All your sister’s horrible judgment annoys me. Crap, man, I hate to suggest this when it comes to family, but your identity and integrity are more important than money; get a lawyer and then come out to your sister. Should she move against you, unleash your litigious Lhasa Apsa at her ungrateful heels and make her do the right thing about the estate if she can’t bring herself to do the right thing for her brother. You should control your own identity, not some fundie who says you’d better not be honest with her or she’ll be unhappy pout pout, kick dirt and make you suffer. Haven’t you done more than enough to prove to your sister and your whole family and circle of friends that you’re head and shoulders above a label? She should be on her knees thanking you for caring for your mother through everything instead of twisting you around like she seems to enjoy doing. I hate bullies and I hate people who say ‘fag’ in the same tone as ‘whore’ or ‘trash’.
Happily lurking here, just a little nervous when I have to scroll down to find this thread…
Amen. She also needs to be read the Riot Act about poor-mouthing and being stingy when she’s that well-to-do. If she wants to be stingy, fine, but she should be reminded on a daily (hourly?) basis that she is rich and her grubbing after her poor mother’s possessions is the height of tacky uncouth.
I love my family, but I’d never have anything to do with them if they treated me like they have treated you, Sampiro. You deserve better.
(BTW, my ex-bass player is one of your Google Doppelgangers).
In defense of Sampiro’s sister, I don’t think she is “grubbing after her poor mother’s possessions” in seach of monetary gain, but in grief. It is not untypical of grieving people to not want to throw or give away anything that belonged to someone they loved. The used tissue in the trashcan? “That was the last tissue she used whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
One part of me wants Sampiro to do as Nawth Chucka suggested - hire a rabid lawyer and come right on out. In honesty, that part of me wants to read about the fireworks (hell, I could probably see them from here). I think it is his best interests to try to get along with her until the estate is settled; if lawyers start getting into it all the children end up losing because of attorney’s fees. I know Sampiro would prefer that his sister is still speaking to him at the end of the day, but ultimately that will be her choice. I think when he finally does come out, she’ll throw a fit and fall in it.
True dat, though I reckon I was talking more about hanging the house over his head and making like she and his brother were going to take thirds even though they don’t need it and Sampiro does (and his mom didn’t intend it that way). And while I prefer being on speaking terms with family, those terms would not include “if you’re queer, you’re dead to me” or anything like it. I’ve never been spoken to like that by any of my family, so it’s not something I’m accustomed to; maybe some folks let that kind of thing slide when it’s family; I think being family’s no excuse.
Scrolling down to find this thread was bad enough, but having to change pages?!
Pllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease come out of CS and tell us a story…
Where my mother’s effects are concerned I think this is totally true. (Of course she now denies ever having said “don’t sell/get rid of anything” but by the literal meaning of testimony she did, several times.) She’s never read Harry Potter (and in fact thinks it’s evil [1]) but it’s almost along the lines of horcruxes- the seems to thing there’s a part of the person’s spirit in some objects. At the same point she won’t come move the most significant pieces (the cedar chest [2] and china cabinet our grandfather made, my mother’s beloved sewing machine [3] and its cabinet, and similar things, almost as if she wants it to remain where it is because by moving it (“I don’t have any place to put it” says the woman with several houses and condos) it’s conceding the mistress is dead.
There is some neurotic (and hereditary) acquisitiveness however. As mentioned, she dumpster-dives, picks up throw-outs by the side of the road (sometimes understandable- building materials are routinely thrown away down there when jobs are done for example- but also odd stuff- for years she had a huge [easily 5 x 7 feet] glass window with ‘CHAN’S CHINESE BUFFET est 1981’ in her closet, but now uses it at her house over her bathtub since building an addition because “it’s good glass”. Also, since for the first time in my life my assets outweigh my liabilities (my mom’s death left me broke, which was good as before I was deeply in debt- plus I have a little money in CDs, a paid for car, and whatever I end up taking from the house, but I have no debts and a good bit of life insurance) I’m making a will. It’s mainly for my personal property as the life insurance obviously has a beneficiary. So I asked her “Is there anything of mine you want me to leave you in my will?” I thought she’d answer “some of your clothes” (she has suits that belonged to our father, work clothes that belonged to our grandfather, a closet of clothes belonging to our mother, and other odd effects) or “your ring” (forgetting that she finds it Satanic [it’s an ankh and, for reasons mentioned in my eulogy for my mother, my favorite possession]) or perhaps some of my favorite books or items I’m keeping of our mother’s or whatever. Instead her answers were
“Your car and any land you own”.
