Oh I love this story I've been trying to post it since I came back on Sunday.
As I've mentioned before Cody has many aunts. For the most part they're a group of big boisterous sweet women who love going to the casino, playing bingo, cooking high-fat vaguely New Mexican food, and bargain shopping. A few of them came from a different dad - Cody's grandmother's first husband who I know nothing about. But those distinctions are almost never made. You can only tell the older ones by their genetic predisposition to be skinnier than the shorter, plumper ones I look more like.
There's one aunt who doesn't quite "fit" with the others and not in a fun way. She married a guy who usually comes off as a little darker, creeper than the other, more pleasant if a little silly and bigoted, husbands of the aunts. His source of funds is dubious and the speculation about his ties with the ranchero mafia boys flies about. But I don't know about any of that. All I know is their checks for computer parts have bounced and we just take them to Cody's mom and she deals with it. Between them they produced three children who have put a pretty hefty load on our welfare system.
Let me say that before I moved to their little small town for a year I'd never seen welfare abuse. After six months of watching what some of these people get up to I can actually understand to a certain extent why the man I married was a registered Republican. But that's another post for another time.
Anyway, they produced one cousin who is the worst example of this kind of apathetic shameless abuse I've ever seen. Neither she nor her husband have held a job in the seven years I've been acquainted with them. She's been in school on some kind of financial assistance program to get a degree until she finished one a year and a half ago. No idea what her major was but she doesn't work now.
I think at final count they have five or six kids ranging in age from the nineteen-year-old who started college last year to the one-year-old who was popped out suspiciously in time for the mother's student loan payments to come due.
She said really ugly things to me the one time she came to our new house in town for a bridal tea about how our place was entirely too big for two people. I quashed my immediate response: "We can afford it because we don't have ten kids." I never said anything to her when she said something mean to me about killing one's children when I had to put our first dog to sleep either. Just looked at her and felt pity. The anger came later.
The husband is on some kind of disability pay program but this doesn't prevent him from being able to do heavy work on random cars in the yard.
They are extremely religious and homeschool all of the children. Apparently you get a tax break for doing so. The only other places these people go are shopping at Big Lots and church in a big fucking van. The children are the epitome of all white trash children: awkward, dirty, badly dressed, ignorant, terribly-spoken, with awful, awful haircuts. We always groan when we hear they're coming to the ornament party because their ornaments always end up being cheap arts and crafts projects the kids made in the guise of home-schooling.
They didn't make a payment on their FHA home loan for five years. Then finally got booted and now live in a trailer on her mother's property.
And this last part really pisses me off: they have an unneutered male dog that roams their little neighborhood freely.
We hate these people.
The eldest daughter has grown a lot since I first met her in '97. She's always been a little awkward but my former high school goth friend and I could see signs of Emily the Strange in there. Eldest Girl was kept on an extremely short leash - strictly church, homeschool, family functions - until last year when she was sent to a very small not that scholastic but notoriously rowdy college in the east part of the state.
Frankly I was surprised she not only got in to college but got enough money to go. New Mexico kids are supposed to get help paying for school through the state lottery program but that doesn't cover books, food, and housing while there. At least I don't think so.
Anyway, after six months of school I saw Eldest Girl at last year's ornament party and she was starting to blossom a bit. She was a little more relaxed, better read, had an actual sense of humor about things. We went on a quick coffee run to Hastings with two other younger women in the family and had a pretty good time talking about coffee, shopping, comic books, and such. It was kinda nice.
Last spring I saw her mother at one of the family weddings and she was complaining about how Eldest Girl needed to get a job to learn the value of working for a dollar and stop taking their money and running around with her non-church-group friends. I just nodded and smiled and sang an I-Ron-Yyyyy! opera to myself.
Then at this weekend's party I get the news: Eldest Daughter is getting married in March. To a guy who wears a kilt. And has blonde hair to his butt. Hee!! There's are also rumors he's really into gaming too. Oh I'm betting MONEY he's in the SCA and swordfights on the weekends too.
The mom wasn't there but I heard the full complaint list from another cousin, who's not that much older than me and had just shown her new bough of flowers tattoo on her ankle, about how if he's going to dress that way he needs to be more polite to her parents. Or some nonsense. I'm sure they were really fucking welcoming to the boy too they've always been the epitome of politeness to me.
And all this crap about how he needs to cut his hair and get a job.
HE NEEDS TO GET A JOB? LMAO
I can't wait for the Celtic-themed wedding. Can't. Wait.
Dude...PLEASE tell me they're exchanging "The One Ring" rings at the ceremony. OR THAT IT'S A HANDFASTING. Either one would make for comedy gold, baby.
Posted by: macgeezel at December 1, 2004 9:25 AM
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