asked the neighbors and someone told her a truck with guys came and took it. So I told her how I saved her two hundred fucking dollars, she was furious and terrified. How could I give out the address to some guy, what if he is a serial killer or burglar?! Mom that is a currently vacant rental property, it made no difference she said. She demanded I contact the guy and have him return the wood so she could pay the company $200 dollars to haul it away still like she planned, I laughed and refused. I said he will still have your address what will that fix? You see what you did to me she said. I banged my head against a wall over and over.

tldr saved my mom $200 bucks, got hated for it.
But then to save $200 bucks she insisted my dad who was old cut large tree branches on another property, I and my nephew arrived just in time to see him cutting an enormous vertical branch on a live oak tree, cutting it near the trunk with his fucking ladder directly underneath. We started screaming at him to stop, we saw the inevitable the branch cracked when he cut it too thin and swung and hit him and the ladder like a baseball bat. He was hugging a running chain saw on the ground and it was lucky we walked to the house so I could kill it before it did more then skin.

He was bleeding, couldn’t walk, was breathing in a whooping sound, and she did not want to call 911 because their insurance did not cover ambulances and he agreed with her. We put him in the reclined passenger seat of their car and she drove him to the hospital, but she stopped at a drivethrough because she was hungry my dad told me later first(he said the clerk looked shocked). At the hospital she dicked around, apparently not knowing what to do and tried to help him walk in before EMTs took him in. She wanted to file a complaint because the emergency room personnel cut his shirt off, an old ratty shirt he wore for yard work. She still groused about that for years, she did not understand why they could not lift his arms and take it off, it was the first thing she mentioned when I asked what was going on on the phone.

Collapsed lung, broken ribs and fractured ribs galore, broken arm, lacerations and some internal bleeding, time in ICU and weeks in the hospital. Bill in the six figures even with shitty insurance. He did recover but missed months of work and still was not 100% six months later.

tlder my mom saved $200 by spending $200,000.

I have so, so many more. My wife said unless she had talked to my mom and witnessed some of these absurd things she wouldn’t believe it. BTW this person had a four year college degree and had a job with a major company paying six figures at one time.

2

The $400 dollar washing machine and the pointless lawsuit!

My bought a washing machine from a small appliance store for 400 bucks, but refused to pay 40 bucks for delivery. She was going to arrange that herself by getting a truck, and cue a bunch of nonsense and the store calling begging her to come get the damn unit for months. Six months later when she arranged to borrow a truck and the store was out of business and gone.

So now she found the same family owned a similarly named store on the other side of town, kept going there asking to speak with the guy she dealt with and finally caught him one time. He claimed he did not remember her, never sold her a machine, and anyway the old place went bankrupt.

But she mentioned to my she paid with personal check and had the cancelled check, and NOT to the business but to the owner personally, the check for $400 was payable to him. I said bingo, sue him in small claims court PERSONALLY do NOT sue the defunct business. You paid HIM the money, let him explain to the judge why he did.

I filled out the fucking filing papers for my parents, gave it to them and they went and filed. Court day came and they went and lost.

Jesus fucking christ, they scratched out the guy’s name and sued a woman, the guy’s wife. Why? Because my mom talked to a county clerk and somehow she convinced her to sue the existing unrelated business. She even helpfully looked up the owner which is the guy’s wife, the judge even said I don’t know why but you even had the correct party here but scratched it out in court, had to dismiss it as no standing.

My mom blamed <me> for not going with them to file to stop them from fucking up, because she thought a county clerk who works in the court knows how to do things properly more than I would and if I had physically been there I could have stopped her. My fault.

They wasted another $60 dollars refiling because the statute of limitations was up when the second filing occured, I told them this, they still did not file against the guy.

3

The criminal accountant and a giant pile of dog shit.

Due to my parent’s enormous tax debt(guess what happens you empty a 30 year 401K 6 months before it would have been tax free?) the IRS was going to start garnishing my dad’s by then smaller wages, and it was punitive like leaving him barely any take home.

My mom found an accountant that said for 3 grand he had connections at the regional IRS office and could get the garnishment taken off, but not their debt or the liens since that involved too many people. Well I told my mom it was probably bullshit, he was just going to file an appeal or negotiate the amount. I was wrong, it was criminal and it worked, for as long as my dad still worked they never again heard a peep of garnishment for decades.

So I was wrong for once har.

Anyway my mom went to the office to make a payment and the accountant was being arrested by cops for some unrelated matter, and he gave my mom his office key and asked her to feed and walk his dog til he could get bailed. A great dane, she brought food and water but was terrified of trying to control it on a leash so she never let it out. It took the guy around a week to get bailed, the dog shit in the office was amazing and to make it worse he obviously slept and lived there.

She thought she was getting on his good side and might reveal further ways to get out of the tax problem with bribes, but I assumed he was stunned to have his office stink to hell.

4

I may be mistaken here, but I don’t think this is meant to be your personal blog grude.

5

Aww, let him keep posting I’m really enjoying these.

6

I agree. Let Grude’s sufferings give others reading pleasure.

Didn’t some other poster know someone kinda like this? The friend of her husband? Code named Ron?

7

I agree, keep posting these.

8

I’m so glad you’re getting free therapy by posting about all the horrors your mother inflicted upon you while she was alive but perhaps, now that’s she’s dead, you may want to either see a real therapist or let it go?

9

I see no good venting your frustrations about your mother.

The Bible says “Do onto others as they would do onto you”. In no way does your complaining help your mother improve. We all do some bad things. Its up to us to love no matter what.

10

Is this not mundane pointless stuff that grude must share? If there’s a problem, leave it to the mods.

I enjoyed the one about the free firewood.

