Tag Archives: power trips

ethics, narcissists, Police

Look out, guys… she’s looking for a rich sponsor.

The featured photo is pretty much a description of how I feel today…

Greetings, blog fans. Happy hump day to you. Today’s big project was originally going to be taking Arran to the vet. I made a morning appointment last week, because I was the one who took him in for his chemo. Because his lymph nodes are swelling again, the vet wants to see him today. I hate going to the vet in the late afternoon. I feel like it spoils the whole day.

Bill was going to drive my Mini to work today, because it’s hard to get Arran in the backseat of the Mini, now that he’s an old man. The car definitely needs to be driven more than it is. Unfortunately, the Mini has been sitting in the garage for too long. The battery died. So now he has to come home later this morning, and I guess that means he’ll be taking Arran to the vet. That suits me fine. I hate going to the vet. I’ll do it, because I love my dogs, but it’s not one of my favorite chores. Especially when the dog has cancer. I guess Arran will get chemo today. Hopefully, it won’t affect him like it did last week.

SIGH…

It’s just as well, anyway, since it means I’ll be home to collect any deliveries that show up today. We are expecting a lightbulb for the oven, new contact lenses for me, and I have also ordered cheese from The Netherlands and my new computer, which is supposed to arrive Friday, but could realistically get here whenever. I look forward to having the new machine.

Yesterday’s music post was surprisingly successful. I probably should do more music instead of writing, but again, my computer is giving me some pretty big issues lately. Sometimes, I think big companies like Apple make their products so they fall apart after a specific period of time. My computers tend to die after four years. I’ve now owned three Mac desktops, not including the one on its way to me. All three basically turned to barely usable crap after four years. And all three are sitting in my office, because we need to dispose of them legally.

My current computer is now at a point at which it really can’t handle multiple tasks. I just spent several idle minutes waiting for the colorful spinning ball to quit spinning. Yesterday, I couldn’t make a decent video to go with my vocal track, because Photo Booth refused to work properly. It appeared to be videoing me, but then there was no video at the end of the song. So I had to use my newer laptop to get the job done, and then I couldn’t get the video to sync properly with the audio.

Anyway… it will be good to have a new computer. This one I’ve been using hasn’t been beaten as hard as my others have been. I actually use my iPad for a lot of things. But when it comes to writing blog posts or anything else, I much prefer to use a desktop computer. I also like to do my recordings on the big computer. So my new “blue” machine needs to get here, pronto. I see it’s just departed Hong Kong, where Apple has a big factory.

Lately, I’ve been hooked on the Audit the Audit videos on YouTube. Unlike Code Blue Cam, which seems to focus on good cops, the Audit the Audit videos seem more geared toward bad ones. They do, on occasion, feature good police officers, but it seems like the videos I’ve seen lately have shown cops who are on power trips.

I think it’s scary how easy it is to get in trouble with the police in the United States. Yesterday, I watched a video involving a 19 year old man who was harassed by the cops for suspected truancy because he had a backpack and was near a school. The guy didn’t want to show the police his identification, so they eventually transported him against his will to a local school, where it was determined that he wasn’t a student there.

Seems like a big waste of time.

Here’s another video I just discovered as I’m writing this… The cops arrested this young man for walking in the street, but then had to let him go.

Yikes! This is insane.
The cop in this case is a real jerk. He trespassed on this fellow’s property, acted like the landowner was being rude, when he was intruding, and then wouldn’t leave.

And now, I’m going to segue into an inappropriate discussion about Ex…

As I watch these crazy ass videos of cops who go too far or just far enough, I wonder how it is that Ex is still on the loose. She’s always looking for “help”, especially of the financial kind. A few days ago, she was back to swooning over Outlander, and she posted this…

Ordinarily, I might just have a giggle at Ex’s assertion that she “needs” to learn to speak Gaelic to her “ancestral relatives”. I’ve been to Scotland several times now, and I have yet to encounter a single Scot who speaks Gaelic exclusively. I did notice, when we were in Ireland, that there were parts of Ireland where some signs were in Gaelic. But I never saw that in Scotland. Maybe she might encounter a Gaelic speaker in the hinterlands of Scotland, where very few people live. I doubt she would ever get to those places, though.

