Brave Little Gerda Knows More Now

[Rita]

Thank you, everyone, for the kind messages and empathy.

Another "side effect" of the MLC divorce disease -- no one except all of you thinks I would care about my FIL dying, and dying with so much suffering, or that I would grieve. I knew him since 1995. He was a really hard man and not a kind man, except to animals and his wife at times, but I had my way with him and he made me laugh, and he was someone I knew very well, knew all his stories, have photos of him as a child and an adult in my home, and would have taken care of in his old age. I have been crying a lot about him and for him and praying for him and didn't file things I needed for court out of respect, but then on Friday, four days after his death, H's lawyer sent some message about scheduling trial. Relentless.

Another thing happened, and I wanted to hear your comments about it -- those of you who have been here a while may remember that I had to have the house appraised in August, 2019, by a court-ordered appraiser who was extremely expensive and who did not measure the house, overvaluing it by an insane amount as a result and causing many of our troubles of today -- but even way overvalued H did not accept the appraisal and that's why we are still here. But anyway -- we were not allowed to be present for the appraisal and there was a huge drama when the appraiser showed up and I had to find a neighbor to take her through the house etc. I looked out my window beforehand and H was standing outside with some guy in linen pants who was obviously a broker. This guy pretended he was just a friend representing H, and would be coming inside. There was a scene on the street when I came out and he was chatting up the appraiser and I said, "You are a broker, get out," she had to call the court to ask, etc., huge drama ending with him admitting he was a broker and leaving. Then H tried to hire him as the broker and I said no and then found a year-old letter from this broker where he gave the same overvalue of our house to try to get H to be his client, H had sent it to me to try to force me to sell the house before he had filed for D. So I told the court he couldn't use that broker. So H submits the name of another broker, let's call her Julie, supposedly from another firm, and I dig up the year-old letter that was from this broker and his partner, JULIE! They were LYING again and again to try to get this guy, let's call him, Cockroach, in on the listing! I called Cockroach's boss and complained about the whole thing and even his boss seemed shocked at the story. This was all in fall of 2019. THe only broker more unethical was the one H hired after that, but he was such a low-life and outright stupid, he also wasn't effective at selling the place.

Cut to last night, S16 comes home from a night out with friends and asks me if I know Cockroach, because he is very good friends with Cockroach's son!!!! In fact, this kid had offered to help get S16 a job with his uncle, who is Cockroach's brother. S16 just found out about the connection it turned out that Cockroach had just taken his son and another good friend of S16's to H's restaurant, and they were like, hey, I know a kid with that last name, and H had offered Cockroach Jr a job!!!! S16 was humiliated that they would know about our family's problems, our financial problems, that the kid might work for H, etc., etc. He wanted to know what I would do if Cockroach's son invited S16 on a trip and I had to talk to the parents, and I assured him I would act normal and either say nothing or just say, "Hey, we have a weird connection but I'm glad our sons are friends." It was quite hard to navigate and hard to assuage S16's fears, because the truth is that the drama will probably continue, H probably LOVES that he can sneak his way into S16's life and get control of his feelings in that way. S16 asked me many questions that I did answer but which revealed some of this dark story. I told him that he had nothing to be embarrassed about, and that Cockroach might not tell the full story to his son because he would have to admit to unethical dealings. But they probably have a whole story about me too.

I live in a huge city with thousands upon thousands of brokers and thousand upon thousands of restaurants. WHY?!!! This is crazier than a Dickens story!

Comments please. All of y'all!