A**hole in Life in General

Well Christmas was kind of ruined by Jessica’s stepdad, big surprise.

I don’t talk about that man very much, because I don’t really respect him. He’s lazy (he’s in his 70s now but he’s been this way forever), immature, kind of an alcoholic, and just a pure asshole sometimes. Jessica has told me he’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which totally tracks with his behavior sometimes, but he doesn’t take his medicine regularly and not even the full dose usually.

Backstory

So back when we lived in Oklahoma, our rent was $1900/month for a nice big house, good neighborhood. I hate how expensive rent is these days, but I figured I can swing a couple grand a month for a comfortable place to live. But moving back to DFW, things are WAY pricier here. We still needed at least 2 rooms because we were expecting Lily to arrive soon, but I couldn’t afford what they wanted for rent houses here so I decided to just look for apartments.

Well Jessica’s parents didn’t like the idea of us doing that, so they offered to help us get a house. They’re loaded AF (well her mom is… more on that later), so to them, it’s no big deal really. They wanted us to have a place really super close to them to help with the baby. But here’s the issue, houses near them, even with a fat down payment from them, would still have a payment close to $4000/month. And these are modest houses, like under 2000 sq/ft, 3 bed/2 bath houses. I just cannot afford to pay that on my own, that’s crazy with all of my other bills like my school loans, car payments, credit card bills, medical bills…etc.

So they offered to pay the note until Jessica gets a job. I don’t like the idea of accepting so much generosity, but in the moment, with Lily about to be born and Jessica really liking the house we found, I accepted. I was thinking it would be like, max 2 or 3 payments before Jessica starts working and we can pay the note. The idea would be that eventually when we are established and can pay off some of Jessica’s school loans, we’ll refinance the house in our name (we tried to buy in our names initially but the bank’s were freaked out about Jessica’s pharmacy school loans.... so what you’re just not allowed to buy a house until you pay down your school loans? how tf do they expect you to make enough money for a house in the first place?!?! ugh)

So, as some of you know, things went drastically different this summer and Jessica is still not working, for obvious reasons. I went to her parents about the note and they told me to continue not worrying about it. They were heartbroken about everything too, so of course the last thing they were worried about was money (at least her mom was… more on that in a bit).

But enough was enough and by December I approached her mom and said “listen I know Jessica still isn’t ready to work, but I have some money saved and I’m happy to at least pay MY half. I’m not your kid and I don’t expect a free ride any longer” And she agreed, so starting in January I would pay half the note and the bills until Jessica worked.

I thought it was fair, and honestly, the best I could do in the meantime. Okay, backstory complete.

Christmas

So one of the only positives to come out of this summer’s tragedy was that my family and her family got a lot closer. So for Thanksgiving/Christmas, we suggested that our families just merge our traditions and do them together. So for thanksgiving, her family would come down to my parents place (about a 2 hour drive) and visa versa for Christmas. And honestly, there wasn’t much to say about Thanksgiving except it was a really nice visit and went really well!

So then comes Christmas. Jessica’s parents just renovated their house (like one step short of tearing the entire thing down and starting over). Her mom was frantically working so hard to buy new furniture and get rid of old furniture and put things up around the house and fix issues that the contractor missed.

Now you’d think Steve can handle things like installing light switches, blinds, curtains…etc. Nope… he’s like the opposite of “handy”. All he did the entire time was just sit and watch football. That’s fine, that’s how he’s always been. Back before Jessica’s mom was retired (before they had lots of money), I watched him sit and watch golf all day on the couch, doing nothing. The only way he contributed around the house was doing the dishes after she came home, cooked and cleaned everything else. He would do the dishes. Great. (trust me this dude sucks).

Anyway, that’s fine we’re used to his laziness. Well Christmas comes around and my Mom and Dad are staying with Jessica’s parents because we don’t really have a spare bedroom at our house and they have like unlimited space at theirs. That was fine, my parents enjoyed her parents company so that’s what we did. They were staying in her grandpas old bedroom, and in his two closest are two very large gun safes. Jessica’s mom encouraged us to go through them and look at the guns in there and maybe take a couple of them because it’s a crazy number of guns and they don’t need that many of them.

Now my dad has enough guns, so he’s not super interested in more guns but he was excited about going through them and finding something for me. I’m not really a gun nut, but having a shotgun for the house would be nice just for general protection. So we crack the first safe open and there’s a perfect 20 gauge shotgun that’s probably never even been fired. My dad cleans it up, oils it, and hands it to me. I’m pleased with it. Oh, and earlier that week I had found a little .380 in the truck that her grandpa left us (oh shit I skipped that part… more on that later I guess). So now I’ve got a little pistol and a modest shotgun, cool. Everything seems normal.

