Og knows I love your stories, Sampiro, but I gotta go with featherlou on this one. Except that you do have my sympathy.
Truth. If you want to be passive-aggressive right back… well, you just didn’t hear your sister backing out. Keep going forward with this, and she can’t back out. Don’t let her.
Not EVEN. If that little game of chicken blows up, it’s Mama, not Sampiro or Kathy who ends up with mud all over her shoes. Our man is just too good to risk his mama’s well-being to score some points on his sister.
True, true. But if he backs down… Well, Sampiro, you’re the one on the spot. We’ve got faith in you.
sigh
Y’know…
Taking someone at their word is sort of a judgement call. When it’s family, it makes it even more difficult to not do it, because, well, they’re family. You’re willing to cut them more slack then you are, say, a friend or a coworker. And that line gets even more fuzzy when you take into account the size of the commitment. If someone loses their keys over and over and over, you stop handing them your copies. OTOH, if that same person makes a commitment to make a large financial expenditure to care for someone and have demonstrated in the past that they have no problems doing so (paying for trips, hotels, etc) despite the arguments and hassled caused, then I’m going to take them at their word.
Y’all need to back off a bit.
On the other hand, the same person has also demonstrated in the past that they do have problems doing so, as when they offered to pay a family member’s college tuition and then didn’t bother.
I’m not saying it’s not natural to want to trust one’s sister. I’m just saying that your sister, despite having admittedly been very generous in particular cases, seems to be rather untrustworthy.
So I say again: from now on, if she claims to be planning a big act of generosity, be nice to her about it, but don’t bust your ass helping with the plans. You simply can’t count on her to follow through.
Ummm… that was me, not Sampiro.
His sister’s taken his mom on trips, paid for everything, and who knows what else she’s done that Sampiro hasn’t posted about?
My only point was, it’s easy to make that call when it isn’t you doing it, or your family that’s involved.
Like a Christian in the Colliseum, Sampiro’s job is to suffer for our amusement. I’m looking forward to the chapter when he tells his sister over the phone that he’s gay, she instantly suffers a massive stroke and before help can arrive, her dogs have chewed up all her furniture.
And I mean that in the nicest possible sense.
I want to know two things.
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Sampiro, I genuinely love your stories, and would be heartbroken if they didn’t continue. Is the part in this thread where well meaning, albeit totally misguided folks are hellbent on giving you fixes for a “problem” you have no intention of changing the way you deal with going to stop you from doing this?
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Is there a place here in this thread where you asked for outside judgement calls, or were you just telling the latest story, that, in order to be told right needed a pit?
Seconded on the Sampiro-story-love.
That said, I have a feeling that this thread isn’t going to generate too many stories. It’s just a sense that, this being a situation with the potential to result in actual life-changing consequences for someone he loves, the therapeutic effect he gets from sharing stories when these folks are merely driving him bonkers is not there to be had.
I really hope I’m wrong about this. And I really hope Sampiro and Mama come out of this relatively unscathed.
Kathy, OTOH, could really do with some scathing, IMHO.
Yeah, I didn’t expect this particular thread to generate many more stories, but the feeling that I was getting was that it wasn’t going to generate other THREADS, either. I mean, if every time you started a thread telling a story about some particular life circumstance, and all you got were replies basically telling you to, “Suck it up or kick <it, them, etc.,> out of your life!” or, “You need therapy to teach you how to deal with XYZ.” Wouldn’t that make you maybe not tell anymore stories if the original point was to just tell a story?
I’m seeing a lot of this lately. I know it’s always happened, but it seems to be racheting up a bit. Normally, I don’t much pay attention to that stuff because it either halts the thread in question in its tracks, or launches a trainwreck hijacking that totally gets away from the op and degenerates into an argument.
See, much like I’m doing here. 
So, Sampiro! When’s the next installment? Does Mama WANT to come live with you?!
Sampiro, I know this might be the nuclear option, but what if you told your sister of your, how would she understand it, “lifestyle choice”? If she survived the shock, that would probably stop the talk about Mama moving in with you.
You post your stories on a public message board, you get public feedback on them. I have read and enjoyed Sampiro’s stories before without commenting, but this time I felt like commenting, so I did.
Uh… I’ve considered it. There really wouldn’t be a Kathy shaped hole in my life exactly (I mean, it’s odd, but you can probably relate- I love her very much, she’s always been a part of my life, I would never want anything bad to happen to her and would actively work against it…
but…
at the same time, if she should tell me tomorrow “You already caused the fall of Sodom and you ain’t gonna cause the fall of Gulf Shores, Alabama by bringing your homosexutry down here and summoning a tsunami… I’m never talking to you again!”, I hate to say it but I’d probably get along just fine.
OTOH my one and only retirement plan moneywise is to outlive her. 
I hate the thoughts of pissing off my beloved older sister, but I also hate the thoughts of pissing off my richest childless acquaintance (not that I’ve ever asked her for a dime [she’s given it, and she really does keep most of her promises, but I’ve never asked for it], but if push came to .45’s at dawn I could).
She also told me that if I move down there and stay for one year she’ll give me the deed to one of her houses. She wants the whole family clustered around her. I was genuinely offended by the notion (if I move close to her it will be because I like the job or because I want to be close to her) and she has no idea why. OTOH, I’m curious: if I were to move down there, I wonder how the bargain would become amended in twelve months?
“No, I’m not giving you the house, just the deed. Well, it’s a photocopy of the deed really, it has my name on it, but it looks just like the real one. Oh, next time you go onto that Internet thing see if there’s anything on there about lambskin seat covers for a 64 1/2 Mustang or bench seats for a C-45 cargo plane.” (Kathi really does own one of each, the 64 1/2 Mustang and 1/2 of a military surplus C-45 [she and her husband purchased a .25 interest in the latter at an auction and an elderly friend who did likewise left them his share- when I asked why they bought it she replied “It was a whole lot cheaper than you’d think.”)
You’re right, sorry! No idea how I managed to screw that up so bad.
Wow. I guess once you reach a certain tax bracket, a person just kinda forgets to have a rational reason for saving money at a sale.
I’m not sure whether it’s you, your sister or this story but one of the three has just crossed over into a whole new realm here.
I think I know what you mean; I love my family very much, too; they’re very nice, good quality people, and I think I really need a break from them for a little while. I live in the same city as two sisters and my mom (my mom just left after living with us for over four months), and I think I’d like to live about two hours away from them. You know, close enough so I can visit for a weekend any time I want, but not so close that I see them every week and get involved in all the ongoing dramas.
Sampiro, while your stories have been a source of…entertainment for me, I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. All I can do is wish you inner peace, and the knowledge that you’ll do your best, however it ends up.
Remember, nobody is a saint, and (quoting Styx) “it’s hard to please
Most everyone
When your spirit’s got you on the run, on the run.” You’re only human; care for yourself first, then focus on others. Nobody’s better off with you depressed or mad; Care for yourself first, then worry about others.
You can’t help anybody without being sure of yourself first. Tell your sister about your preferences; how much worse can it be? Tell your sister how bad momma has it; she’ll either understand it or nothing you say will ever make her understand mommas’ situation.
In the end, all I can offer is;
Peace and Love - DESK