I’m not saying Ex shouldn’t try to learn Gaelic if she wants to do that. Scotland is apparently officially trying to preserve the language. As Ex’s Twitter friend points out, she could even learn some Gaelic for free on Duolingo. Bill uses that app every day for German practice. However, I do think learning Gaelic just so she can “speak to the natives”, is kind of stupid and pretentious. And it’s also something she’s just throwing out there for show, because I highly doubt that even if she ever became fluent in Gaelic, she’d ever use it, even in Scotland.

I probably wouldn’t have posted about this interaction today, save for the last bit of Ex’s second comment. Note where she writes, “Now all I need is a rich sponsor to pay for my trip; I have to bring my three autistic children!!!”

None of her “children” could be described as actual children. She has one son who is now 16 years old and evidently has severe autism. The other four are all legal adults, aged 35, 31, 29, and almost 20. Moreover, while older daughter supposedly has been diagnosed with being “on the spectrum”, it’s not like Ex did anything at all about that until older daughter was herself an adult. The first we heard of her supposed autism/Asperger’s Syndrome was when she was 20 years old. Prior to that, Ex basically described her as “dumb” or “weird”.

I am not kidding. When older daughter was a child, Ex once sent Bill an email that read something along the lines of, “I don’t know what we’re going to do with that girl. She’s just dumb.” Now, she’s acting like her very reason for being is championing all of her children’s hopes and dreams. Her actions don’t match what she says.

I’m not sure who she’s claiming as the third “child” with autism. Maybe it’s her daughter with #3. Who knows? I get the sense that she sees mothering a child with autism as some kind of special badge of honor. If one is “good”, three must be better, right? But even if she has two other adult “children” with autism, they are highly functional. She doesn’t need to label them in a way that implies that they are abnormal, even if technically, they are. One of them is apparently attending graduate school, and the other is reportedly a college student.

As for Ex going anywhere with her “three autistic children”, I don’t see it happening. A year ago, she was moaning about how her youngest child runs away and needs a securely fenced in area so he can be outside without constant supervision. She was trying to crowdfund that project. And she has a habit of buying stuff when she can’t pay her bills. So, I doubt she will ever manage to take this “dream trip” of hers. But she still dreams of finding that “rich uncle” to help her achieve her elusive dreams.

I’d like to know why a “rich sponsor” would give Ex money for a trip to Scotland. What would be the purpose? No one should feel sorry for Ex. She makes it sound like she has her hands full with “three autistic children”, but two of the children aren’t actually kids anymore. The other is an older teenager whom, she says, runs away. If that’s the case, then maybe traveling with him isn’t a great idea. Or, perhaps she is exaggerating his condition. At this point, who knows?

I think what is most interesting about Ex’s latest tweets is that, once again, she’s outwardly and openly asking strangers for money. Sure, she does it in sort of a joking, dreaming way, but there’s truth in jest, right? And she has a history of getting people to feel sorry for her, or acting like she’s helping them, when she’s really just trying to make them feel like they have to reciprocate her “kindness”… which isn’t actually kindness at all. She likes it when people “owe” her, even though she isn’t very good about repaying the debts she owes.

So where are the overreaching police where Ex is? I don’t like to see the cops abusing their power, but Ex has been getting away with her shit for so many years. Isn’t it time she got busted for her obvious deceit? Well, I can dream, can’t I?

Anyway… I suppose it’s time to wrap up this post and practice guitar. This slow computer is bringing me down. Hopefully, Arran will have a good vet check. He’s not any worse off this week than he was last week. He just has bigger lymph nodes. I hate canine cancer.

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narcissists

Dealing with narcissists is completely demoralizing.

