Do you have a friend who self-sabotages? Did you tell that friend?

Pearl, I did have a friend like you have mentioned. My kids finally said, "Mom, she is not your friend. I also had someone else I tried to help who was like that, then decided she hated me for awhile, then nine years later told everyone how much I had helped her. I keep that one at arms'lenghth.

Yeah, after all my brother did for him, he tells everyone my brother did second rate work and the roof flew off. It flew off everywhere, all the parts that all of us did because he wouldn't buy long enough nails and/or ones with washers. We have wind gusts of 65miles per hour every year up here, you have to really do the best you can on a rough. So I wonder what he says about me behind my back. Still, he's in a wheelchair and from NYC. So he needs all the help he can get. Besides, when he shoots his mouth off, people may listen once, but once they try to help him, they know the source.

A smart thing he should do, but will not, is to put the property into her name, with a quit claim deed. Then when he passes there is no estate. Or if she does not want it, she should just keep her name off of it. My brother was good friends with a lawyer, and this is what we did with Mom. She was a charity case, as far as hospitalization, Medicaid, possibly Medicare as well for some of it. Also had tribal benefits for day to day stuff. She had a huge bill with Fingerhut, for stuff she did not need, and never paid for, but since there was no estate, they had no claim.

Since the leans have been there for a long time, I don't think he can do that. My parents put their property in my name because my brother was having accidents and the insurance was in their name. But the Lawyer said that any claims had to be 2 years after signed over to me in order for the land to be protected. So we had to cross our fingers for 2 years. The lawyer said that if it looked like they gave me the land to avoid their obligation to pay a debt, could be a problem. So if he has 2 leans on his property already, it is obvious that he would be doing it to avoid loosing the land to pay a debt which is his obligation. Luckily, my brother did not get into accidents where my parents were sued personally, most people took what the insurance companies had to offer. This idiot NY State acts like a Driver's Liscense is a right and not a priveledge, despite multiplie DWIs and DUIs plus many, many accidents (10 before the age of 18 and many thereafter), they continually give him his liscense back. As soon as he hit 18, my parents made him get insurance under his own name and he had coupons, he had to pay $100 a week to stay insured. The only thing NYS does right is no insurance, no liscense. That Barry Scott company will insure anyone, but do they ever make people pay. I think they still lost money on my brother!

He has worn-out many people. People only want to work for him or with him when they are so poor and desperate that they can't work for anyone else. He has all these grand ideas, but the reality is that smaller, esp. up here, often works better. I worked one day and that was all I could take. He wanted me to go back the next day, but I have my own work to do. This is fall and I need real money or to do my own work. In winter, there isn't as much to do. His daughter is a nurse, he has her on ladders trying to do roofing and she canceled coming up here a few weekends ago. I think he's going to die alone, pennyless, leave a big debt, and all his crazy dreams of all this gradiose stuff will hurt him in the end. If your Mom was like this, how did you stand it? No, I don't know much about construction, so I don't suggest much. I did suggest that he have my brother do it. My brother had two guys come with him and did my roof in a day and a half. Would have been one day, but the place he ordered materials from, they didn't put the roof cap on that truck, so it came on the next truck after dark. My brother did work for him eventually, but he kept telling my brother how to do it and my brother does roofs all the time, my roof is great, but with bad materials like nails that don't go through the layers and tin that doesn't cover the entire roof, my brother couldn't make it work and told him that. I watched a special on doing roofs. They had nails with washers and special roofing nails, then I understood what my brother was trying to say. My roof has been on my house for years now. First storm, the part I did for my friend flew off and even the part my brother did flew off later. We have winds of 65 mph here, every year. You can bank on it. You can't skimp on the roofing material. Special roofing nails with washers to hold everything together have to be used. Extra tin has to be ordered, not too little and (this really upset my brother) not "try to stretch it." That's when my brother walked off the job. My brother called me up screaming into the phone, "That loonatic, he wants me to stretch tin!" What I did know better than was putting wet insulation back into construction. I had told him that you can't do that, he said it would dry and just throw it under the trailer. Sorry to go on and on, but he drives me crazy. That and he tells you to do something and you start to do it and he wants you to do something else, so you start to do that and he wants you to do something else. Either I'm cleaning or hammering, or cooking, but I can't start one thing, then get told to do something else and then something else. Then he complains that we work for hours and get nothing done. He sabotages everyone else so he can complain that everyone is incompetent. He doesn't leave you alone to complete anything and if you need instruction, he doesn't know what to heck he's doing so how can he explain it to you? Until he moved to the country, he had never built a thing in his life and now he's an authority that doesn't know what he's talking about. I wish he had stayed in the city, any city. He had lived in the projects where professional people took care of the apartment he lived in and trust me, that's what he needs.

True, I mostly self-sabotage during job interviews and I know the moment I stick my foot in my mouth. And, I have an interview today!