My mom is a hoarder, one of the worst. She goes into periods of cleaning and then her property looking like one of the episodes from that show. The house is the worst.
Two years ago, she was about to be evicted from her home and property due to $8,000 in back taxes. This was all for about $100/mo. If she had told me years ago, I would have just paid it.
I sent her about $900 to help the down payment so she could get on a payment plan. She's been living hand-to-mouth (no different than it usually was, even when she was working full time, not retired early on a fixed income) on less than $200/mo, paying like $800-$1000/mo to the county.
She called me last night. The last time she laid guilt on me for not calling her. I said, "mom, you have a calling card. You can call me and I'll call you right back since it doesn't cost me money." That boundary apparently worked, because she did call, and I called back. I hadn't called her in 6 weeks (boundary). Of course she said, "since I haven't heard from you in 2 or 3 months... ."
. This is expected.
She told me about the back taxes, saying she had about $3K left to pay. A few months ago, she was set to pay it off by this August. Apparently, the bureaucrats in this small town are enabling her. Now she says that she takes down $100/mo and she has a "cheering section" of ladies in the county office. I said, "At $100/mo, it will take you almost 3 years to pay this off now." She replied, "well, I always have the option to pay more if I want to, but I have bills, too, you know." I let this slide. There was absolutely no point in pursuing her line of reasoning, nor Parenting her. I actually have the money to pay it off, but I'm not going to offer (to my mom's credit, she didn't ask... .although my uBPDx always seemed to think my mom was always hitting me up for money when it was her parents who did that to her).
I said that D3 just had a birthday last week. "What is she, like 4 now?" No mom, she just turned 3
and you saw her in January.
Lessons for me?
The boundary of not enabling her financially is still working. I kind of telegraphed my frustration, but held back. She's still making progress, albeit with those ladies in the county office, though truthfully, it's now right to toss someone out onto the street (or into the woods in her case), but this is a mess of my mother's own making.
The boundary of not calling her also worked, as she used her calling card, which cost her literally cents, to call me instead of waiting for me to call her and then going Waif and complaining that I never call her.