This morning, I’m listening to another one of Les Carter’s videos from last year. I wish I had been able to see it when it was first released, but that was when we were moving from Jettingen to our current home in Breckenheim, and I didn’t have regular Internet access. December 2018 was a bewildering time for Bill and me. We were leaving what was what we now recognize was a very toxic living situation. I’m serious about this. Our former landlady was very narcissistic, and when I listen to Les Carter talk about this subject, I can’t help but nod my head.

Yeah… this video speaks to me.

Yet, as I write this, knowing in my heart that I’m probably right about ex landlady, I realize that “narcissism” seems to be an epidemic these days. It seems like a lot of people accuse others of narcissism when they simply don’t get along. I don’t think that’s the case in this situation. When I listen to Les Carter speak about narcissists and their behavior, I recognize it implicitly. But I don’t generally attract narcissistic types, because I am not really a “doormat”.

Thinking back on it, I remember tolerating more than I should have. When something went wrong in the house and we asked for a repair, she would generally blame me. More than once, I listened to her go off about how none of her other tenants had ever caused her any trouble. She would invite me to call them and ask, although I’m sure she knew I wasn’t going to want to do that. I also knew that she was “friends” with the people who lived in that house before we did, and that her “friend” would probably back her up.

Actually, ex landlady’s “friend” was monitoring my blogs and they were both probably sitting around, analyzing me. But more than once, ex tenant left me a comment, then deleted what she wrote. Why would she do that if she was secure in her “friendship” with ex landlady? Why can’t she back up her comments? Is the relationship not strong enough to handle her opinions publicly stated on my little read blog?

In the course of four years, I put up with ex landlady coming over whenever she felt like it, and becoming totally belligerent when we finally asked her for notice before a visit. I was accused of being “negligent”, “irresponsible’, and “dirty”. I put up with her and her husband giving me a tutorial on how to flush the toilet, even though at this point, I’ve been flushing them for well over 45 years. Later, she got her lawyer to send our lawyer a letter that accused Bill and me of being thieves who stole her refrigerator. There was also a diatribe in the lawyer’s letter about how Americans use too much toilet paper when they go to the bathroom, causing blockages in the plumbing.

More than once, she shouted at me in my own home, and went off on me for trivial things like a clump of dog hair in the door way. When she would yell at me, she would not let me get a word in edgewise. I would feel the stress level rise to the point at which I was about to explode. But somehow, I would stay quiet while she belittled and criticized me. And now, a year later, it’s still causing me problems. In fact, I’m probably as angry now as I was a year ago, when she made it clear that she was going to be ripping us off. Her lawyer’s ridiculous letter to us was a clear attempt at trying to scare us from asserting our legal rights. Despite his best efforts to scare us from suing her, we have filed a lawsuit through our lawyer, but are still waiting for a court date. It’s frustrating, because I want that bitch out of my life, once and for all.

When I think about that lawyer’s letter, particularly coupled with ex landlady’s comments, I think it’s kind of telling that ex landlady isn’t playing with a full deck. Here are a few facts.

