Worse or Better?

One of my favorite shows to watch is Deadliest Catch.  Scott and I have watched every single episode over the last 6 years.  I was looking at the Cornelia Marie page on Facebook and I'm so sad.  Everyone who watches Deadliest Catch knows that Captain Phil Harris passed away earlier this year during Opi season.  It's been so weird to watch each episode this year knowing what was going to happen. 

Two weeks ago, Phil suffered a major stroke at the end of the espisode.  I cried.  Last weeks show talked about his 12 hour surgery to relieve pressure on his brain.  He was awake and talking to his boys.  The doctors were talking to them and saying that most people die from this type of stroke, but that Phil had improved considerably in 24 hours since his surgery.  They felt he would make it, yet be in the hospital for at least 8 months.  His two boys, as well as Jonathan from the Time Bandit, were so happy.

I cried through nearly the whole show because I know that Phil is going to die.  Well, this week is a two hour special Deadliest Catch and Captain Phil's last episode.  After reading Beth's blog tonight about the different way's in which she has friends got me thinking about this.  I don't know Phil Harris but his death is affecting me deeply.

I guess after watching 6 years of Phil on the Cornelia Marie you start to feel like you know that person.  I don't think I would call it "reality TV" because these guys aren't out doing things for the hell of it for a TV show.  They are fishing and surviving.  It's not like "Survivorman" or "Dual Survival" or those other stupid shows where they take a group of people to an island jungle and then vote them off one at a time.  This show is real life.  And as fans of the show, we got to know Phil, Sig, Keith, Andy, Jonathan and their crews.

So, it's sad to know that when we watch Deadliest Catch this week, it will show us the end of Phil Harris's life.  I was talking to Tina about this tonight and we both decided that it it probably the kind of episode you should watch by yourself because we both know that we are going to be sobbing like babies.  I watched last week with Scott, and cried.  I told him it was just too sad  and it was hard to watch.  Thank goodness he didn't tease me.  Would be one thing if I was crying over Days of Our Lives (which I've done) but this is real and Phil really did die.  It's got to be hard to Phils kids and his friends and family to watch these weekly shows. 

Phil wasn't that old.  He smoked like a chimney and didn't eat right.  I can sort of appreciate what they are going through.  I didn't lose either of my parents, but Scott's parents both passed away at early ages.  Scott's dad was 59 and I never met him.  I've been told that he was a really great guy.  Scott's mom was only 64 when she passed away from lung cancer.

I feel like I was close to Jan and I think about her all the time.  It's crazy because I keep thinking, she can't be gone.  She was too young.  I've even had dreams that she came to our house and said things like, "I didn't really die."  I guess cancer works that way.  Whether your ready or not, if the cancer is bad it's going to take your life.  Jan fought it for 2 years. 

I remember going to visit her several months before we moved down to Ohio.  She had told us that if her current string of chemo didn't work that she was just going to stop.  She was tired of being sick and the lung cancer had spread.  It was in another spot in her lung and the original cancer tumor had wrapped itself around her aorta.  They couldn't remove it.  Well, I cried like crazy.  How can you just know that you are going to die soon and not be freaking out?

Anyhow, the topic of smoking came up and she started to cry.  She had quit just before she found out she had lung cancer.  She told me that she was scared that she'd quit too late. 

Scott and I went through so much to get our store sold, sell our house, and get permission to move Jason and Jourdan out of Michigan.  Remember their dad lives here.  We took a loss on the store and the house.  The store was a nightmare anyhow.  That summer MDOT had decided to do a complete reconstruction of the highway in front of our store and the road was closed from Memorial Weekend until Labor Day weekend.

Well, instead of doing full summer business we were doing about $300 a day in sales.  I was pregnant for John and we couldn't afford payroll.  Scott had gone back to work at Graphite and I worked 12 hour days on my feet all summer at the store.  I had John on August 28th and I stayed one night in the hospital and went back to work the day after I got home.  We've never been in worse financial situation.  We were paying store bills with Scott's paycheck and we were behind on everything.

I know I'm off my original topic, but you know how things are with blogs.  One topic sort of bleeds into the next.