The car, of course, is my most valuable clear asset (though it took me for frigging ever to get it in my name). I don’t even know how many cars she owns, but there are at least two pickups, two convertibles, a 64 1/2 Mustang that’s in a warehouse, a 1990ish Cadillac that belonged to her mother-in-law, an MG Midget, and several others, admittedly not all of which run. The only real estate I own other than whatever I own of the house is some land where we grew up that I actually own 1/3 interest in thanks to her due to some “fear of God” she put into a bank in the home county- to quote Naomi to her mother-in-law in Mama’s Family “Why is it the things I can’t stand when you do to me I love when you do to other people?”
Since I borrowed money from my sister a few years ago to pay off my credit cards and she waived repayment (I think I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but I’ll remention it here to reiterate she’s far from all bad- she might not give you water if you’re dying of thirst but it’s because she has no idea you’re thirsty and the gasping and parched lips just don’t send the synapses firing in her brain as she sips the Kool-Aid) I signed over my share of the land to her now, meaning that the gold panning she’s planning to do on it (yes, really- I bought her a gold-panning kit for a gift recently and she plans to use it on the stream in our woods- there is gold in that county but any in that stream would be enough to possibly buy a Coke if you panned for 2 years) will probably yield the richest strike since the Klondike UNLESS the oil bubbles up to where you can’t get to it. The car she claims to want because “it was Mama’s”, and when I told her I’m thinking of trading it on a truck of course “Don’t do that! Keep it! It was Mama’s and she loved that car!”
Then she asked about my life insurance beneficiary. I told her the truth: my beneficiary is our mother and I haven’t changed it since I honestly haven’t decided who to change it to. I told her that I’ve considered my (ex boyfriend turned current closest) friend “Earl”, but that I’m concerned he’d go through it in two months on harebrained “get middle class quick” schemes, to which she responded “Why aren’t you leaving it to me?”
I responded, very honestly, “I love you, but you don’t need the money”. She was offended. “There’s more than need… there’s the fact blood is thicker than water!” This of course triggered a memory of the musical Camelot when Guin tells Arthur in reference to Mordred “Blood is thicker than water is a statement invented by obnoxious relatives”.
The thing that totally floored me, though, is the revelation that my sister does not have a will. This is a very very bad thing. It doesn’t affect me so much as
1- I have no illusions I’ll outlive her
2- If her husband outlives her he receives everything as it’s all community proper
2- If she survives her husband and dies intestate I’m one of her two closest relatives (the other being my brother) so I’m down for a share anyway
but this is a really really bad thing for whoever she wants to get her money otherwise as
1- her estate’s worth well over a million, so it’s subject to inheritance tax
2- her husband has no immediate family that he likes. He was his mother’s only child, he saw his father about three times in his life (his parents separated when he was an infant), his motehr and grandmother are dead, he can’t stand his first cousins (one set is, according to them, snooty nouveau riche snobs in Buckhead-Atlanta, the other set is Jerry Springer quality) and the only relatives he likes are a set of second-cousins (who are quite well to do themselves). It’s not at all unlikely that if he were to survive my sister by five minutes following an accident that his fortune would drop into the laps of complete strangers as his father had several other children with other wives but he’s only met one of them and that one just one time.)
3- NOBODY has ANY IDEA what all’s in her estate- it ranges from the entire inventory of two dress stores that closed in the late 80s/early 90s, to three WAREHOUSES full of personal items, 4 homes, numerous rental, investment, and rural properties, loads of cash and stocks and bonds (and I have no idea where they are), annuities, airplanes, tons and tons of personal property, interests in a drugstore and a pharmaceutical wholesaler, an office building, insurance policies, and God alone knows what else. It would take years to just inventory the fucker and a fortune in legal fees and accounting fees and estate taxes.
Her estate’s not big enough that it couldn’t be conceivably consumed in probate costs and taxes. (I’m not sure any estate is too big for that- as memory serves the U.S. government got more of Howard Hughes’s billions than his relatives got.)
The plotline that I would write for us is this:
1- The house is sold for market value and I keep the proceeds
2- At some point afterwards and on a well chosen battlefield I tell her I’m gay
3- She flips and disowns me
4- After an estrangement she realizes I’m still the same person, that I really do love her for herself and not for what she has, and that maybe she’s wrong
5- We become for the first time truly close and a vital part of each other’s lives
6- I use the powers of invisibility I’ve picked up over the years to save America and become the first person ever knighted by the president
7- Together we discover the secret to my mother’s fried corn recipe (I know it involved a bit of scorched sugar)
But I think 6 is far from the most unrealistic thing to hope for.