Well a couple days later, the day before my parents leave, I say “hey lets get that other safe open! See what’s in there”. So me and my dad get in there and start looking through the guns. We don’t plan on taking anything, just kind of going through it to see what’s in there. And holy crap, this dude had a lot of guns holy crap. Who needs all this? But I did find a ton of ammo, which was perfect because neither the .380 or the shotgun had any ammo so I figure I’ll just take a box of each.

Now, here’s the fun bit you’ve been waiting for.

Steve, seemingly out of nowhere, looks at me and says “David, before you take one more thing from this house, you need to start paying rent at that house”

My dad is right there.... like that’s not a fucking conversation you have in front of my family you fucking idiot. Everyone on this planet with a pulse knows that’s a private conversation. The only reason you do that is if you’re trying to humiliate and/or shame me in front of my father, which is what he was clearly trying to do.

Of course, my dad tries to quickly leave saying “oh I don’t need to be here for this”. No shit, you’re not a fucking dumbass so you know this isn’t a group conversation.

Let me say this, I have NEVER asked for a single thing from these people. I rarely accepted money from my own parents while I was in my 20s, unlike my sister and brother who needed help regularly (no hate everyone has their own needs). But I always try to make things work my own way. I only accept things they offered because of MY WIFE. She wants these things, so rather than let my pride get in the way and refuse their help, I accepted so SHE would be more comfortable. I’m fucking FINE with with a single room studio apartment, I don’t care AT ALL where I live.

So for him to come in that room and puff up his chest and pretend like he’s some big shot with all this money and I’M the mooch, oh boooooooy what I wanted to say.

That man is a bum. Everything he has, he married into. The money they have came from his wife’s family. He’s so fucking dumb too, not just like I’m mad at him way, he’s actually dumb. I’m quite certain if he took an IQ test he’d barely get a room temperature result. Everything he touches gets fucked up somehow. Hand him a remote for a TV… within seconds he’ll end up in some safe mode TV function with no clue how to get out of it. (that’s not a joke, he legitimately does that to their TV and I have to hard reset the TV every time. I cannot figure out what he’s doing to do this....). Every time he tries to help me with things around the house, he ends up making a 5 minute job a 20 minute job. I had to change an air filter in their bedroom recently and he insisted he do it himself, so I pull down the ladder for the attic and let him go up there. He spent 20 fucking minutes trying to figure out how to get the filter installed and told me it wasn’t possible. I waited for him to leave and got up there and did it in 10 seconds, I’m not joking. I may have even saved his life, because at one point he started trying to pull the cover off their instant water heater and I screamed at him to stop because those things are wired up with A TON of power and it’s not safe to mess with them while they’re live. Maybe I should have just let him do it… (just kidding of course.... mostly).

The worst part, I know he knows I offered to pay half of the rent until Jessica starts working. He wasn’t ignorant, he just wasn’t happy with that deal I guess and decided THAT was the time to bring it up. What a fucking douche.

After he left the room I got more and more upset, to the point where I wanted to walk out in the living room and call him out in front of everyone. So I walk in there, ready to speak my mind and tell him everything I just wrote out, but I didn’t. I just walk outside. As much as I hate this dude, I do live in that house with his name on it and he knows I can’t say shit.

But the damage was done. Everyone saw how upset I was and that my anger was directed at him (sitting on the couch watching football again, go fucking figure). I’m outside talking with my dad about it and he’s upset too of course, because what happened was so disrespectful. Then Steve comes outside and apologizes.

And as much as I appreciate the apology, I know it’s hollow. I know what happened, he probably got the shit yelled out of him by Jessica’s mom, because she and Steve both know how worthless he actually is and that he doesn’t have any authority over that house, the stuff in it, or anything. Yes legally, half of it is his, but that’s as far as it goes. We all know where it actually came from.

So anyway I accepted his shitty apology and I’ve tried my best to move on from it, but unfortunately it left a real bad taste in my parents mouth and they probably won’t want to do Christmas with them again.

Something that makes this all worse is how I’ve tried my absolute best to be helpful around the house as a thank you for them. Steve hit something with his brand new BMW (big surprise the fucking idiot), so I offered to fix the paint he rubbed off. I took the car to my garage and buffed out the paint and put some nice touch up paint I ordered on the spots where it was gone. Made the bumper look basically new again. I have literally installed new outlets and run conduit around their house… basically I was spending at least a few hours each day helping them with anything they needed. I was washing/detailing their cars weekly. Of course, that doesn’t equal the money they were paying for the rent, but I felt compelled to do what I could because I don’t want to feel like a freeloader. All while that man just sat on the couch watching sports all day, getting viruses on his computer I have to constantly remove.

Oh yeah and I had just recently offered to go with him to Best Buy and pick out a macbook. That man doesn’t need a windows computer anymore because the sheer amount of malware and viruses he gets should be studied.

I did end up helping with the purchase and set up of the macbook anyway, but that’s the FINAL time I offer to help him with ANYTHING. Go ahead and fuck up your car again dude, see if I care.