Anyhow, Scott and I were in a bad place.  On top of all that, we'd bought our house on land contract.  It was a beautiful farmhouse that we spent 4 years remodeling.  We had 20 acres and a swimming pool, two bathrooms...one with a 7 foot jaccuzi tub.  And the Land Contract holders filed bankruptcy.  Our hands were tied.  We immediately got pre-approved for a mortgage but Wells Fargo came right our to our house and took pictures, then informed our mortgage guy that they didn't want to provide us a payoff because they wanted to property back.

After making our downpayment of $10,000 in cash and making 2 years of payments at $700 a month we owed just over $80,000 and with all the work we'd done to it, it appraised for $145,000.  No wonder they wanted it back right?  The land contract holders had a mortgage on it that was around $75,000 - $80,000 so they were going to make a killing if they got it handed back to them.  We actually had to let it go through the foreclosure process, it was sold on sheriff sale by auction and then we were finally able to get a payoff amount. 

Luckily, the foreclosure process was pricey and added over $10,000 to the balance of the mortgage that was owed.  So, we were able to redeem the property and pay off the land contract holders mortgage.  It was well over the balance we owed on our land contract.  Needless to say, I'll never buy land contract again because there is no protection for the buyer.

This whole process took a year.  For a year, our mortgage guy told us honestly that he didn't know how things would shake out and chances were that we'd lose our house, through no fault of our own.  We'd never even made a late payment.  All of this was happening during Jan's lung cancer, my pregnancy with John, and the road closure in front of our store.

I was in such bad shape that my doctor seriously considered putting me on anti-depressant meds while I was pregant, that's how bad it was.  But, I refused and ended up going on them immediately after John was born.  So, we did redeem the mortgage and finally were able to sell our store the following March.  It took us over a year to sell our house and finally we did in December.  That left us free to get the court permission to move the kids and to go to Ohio to be with Jan.

That past year and a half had been so horrible that I was looking for a fresh start.  With the road closure in front of the store we were in financial shambles.  I had to file bankruptcy.  That's hard for me to admit, but I had no choice.

We started packing the day after Christmas and we left for Ohio on December 28th.  Scott's mom had come to our house that we'd rented that very weekend.  We showed her around and she was so happy that we were there.  She passed away 11 days later.

To make an even longer story short, when we went to buy the store Scott's mom had helped us out by helping us secure part of our down payment on the store.  When all the shit was hitting the fan financially for us, she let Huntington take some of the payments from the money market that secured the loan.  Well, you know what happens in a family when there is money.  When Scott's sisters and brother found out about it, they ripped us to shreds. 

We had copies of checks for money we'd paid back to Jan but it didn't matter.  They had a nasty slimy attorney who actually dropped the F bomb on me during my deposition and yelled at me.  Scott's own family sued him in court to get back the original $35,000 Jan had put into that money market.  Even though she closed the account and I gave copies of all our checking and savings proving that none of the money went to us personally, they sued Scott in probate court. 

So Scott walked away.  We had registered letter reciepts for money sent to Jan, but it had all been tossed in the trash when we were moving.  We had a huge house that was full and we just had to get rid of stuff.  We took truck load after truck load to my friends yard sale and ended selling almost $3000 worth of stuff from our house.  So, I wasn't worried about stuff like that.  I was able to get check copies from our bank for money we'd sent.  Anyhow, we moved back to Michigan because I couldn't stand being there anymore.

When we went back to Ohio to court I was so beside myself nervous  I'd take like 4 or 5 of my Klonopin.  That's in the valium family so I was a little foggy by the time I was sworn in.  Plus, they made Scott leave the room and I was in there with our attorney and Scott's entire family, including his evil uncle.  Talk about intimidating.  The judge had asked me before I stepped down how much the checks were for that we'd sent.  OMG, I couldn't remember if the checks were $5700 and $6300 or $5300 and $6700.  The judge ripped me a new ass and told me that I should at least know that.  Well, it had been almost a year since I'd dug that out so I wasn't sure.  So, because I was drugged and foggy he blew me out of the water and said he didn't believe me.  I mean, the checks were right there.

Anyhow, Scott hasn't spoken to his sisters or brother since.  They are non-existent.  If I happened to see one of them at the local Walmart, they would be so mean to me.  I didn't know anyone in Ohio.  It broke my heart.  So, like I said we decided on a monday that we were coming back to Michigan and on saturday we moved.