  • In February of this year, we saw an ad ex landlady put on Bookoo, lauding the fact that she’d had five American families renting her house. And yet, her lawyer’s letter specifically complained about Americans using too much toilet paper and “not knowing local ordinances” regarding the disposal of trash. I note that ex landlady has never been to the United States; she told us that when we moved in. I also note that she never had a problem telling me how I should behave in a German neighborhood. So… where does this extensive knowledge of American toilet habits come from, if not from prior American tenants… whom she is obviously courting? She said she’d “never” had any problems with prior tenants, most of whom were from the United States. And yet, “Americans”, as a whole, use too much toilet paper and don’t know the ordinances, even though she doesn’t have a problem telling her tenants what’s what. It makes no sense.
  • There were two toilets in the house. One of them never clogged, even when we used fancy American toilet paper. The other one, supposedly an old fashioned “water saver” toilet clogged three times. If the issue is simply that Americans use too much TP (really, a whole nation of people uses too much?), why didn’t the other toilet ever clog? Why have we not had repeated issues with clogged toilets in every house we’ve ever lived in? And why didn’t she ask us to pay the plumbing bills for the other two times in 2015, instead of when we moved out? Those bills are out of statute, so she can’t legally demand that we pay them. And yet she has.
  • We have written communication from her expressing relief that we wouldn’t be moving out. She even told me, back in 2017, that she was glad Bill didn’t take a job in Italy. And yet, when we moved out, she claimed we were the “worst” tenants she’d ever had. We weren’t so bad when we were paying her regularly, but suddenly we were shitheads when it came time to make a determination about our deposit.
  • I pointed out the leaning awning that eventually led to our ultimate falling out. She sent her husband, a man who clearly didn’t make a living repairing things, to fix a heavy, potentially dangerous piece of equipment instead of hiring someone to do it. She did that because it was cheaper than hiring a technician. We have written communication explaining that the awning was “old” and she didn’t know how long the repair would last, but that it was fixed. So I used it on a hot day. A gust of wind blew it down, and suddenly I’m “negligent and irresponsible” because I wasn’t sitting under it when it collapsed and can’t predict sudden gusts of wind. And the awning, which was determined to be worth about 300 euros because it was 17 years old, is suddenly worth 2800 euros. Bill and I have looked up new awnings and we learned that a 2800 euro awning would be pretty fancy indeed. I highly doubt she would ever purchase something like that for her tenants’ use. Moreover, she had NO CONCERN whatsoever that if that awning had fallen on me, I could have been seriously injured or even killed.
  • She repeatedly criticized us for being “negligent”, “careless”, “irresponsible”, and “dirty”, but we were paying her to cut the grass. She never did it on a regular schedule and would often let the grass get high. She also didn’t do basic landlord tasks like a proper check in protocol and a yearly accounting of how she used our “Nebenkosten”, which is required by German law. When we called her on not doing the accounting, she falsely claimed that we had an agreement that she didn’t have to. That is definitely NOT TRUE, because although the requirement is clearly spelled out in the lease, we weren’t even aware that it was the law until our lawyer pointed it out to us! So if we didn’t know about the law, how could we have excused her from doing the accounting every year? Now who’s the “irresponsible”, “negligent” one? Seems to me that if you’re going to demand perfection from your tenants, you’d better be perfect in kind.
  • I’ll bet that if she has problems with the people living in her house now, she will claim that she “never had a problem” with her other tenants. And yet, that isn’t true, because she’s having a big fucking problem with us. We are suing her! And we also had her blacklisted in the military community.
  • Bill and I have never had a landlady or landlord as unprofessional and unfair as our last one was. And yet, because we are decent people, we still feel badly about all of this and would have preferred to just let it go. We would have, if it hadn’t been so clear that she’d intended to cheat us all along. But there are innocent people who are coming after us, so we have to take action. Plus, Bill in particular has been victimized by narcissistic, extortionate assholes before. This time, he’s going to fight back.
  • Seriously? FUCK her. I am angry that we spent four years paying to live in her crappy house, putting up with her constant intrusions, tolerating her insults, and letting her treat us like employees instead of people who were paying her for a service. How dare she blatantly STEAL our money, while making false claims about our characters and trying to deny us the right to defend ourselves? It’s absolutely infuriating! And as she’s stealing our money, she’s falsely accused us of theft!

It would be so nice if I could just let this go… but I can’t in good conscience let her do this to us, knowing that there will be others who will be scammed. She seems like a nice person at first, but once you see her true colors, you find out she really is a narcissist and she doesn’t care about anything but her bank account. She’s a bully, too. I hate bullies, and I’m tired of being fucked over by people like her. So… as much as I think going to court is an expensive, annoying hassle, we have to do this now. She went way too far when she accused us of theft. Hopefully, the courts here are fair and reasonable, but if we don’t do something, it will continue to haunt us.

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