Enter At Your Own Risk

It was a "death by a thousand cuts" day. For a month, she has complained about needing things done but does nothing to take care of it. Her water hose wasn't long enough, she needed a second hose for the gray tank, her RV isn't leveled, too much sun through one window, the list is long. I have many years of RV experience, five years full-time, and have explained to her over and over how to do these things but she does nothing.

She complains that she is paying $160/month for storage of her stuff and needs to go sort through it and clear it out. She doesn't have water or sewer connected. She has no cooking implements; it's all in storage. Needs to "buy new clothes" (naming the most expensive place within 100 miles) because she can't find the ones she has (they're in storage.) Yet she spends her time playing in her garden. It had been covered with fencing material to keep the deer out but since it was "ugly", she removed the fencing and now complains about the deer getting into the garden.

She can't afford a water hose ($20.00) but is going to buy a weed eater ($65.00). She can't breathe but refuses to go to or even call a doctor to get her inhaler refilled. She says the propane cooktop makes the RV too hot. In the next breath, she mentions she has no cooking implements and has never used the cooktop. What??

She had asked me if I would come over in the middle of the night if needed and I said "yes". She couldn't drive because she was too sick but as soon as I arrived there yesterday, she mentioned she had gone to a friend's place to feed their animals, which meant hauling bales of hay, etc., and had stopped at the dollar store for "a few things".

I had run all over town, bought the water and sewer hoses, leveling blocks, etc., ($160) packed up four bags of groceries, refilled my inhaler for her. As I was connecting things, she stood there and told me how to do it (YouTube said ...). I could see she had done some preliminary work BUT she didn't have the hoses to finish it and had made no attempt to get them. Did she know I would get them for her because I hadn't said I was going to. We couldn't finish because she couldn't find one crucial part. So still no water.

When she first moved into this little camper, she left her kitchen things, food, clothes in the storage unit but spent the first few days hanging art and decorating. Nothing to eat, nothing to cook with, very few clothes (couldn't find her bathing suit). Talking about moving the RV a few feet; I asked her if she knew how to hitch up. "I hauled it from the dealer." I asked, "Did you hitch it yourself or did they hitch it for you?" Yep, the dealer did it so she has never done that.

I am so frustrated. This is the type of behavior that caused the break up two years ago. Funny she called me when she needed help moving. I am a helper type so of course I helped her move, tried to get her RV connected, provided medication to help her breathe, food, etc. Yet she just keeps doing nothing to help herself.
 
I play "What If". What If she has dementia? She hangs her art and surrounds herself with pretty things that are familiar. Because that makes her feel better and it is something she knows. Do her stories change because of that or because she wants to make herself a victim or has made poor decisions and wants someone to bail her out? Someone like me since everybody else seems to have disappeared?

What If she can't afford the hoses, etc.? She says she has credit cards (plural) to pay off (are they maxed out?), a loan on the trailer, owes money to everybody, paid off one payday loan three times (if that's true, she was scammed), gets collection calls all the time. A lifetime of poor financial decisions but still, she needs water/sewer. I can help with that.

Yet her stories change with every telling. First, the payday loan was she proved she had paid it but they kept calling. Then it was she paid it twice. Next it was she paid it three times. A water leak was originally caused by her son and she had to pay for the repair. Now it's the pipe just sprang a leak on its own. I never know what to believe.

She is NOT a bad person. She supported her no-good son and his daughter for many years, bought him a vehicle, paid the insurance, and one time, in the middle of the night when my back seized, she came over to help me. I will never forget that. I know that if I needed help, she would come.

But she gets herself into these awful situations and is the victim every time. Yet when I have tried to help, it's "YouTube says do this" and I want to tell her, then you do it! I'm the one crawling around underneath her trailer, dealing with the sewer lines, telling her when she finds the missing part to do this but "YouTube didn't say that." Trying to explain that if she doesn't turn on the water faucet, the water will not fill the lines. Her response: "But the water heater is a tank and it's electric."

When I removed the sewer line cap, brown water dribbled out. When I told her that, she said, "There's nothing in there." Really? What do you call this? "But there's nothing in there!" And "that water was clear" -- she didn't see it since she wasn't anywhere nearby when it happened.

Is this dementia? About which I can do nothing. I tell myself to be more patient but it is really difficult. It feels like she is blocking me from helping, unintentionally but perhaps to show she is not as uneducated about certain things as she is. I want to tell her to just shut up, go sit down and leave me to get this done. But how can I just abandon her?