I almost forgot.  While we were still in Ohio, Scott's sister Connie had sent me a letter.  It was the most evil letter I have ever read in my entire life.  It was so bad I dreamt about it last week....and this letter was four years ago. 

I'd always felt like I was close to Jan.  I loved her like another mom.  She was honestly one of my favorite people and I was so excited to be moving to Ohio to be closer to her.  Well, in Connie's letter she explained to me that Jan hated me with a passion and regularly told people that I was a "worthless piece of shit".  She went on to tell me how Jan always complained about me to her friend Lee.  Then she brought Scott's friend Jeff into the mix.

I know this is a long post.  Sorry.  This has been hurting me for four years and I'm finally getting it off my chest.  Jeff is an old friend of Scott's and they used to go dear hunting every year up in Mio, MI.  Well, Scott hadn't gone for several years and it was somehow my fault.  I would tell him Jeff called about hunting and he wouldn't call him back.  He just didn't want to go because he said the hunting sucked.  How was that my fault?

When Scott and I first got married, Jeff and Scott had a long time planned hunting trip to Canada for a bear.  So the August after we'd gotten married he left for 9 days on this hunting trip.  Well, that was a horrible 9 days for me.  We were newlyweds and he was in the woods...no phone...no contact.  I can't describe how bad it was.  I had to take sleeping pills at night just to sleep.

A few years went by and I remember Jeff calling and wanting Scott to go on another hunting trip.  First of all, the first one had been about $5000.  Ouch.  We were in the process of buying the store, trying to sell our house and move 70 miles north and buy another house, and we'd been talking about a baby.  When Jeff called I happened to be home and I was telling him about our plans and that I didn't know if we could afford a hunting trip.  I told him to call Scott back later on that evening.

He did and Scott pretty much told him the same thing.  Somehow, it was my fault that Scott didn't go hunting.  Back to the letter from Scott's sister.  In the letter she told me how Jeff hated me because when he called to ask Scott about going on a hunting trip I told hin that Scott couldn't go and that I never wanted him to call Scott again!

What the fuck!  I have never been rude to anyone like that in my life.  I remember the night Jeff called because Scott and I were laying in bed watching TV and he told Jeff that he would have to pass this time.

Well, this tore me up so bad I couldn't stand it.  This letter just ripped me to shreds.  We'd been to dinner with Jeff and his wife, we could see their house from the back yard of our rental house.  I called Jeff right up.  Have you ever heard of Pappy's Sassafrass Tea?  Well, that's his business with his dad and brother.

I called him at the tea plant and told him what Connie's letter had said.  I was crying of course because I felt so bad.  He was a little cold and I could tell that he blamed me for
Scott not going.  He told me how lucky he was that he had a wife who didn't mind that he went off on these expensive hunting trips.  I tried to explain to him that at the time he'd called a couple years back, Scott and I were just getting started with our married life.  We were trying to start a business.  Jeff and his wife have been married for many many years, they had a new house, he had a business with his dad.  He was established.  We were not in the position to spend $5000 on a hunting trip.

Well, I apologized to him and told him that it just wasn't good timing.  I felt terrible about it and I guess I just kept telling him how sorry I was.

There was so much  more to the letter.  Honestly, I cried daily for two weeks over this letter.  It shook me so badly.  And to hear so many horrible things that Jan had supposedly felt for me completely broke my heart.  I adored Jan.  I miss her more than I can say.  Sometimes I see someone who looks like her and it makes me want to cry.  She was so young and I wanted her to know her grandchildren.  I pray that she knows that she has another beautiful granddaughter.

Ok, I'm sorry for such a long post.  I haven't talked about this in almost four years.  The letter from Connie sent me over the edge.  It's what made me want to come back to Michigan.  One last tidbit...Beth you'll love this....When all the shit was hitting the fan in Scott's family either Paul tracked down Connie or Connie tracked down Paul for a real big bitch session about me.  Paul filled her in on all the financial woes we had, that I'd had to file bankruptcy, he told her I had a car repossessed....which wasn't true. 

Paul told me that nobody wanted my sorry ass back in Michigan.  They had a real slam fest.  All of this was in the letter from Connie.  Fucking assholes. 

This hurt me more than I can describe.  I don't know why it spilled out tonight...guess it was time.  I'm just wondering if drudging up all these old bad feelings is going to make me feel worse or better?