A Corner Turned?

The in-law estate felt a bit less confining when I left yesterday. Having the first wave of legal yaddahs behind us feels like a proverbial mile-stone. It still amazes me how palaces feel so much more confining and restricted than the police holding cells I have occupied along my strictly personal Trail of Tears. Fancy buildings tend to have more security attached than any prison cell. For sure, the guards are generally better paid and trained. We had two vehicles to move, so we left separately. Hubs was taking care of a few more legal details when I left, so I was alone while I packed to leave. No hovering in-laws or devoted employees riding herd. Just me and a fancy building. This, I can work with. Yea, the house still feels haunted, but I feel spirits everywhere.

Among the items on the agenda is a 140 acre farm in the middle of the Barnett Shale formation. A hot spot of the highly controverted shale fracturing practices for mining Natural Gas. Mister and Missus Surname bought the farm long before Shale Fracturing practices were developed. Not my business, of course, but I think the original purchase was due to its proximity to the family farms they were both raised on. By the time Missus Surname's Huntington's Disease had reached its end stage, it enabled our humble oil company marketing executive to become a True Oil Man with resources to hire the private nursing staff who he eventually declared to be wife substitutes. The decline in production was sufficient to make having the old man's dementia enhanced ego on our middle class bill desk a frighteningly real potential. The current profits are not enough to cover the salary of his most humble employee.

Now it is mostly just 140 over-grazed acres (rented for the ag-exemption) with a very old and humble farm house, some battered dairy buildings and several bio-remediation projects awaiting action. It is still an family property. I don't if the family extends to wives. Hasn't so far. Hubby's one surviving brother has the Huntington's gene. His Huntington's symptoms are advanced enough that he has had to leave his Pharmacist career and is quite dependent on his wife. Mister Surname liked his wife even less than he liked me. That bitch uses the H-word freely. . . In public, no less. . . She is supposed to dedicate her life to hiding the facts of hubby's life. Neither of us have felt inclined to let the "common enemy" unite us. We use the F-word in public, too, my Foolish Old Man. Your Foolishness does not make you our enemy. Fool, fool, fool. . . You can't talk somebody out of having Huntington's Disease, schizophrenia, narcolepsy or PTSD. Welcome to honest disclosure. Guess what. Your wife and eldest son suffered ^IT^ also, despite your most secretive employee efforts.

I don't know the other branch of the family Christmas tree well enough to predict what hubby's brother or his wife will decide on their share of the property, but it looks like I am going to be setting up camp in the old farm house to take inventory. We see what grows.

My fantasies of developing bio-remediation techniques sure are getting agitated. Damned tree huggers. . .