Deep breath.
 
GoodEnuff said:
I play "What If". What If she has dementia? She hangs her art and surrounds herself with pretty things that are familiar. Because that makes her feel better and it is something she knows. Do her stories change because of that or because she wants to make herself a victim or has made poor decisions and wants someone to bail her out? Someone like me since everybody else seems to have disappeared?

What If she can't afford the hoses, etc.? She says she has credit cards (plural) to pay off (are they maxed out?), a loan on the trailer, owes money to everybody, paid off one payday loan three times (if that's true, she was scammed), gets collection calls all the time. A lifetime of poor financial decisions but still, she needs water/sewer. I can help with that.

Yet her stories change with every telling. First, the payday loan was she proved she had paid it but they kept calling. Then it was she paid it twice. Next it was she paid it three times. A water leak was originally caused by her son and she had to pay for the repair. Now it's the pipe just sprang a leak on its own. I never know what to believe.

She is NOT a bad person. She supported her no-good son and his daughter for many years, bought him a vehicle, paid the insurance, and one time, in the middle of the night when my back seized, she came over to help me. I will never forget that. I know that if I needed help, she would come.

But she gets herself into these awful situations and is the victim every time. Yet when I have tried to help, it's "YouTube says do this" and I want to tell her, then you do it! I'm the one crawling around underneath her trailer, dealing with the sewer lines, telling her when she finds the missing part to do this but "YouTube didn't say that." Trying to explain that if she doesn't turn on the water faucet, the water will not fill the lines. Her response: "But the water heater is a tank and it's electric."

When I removed the sewer line cap, brown water dribbled out. When I told her that, she said, "There's nothing in there." Really? What do you call this? "But there's nothing in there!" And "that water was clear" -- she didn't see it since she wasn't anywhere nearby when it happened.

Is this dementia? About which I can do nothing. I tell myself to be more patient but it is really difficult. It feels like she is blocking me from helping, unintentionally but perhaps to show she is not as uneducated about certain things as she is. I want to tell her to just shut up, go sit down and leave me to get this done. But how can I just abandon her?

Deep breath.
Click to expand...

Poor lady!
It may not make much difference whether she has dementia or was just dealt a low IQ and is suffering normal aging. She needs a keeper and you're not equipped for that role.
I'd give her the church's phone number and tell her to call them for help. Or tell her to call the police --they'll know what's to be done.
 
Might be time for some tough love. Tell her you’ll get the water hooked up and she has to do her part. That doesn’t mean watching YouTube and telling you what to do. It’s time for her to get her hands dirty.

Drive her to the storage center and help her dig out her kitchen tools.

Scan the receipts for everything you paid for and tell her that you’re expecting to be paid back. You probably don’t expect to get any of it. At least she’ll stop thinking it’s free.

Good luck. You have a big heart.
 
Thanks for all the replies to this.

Yesterday, she called and said she was going to go shopping for birthday gifts for her granddaughter and great gd, who is turning one this week and that they had plans to get together today for a picnic in the park. I asked her if she could afford buying gifts right now. Well, no but it won't be anything expensive. She planned on doing a lot yesterday, including coming over here to get some plant cuttings. My response was, "If it were me, I would make getting the missing part and finish connecting up to water a priority, not getting cuttings right now." Oh yes, I will do that. I told her she could get the part for $23 at WalMart.

Later in the afternoon, she called with an RV question, said she had sort of cleaned up items in her RV site. but then was running a low-grade fever (she doesn't have a thermometer so how did she know that?) so didn't go anywhere. Truth? IDK. Was that her excuse for not getting that part? I advised her to stay away from her family for now as the baby may get sick. Apparently, she hadn't thought of that when she gave the excuse. That didn't go over well, lol.

Spent most of the day pulling weeds and doing laundry, the weather was beautiful. I find that very calming and I have decided to stop helping her without guilt (unless it is a true emergency). I know not to believe most of what she says and that she is the sort of person with big plans that never does what she says she is going to do. It's just how she is but I am done being sucked into her drama and the self-created problems.

Was going to pull more weeds today, after bagging up everything from yesterday, but my body is warning me so maybe will take today off. I have been warned against pushing it too hard. It will get done; slow and easy wins the race, right? Right?
 
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