1-Her religious views are very hard to quantify incidentally- she’ll condemn Harry Potter/Da Vinci Code/etc., but has no problem with sci-fi that presumes life on other planets and other religions {loves STAR WARS for example}, she discounts evolution as nonsense but is a rockhound who has no trouble believing “this rock is over 100 million years old”, takes the Bible’s prohibitions on homosexuality as granite and inflexible but the “easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter heaven” as symbolism, admits she’s never read the Bible cover to cover but believes every word of it is true [including the contradicting parts], believes Muslims go to hell but Jews and good Buddhists go to heaven, that God will answer such minute favors as making parking spaces magically appear for her but is undisturbed that he ignores genocides and devout parents with 5 year olds dying of cancer, etc… Weird.
2- The cedar chest I moved to my brother’s storage house which is only 80 miles from her, it could be moved in the back seat of one of her cars and certainly either of her trucks, and she’s been there several times, but she won’t collect it.
[3]- My mother loved to sew and make things to give away. It was fine when it was a bedskirt or a pillowcase, but upon occasion she did clothing. I have some shirts she made me I’ll keep for sentimental reason but day-umn. She was a truly mediocre seamstress to say the most (arm lengths are approximate and unmatched, for example) and because I once passingly said I’d love to have an 18th century outfit or Russian peasant’s blowse and didn’t specify that I meant “FOR HALLOWEEN OR OTHER COSTUME OCCASION” she made me some rather eccentric ones, and was so offended I didn’t wear them that I ended up wearing one to lunch with my friend Anna, who was born in Rome, one day, for my mother proudly said “being Italian she’ll appreciate one of a kind originals”. Anna’s compliment (in her beautiful accent): “You know… most men I know would be…overwhelmed b that shirt… luckily you have the personality to overpower it.”
When I had a “friendly-mutton-chops” moustache for a play [pic] and cut off the moustache afterwards, I left just mutton chops and posed in one of the more conservative shirts she made me. I call the pic Javert because I spent the afternoon singing Stars and Javert’s Suicide and other of his numbers from Les Mis (with some elan I must say- I have a baritone/bass anyway and sufficiently acted the part enough to scare the dogs). The clock behind me is from my great-grandparents store ca. 1920 and advertises Black Draught laxative, and the snuff can on it was the last unopened can to belong to my otherwise very ladylike Baptist grandmother.)
PS- I once laughed when she said she’d thought of leaving her estate in equal shares to whoever attended her funeral.
Until I realized she wasn’t joking.
I very much understand what you are talking about, Sampiro. When my father-in-law died, my sisters-in-law were all in favor of my husband and I buying this house, where they all grew up. Both of them got the items of furniture, etc. they wanted, and they both assured me they didn’t expect me to keep the house “as a shrine”. The sister-in-law who lives locally has been over many times and has complimented me on the changes I’ve made - the living room is no longer a formal ice palace done all in white, etc. but the out of state sister in law has yet to visit once even though she has been in town many many times since we moved in. And has been invited many, many times. Theory is fine, but she just doesn’t want to see the changes I’ve made to “her mother’s house”.
Ayup. This is why I’ve said that even if I end up staying in Monkeytown I still want to sell it (even if I buy a house on the same street). It will always be the Mamaleum. (Even I refer to it as such-
Someone else: Is there any more toilet tissue?
Me: Check under the sink in Mama’s bathroom.
BTW, I’m planning to go visit some friends in Americus and to see Westville again in the near future. Perhaps we can do lunch or dinner when I’m in Columbus.
Yes, let me know when you’ll be here!
Jealous, geographically-distant Sampiro fan here.
So can anyone point me to some other Sampiro threads? I tried a username search, but the don apparently posts to threads instigated by other people fairly often… I needs me a fix.
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Anyway, that was my week, how was yours?
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Sampiro? You are the person I actually subscribed to The Dope for. I’ve said it before.
That was funny tragic and wonderful.
Thank you.
heart
K
Yeah, me too. If you’re ever in SoCal, Jon, please let me know! 
emilyforce, when I come across good ones, I save them to word docs and re-read them and share them with others. They ARE that good.
There is a great Xmas story out there- try searching for the term “Dixiephrenia” which appears at the end.
Damn, I just searched for it myself and it didn’t come up… here’s Mama’s dyin’, who’s got the will?, though- it’s a classic.
Well, let’s see…
Here’s Grab your ankles and think of Jesus.
Hell River Easters & Decapitated Freaks.
The Cowardly Catatonic Christmas.
Sampiro refuses an offer of free rent.
That oughta keep ya busy for a while! 
Although a couple of my favorites about Mustang and Meemaw didn’t seem to come up (unless the stories are buried inside the links above)…