Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Jeanne Spa

If you read my Acceptance Speech, you might have been wondering what got me so fired up. My sister. Many of you are probably surprised to hear I even have a sister. Jeanne has been living free for over 30 years. She laughs about it to my face. I’d like to hit her, but I don’t get in the ring with repeat convicted felons. Jeanne is on SSI, labeled by our Federal Government as Disabled. Disabled they say. WTF?

When she is out prostituting herself to support her drug habit, she seems to be able to work pretty darn hard, and eat almost nothing. When she is romping around Disneyland with free passes given to the poor, she moves around just fine, on her feet, for hours on end. If someone yelled, “FREE CIGARETTE BUTTS,” I bet she could jump 10 feet in the air off the couch.

Yet, she continues to get a free pass by the federal government for rent, food, clothing, medical care, cigarettes, liquor, and just about anything else she might want. She periodically gets tired of her living situations, and they just as quickly tire of her. That’s when she will typically check in at the local jail for a Jeanne Spa stay. She and her friendly jail mates laugh about that too.

Did you know we are all contributing to their little Spa visits? Did you know the prisoners laugh about how they get a warm place to sleep, a shower, clean clothes, TV, magazines, entertainment, classes and a store where they have a selection of toiletries, snacks and books? Yes, they laugh. And, to add insult to injury, they have a selection. Yes. You can send your favorite prisoner money and give them a credit line so they can walk down to the store for a little shopping trip. All the comforts of home for your murders, rapists, child molesters, burglars, drug lords, prostitutes and so on. Isn’t that special?

Jeanne claims she needs an open credit line when she’s in jail because “You’ve got to have Chex Mix when you are in the joint.” You’ve got to have Chex Mix? WTF? Chex Mix, a warm shower, television and a good night’s sleep isn’t punishment. Ken rarely gets 8 hours of sleep each night because he’s working too hard contributing to Jeanne’s Spa stays at the Santa Ana Women’s Correctional Facility. You are too. How does this make you feel? I’ll tell you more about how they are laughing at you and me because I want my sister and others like her, to get cut off from the gravy chain here in America.

Do you know anyone who has had to send a loved one to Rehab? I do. There are all kinds. Alcohol, Drug and Eating Disorders are a few. Most of the families involved were terrified, but didn’t blink and eye about spending their life savings to send someone to a Rehab facility. They are not always covered by insurance. Some have huge copayments. To the person who is saving a life, they don’t care. For my entire childhood, my parents invested a fortune in time and money trying to help save Jeanne. They too, were desperate to save their child. In the end, they both paid dearly.

I know a family who has their house mortgaged higher than what it is currently worth. They had to do this to save the life of their child who needed emergency treatment in an expensive Rehab facility. I’m telling you this because Jeanne was sent to Rehab recently for almost free. Seriously. I want more people, besides me, to see how wrong it is. And yes, Jeanne is still laughing about it.

Jeanne didn’t want to go to Rehab, but it was court ordered. It was Rehab or Prison. She enjoys her Spa treatments in the local Jail, but Chowchilla, and the other big Prisons are a different story. Don’t get me wrong, they still have all the wonderful accoutrements that the local Jails offer, but I think she is a Jail snob. So, off to fancy Rehab Jeanne went. At the time, her SSI income was $850 a month, so the Rehab gave her a sliding scale payment plan and told me her portion would be $320 a month. All inclusive. Just another Spa treatment on Uncle Sam, you and me. How do you feel about that? Especially when she laughs in my face? She is laughing at all of us. They are all laughing at us.

When the day came, and I knew it would, when Jeanne had had enough of that particular “scene,” she walked out of her hundredth (or more) stint in Rehab after only completing a few weeks. She said “Fuck that shit, I’d rather do Jail time,” which is precisely what she did. She went to a few of her favorite haunts, picked up some “customers,” earned a couple of dollars (ICK!!!), did some drugs, got picked up by the Police and was taken to Jail for a more comforting Spa stay. Her pattern remains unchanged after all these years.

When I saw her after the Jail stay for that particular offense, she laughed. She said the people at Rehab were stupid and how they wanted her to write down on a piece of paper that she was committed to her rehabilitation. She said she didn’t care about being clean, didn’t want to be clean and only went to Rehab to satisfy the judge so she wouldn’t have to go to Prison.

I’ll tell you a few more things if I don’t already have you convinced why we all need to be ranting about this. She also laughed and said I didn’t give her enough cigarette money. I don’t give her enough cigarette money? I told her I was managing her SSI payments for free; if an organization managed her money they would charge her a percentage and she would have less of the federal governments’ money “to smoke.” So yes, it is our money she needs to buy her cigarettes.

She told me she can go around to all the churches and food banks in the area for as much free food as she could eat. She can go to all the social welfare programs and get scrip for free toiletries, and other things she needs. They will also subsidize her rent payments. She said she just wanted to “smoke” her SSI money since she didn’t need to use it to pay for anything else, because she can get everything else for FREE. Then she laughed.

This crap has to stop!

I’m done with taking care of Jeanne. After the last post Rehab laugh-in-my-face-event, she did something so raunchy, vile and criminal, I threw in the towel and quit as her caretaker and Representative Payee. I’m also done with food banks. I’m done with social welfare programs. I told Jeanne’s Social Worker in a rant how I was going to give the Jeanne responsibility back to the educated professionals who get paid to handle this idiotic, pointless, worthless & mind numbing crap.

I have a beautiful, loving, hard working husband who has been waiting patiently for the children to be raised so he could be number one. I'm here sweetie. You will always be my number one. Thank you for getting up every day while it's still dark and going to work when you are exhausted. Thank you for never saying I quit when things were rough. Thanks for giving up all your paychecks and bonuses to raise a family and never spending a dime on yourself. Thank you for being the best Daddy any child could every ask for. You are our hero.

1 comment:

  1. Well, just get yourself ready for more. As Obama moves rapidly to pass additional legislation to redistribute the country's wealth, we will be taking more and more from the wealth producers, and giving it to the wealth consumers. Or another way, creating more people who ride in the cart as we pull the cart. The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples money. As you kill off the geese that lay the golden eggs, there is an ever increasing burden on the few geese that are still producing. The only saving grace is that we are heading for a complete financial breakdown in this country and we will all be riding in the cart. Yes, I said it. Get your issues in order and be prepared for a massive depression that is coming. One day, you will say, Hey MIG made the call on this a long time ago.

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