11

Its a thread in MPSIMS, I’m not posting randomly in GD or anything. There is a thread here in this forum with hundreds of posts by the OP with not a single reply(if you are interested in pidgeon updates read or not), just thought someone might get a laugh out of these true stories. I know a lot of people I have shared with got a kick out of it, and no sad horror stories here. My expression internally while typing:p not :(, I think my posts often aren’t interpreted right as to their intended emotional reading not sure why though.
Find out how to save ten bucks a month by spending hundreds with Sprint!

Mom and dad had a limited minute cell phone plan because it was ten bucks cheaper than unlimited, but if you went over the small limit you paid big bucks for each minute over.

They always went over by about $200-400 each month, mostly calling each other. My dad understood the issue perfectly but apologized as he refused to challenge my mom or attempt to talk to her(he would always tell my openly someone as illogical as her was a waste of breath). I explained to my mom she was spending hundreds monthly, which could be saved by unlimited which was ten bucks more, she said she wasn’t going to waste ten dollars she did not have for a phone plan she didn’t need. They did not need unlimited minutes, the plan they were on was fine if they could just stick to the minutes, no need to waste ten dollars.

But you’re spending hundreds a month NOW! That you could save by spending only ten dollars, she said why should I throw away money and give Sprint ten dollars when I don’t need unlimited!

:smack:My wife said give me the headset, I can calmly explain it to her. More than thirty minutes later she threw the headset with a blank look on her face

We still laugh about it.
Eventually she ran up an overage bill even she couldn’t pay.

EDIT:BTW if you feel bad thinking you’re laughing at a senile woman, nope! My mom was always like this her whole life, and she was smart enough to graduate college and hold a good job.

12

My mom needed a new tenant at one of the rental properties(same on in the firewood story) so I trying to help her went on craigslist and posted the house with some old pics.

Got a couple leads, inquires, but one woman loved the house and wanted to move in now unlike the others. She told me the one hitch was the government would pay her rent directly to us, as she was a quadriplegic so the government paid her bills. She lived alone with one cat and her aides and medical employees would be visiting daily.

I told my mom about her, gave her the woman’s number and told her I have a dream tenant for you and she wants to move in now since I know you need money bad and the gov pays her rent so no worries about late payment etc.

NO, my mom was not going to let a cat be in her house. And when I told her about the government paying rent and she asked why another no no no, she did not want the woman because her wheelchair might bump the walls.:smack: No way she said, AND she was angry at me for putting the house on the internet. She did not trust that internet, even though I did not publically post the address just the subdivision she said someone could take the pics drive around and figure out which house it is. WHO CARES said I, she did because of ill defined paranoia she couldn’t explain.

House stayed empty for three more months during which there was no tenant to pay the mortgage payment, eventually in real life my mom found a couple with EIGHT kids most under ten that needed a place because they had just been foreclosed on and kicked out of the house they owned. :smack::smack::smack:

They paid one months rent and the deposit, they never paid another rent payment in the six months they were in there. All utilities had been cut off due to non-payment for 3 months by when they left.

The destruction to the house was STUNNING, amazing. Every ceiling fan had the blades bent down or broken off, all electrical outlets ripped out of the walls, windows broken, holes in walls 6 foot long grooves pushed in on the dry wall. Carpets all ruined, one had a large burn mark where it looked like a fire was set. They stole the dishwahser, a bunch of damage I can’t even remember. 10 grand at least to repair it for another tenant and another 6 months empty. They were judgement proof, no assets enormous debts, waste of time to sue them.

You know what my mom said? I wanted her to put a woman with a cat in there, no way these were the only other people she could find. And they were so nice they let her talk and talk and listened.:smack:

13

It sound like the mom could had used a therapist when she was alive .

14

Which is exactly why this thread is a terrible idea. These stories aren’t funny, they’re a fairly tragic glimpse into an obviously disturbed woman’s mind. The OP has never minced words when it comes to his contempt for his mother, so I fail to understand what exactly he’s getting out of this, other than expecting people to come into the thread and be all “hur hurrr, dude, your mom was cray-cray!” which really does no one any good.

I find the whole “trotting out dirty laundry” thing extremely distasteful when the person is dead and can’t either apologize or rectify the situation. There’s a reason we have a prohibition here against piling on banned members, and in cases like this one it should apply as well.

15

Oh Puh-leeeze!
This board is filled with stories of the irrationality of other people as explained by board members. Some of the best short stories I have read were posted by a board member whose “mother” stories could very well be put into a best seller.

Unless you know Grude’s identity IRL or that of his mother, why be so offended that he blows off some steam ?

16

Why is a cruel dead person more important to you than a living person left with a lot of pain?

I don’t see **Grude **expecting anyone to laugh or agree with him. If you do you need to read more closely. This stuff takes a lot of work to get through. I have no problem with him venting.

17

I don’t see a problem with this thread. You hear lots of stories of the stupid stubborn things people do like this. Maybe he’s venting, so what lots of people vent here? It’s not like he’s flooding the forum with hundreds of posts, it’s one thread, it’s easily ignored if you don’t like it.

18

When I opened the thread, I expected it to be one in which everybody talked about some crazy stuff their mothers did. Like how my mom, when she was a teenager, thought the emergency brake would stop her in mid-air if she fell off a bridge. :smiley:

Can’t we have a thread like that? (By the way, my mom’s still alive.)

19

If I can be forgiven – nay, even profit – from sharing my twisted reminiscences all over the SDMB, I see no reason to give Grude a hard time about it. Glass houses, and all that.

I regret that I have no funny stories to share about Grude’s mother, never having met the woman in my life. I could make some “Yo Mama” jokes, but will refrain out of respect.

20

I see no difference between this and my “Thumbs Down Lady” posts about my neighbor. This is what MPSIMS is kind of about.