I know absolutely nothing, but boy, some haircuts make me suspicious

I’ve been saying for decades that hair communicates a lot about a person — that is _one_ of the many reasons why limitations on hair styling become so contentious, and why it is so incredibly important to revisit grooming regulations in institutions like the military to correct areas in which they work in ways that poorly align with our values. And, you know, our ability to have an effective military that represents our diverse community.

I’ve been catching up on TRMS / Alex Wagner, and doing a lot of fast forwarding over sections from a week or more ago that involve speculation about what would happen in the near term regarding indictments that have already happened — it is not that interesting anyway (I _often_ fast forward through those sections) and in this case, extra specially so.

But I stuck around to watch the interview with Tim Parlatore because That Hair. I mean, the suit, the tie, the nose, but fuck me, _that_ _hair_. I listened carefully to what he had to say because he is not someone who normally appears on TRMS / Alex Wagner and the name rang a _very_ dim bell, but I listened and thought and talked to R. first and only looked him up online later. Alex was asking questions about the timeline of the Trump trial process that reached an indictment and is expected to produce an (initial) trial date near the end of this month, that last an indicator that the judge who has the case _really_ intends a speedy trial, to the degree that is possible when the events in question happened over 3 years ago. Parlatore did precisely what That Hair says he would do, which is deploy His Extensive Expertise Which the Interviewer and Viewer Do Not Share. Specifically, he said the trial would take probably 15 months, maybe longer, and there was nothing the judge could do because Motions.

I paused.

I thought.

I said to R., hey, you remember that whole thing with United Airlines and Dao, the guy who got yanked off the plane by the cops? And you remember how I did that deep dive into what the actual law / regulations are when an airline has a full plane, needs to reposition crew, and customers already in the seats? And how the internet and people we know personally in the industry were _adamant_ that federal law or wtf _required_ the airline to bump the customer to reposition the crew, while the FAA regulation specifically says the opposite of that, and we noted that over time, industries that dislike a regulation enough will tend to train their participants to believe the opposite of what the law is and it can be extremely difficult to push back on that if enforcement is not prompt and detailed? I think that maybe federal cases and courts in general suffer from some parallel issues. There is a constitutional guarantee and a chunk of statute to put teeth into the guarantee of a speedy trial. And yet here we have someone with That Hair and a completely straight face and a thoroughly nourished white bully demeanor asserting that judges can do nothing to stop a determined and creative lawyer from ensuring that a trial goes on basically forever. You know, like a baseball game.

OK, so that was last night.

Today, I unpaused the show, and started watching the next part of that episode, repaused, looked up Parlatore and went, yeah, sure, totally what you would expect from Kerik’s lawyer. It is _not_ hard to find coverage from 10 years ago regarding Parlatore’s participation in what we now are all too familiar with as Trump World.

Trust the hair. I’m telling you, it’s telling you. Believe it when you see it. And when you see that particular kind of sliced and slicked hair, the guy who chose to do that to the top of his head is every bit as ugly and brutish inside as he has signaled on the outside. The suit and tie just tells you he gets paid to do it, as well as enjoying it.

I Fix Problems and People React

While I did the catch-up posts from the trip, those are really daily activities posts. Some things happened over the course of the trip that I did not necessarily specifically write about, but which have gotten me thinking. This is what happens when you have over 2 weeks of time in closer than normal proximity to your immediate family and limited socializing options that do not also include that family. Learning things!

I have all kinds of trauma background, and it has distorted who I am in a bunch of ways and also intensified who I am in some very specific and extremely functional ways. Specifically, I think I was always going to be the sort of person who surveyed their surroundings, identified and prioritized what about those surroundings needed to be fixed or could be improved and then set about creating plans and implementing on those plans to effect those changes.

I fix problems. It is not just what I do. To a probably unhealthy — in some sense — it is who I am. I narrowly escaped workaholism and identifying with a career by being AFAB in a conservative social environment, so I basically putter.

It is absolutely unnecessary to present arguments to me about how there are alternative ways to pass one’s time, live one’s life, etc. I am painfully aware, in detail! To quote a recent Nathan Pyle comment about people who won’t use a decimal measuring system: “Oh, they definitely know.”

With all that in mind, I have recently been sorting through in my mind how people _respond_ to Me Being Me, which is to say, Me Identifying, Prioritizing, Planning and Implementing on Plans to Correct Problems.

I would characterize one of the largest groups of people, and one that I simultaneously resent and admire, as responding roughly with: Took You Long Enough. As a general rule, the resentment derives from perennially unrequited wishes that Someone Would Just Explain It To Me and Perhaps Provide Assistance, and the admiration derives from, If Only I had Fixed This Sooner.

The next group of people, which includes my daughter, responds with: This Is Great, How Did You. That feels good, in that it is validating, and creates a feeling of shared or at least aligned values, and also it it exhausting, but now I have to explain myself which is not always possible and even when possible requires effort. I feel some chagrin also, because I know I am often in this group.

Following that group of people is my son, and oh, so, many other people in my life: Why Did You Change That, Why Did You Not Change That Sooner OK Now We Have to Always Do That the Same Way in All Circumstances What Do You Mean No It Is More Complicated Than That. This group of people is exhausting and enraging. I think the rage comes from recognizing myself, or at least my younger self (hopefully only my younger self) in that group. The exhaustion is self-evident, I mean, look at the sequence. But finally, this group of people also inspires a certain nefarious glee in me: if I can just get them to understand, they will take all that energy and brutally subject lots of other people to the same change and as long as I program them correctly, they will fix a lot of stuff so I don’t have to. Nefarious means “wicked or criminal”. I do fully understand that this is a Bad Thing to Think or Feel. The Collins dictionary suggests that glee is often felt at someone else’s misfortune. It says everything about English that we have single syllable word that means Schadenfreude, and then we spend all our time pretending that we don’t have a word that means Schadenfreude, and as if that were not horrifying enough, we also use that word to refer to group a capella singing. I mean.

My life is decades of ferociously paying attention to reality, and then maneuvering to financially benefit from where reality is headed while also having a sense of humor and internal narrative that is essentially non-stop FAAFO.

The next group of people I will carefully not identify members of. I do not see myself in this group, but perhaps that is a failure of self-insight. They respond to me being me by asserting that there is no problem. I think a lot about this group of people, because just straight up fingers in ear, la la la la la never stops astonishing me.

According to thesaurus.com: “Astonish is more neutral [than amaze]—it is commonly used in both positive contexts (He astonished them with his insight) and negative ones (His lack of awareness astonished her). Astonish suggests your surprise or sense of wonder is so intense that you’re bewildered by it.”

I will give some persistent examples of reality-denial. When I was planning this recent trip to Europe and expressing concern about our short time in Dublin after getting off a red-eye. I didn’t want to miss out on everything while I adjusted, so I started — weeks in advance — adjusting my getting-out-of-bed time earlier and my going-to-bed time later, and more connected to the sun, in hopes that would help (it did). I also booked our hotel room including our travel night, so we would be able to nap on arrival. I know that is a no-no in some theories of circadian rhythm adaptation, but I’ve done the stay-up-continuously thing repeatedly over the years and it is only getting worse and more dangerous in terms of being accident prone and coming down with a cold. Transatlantic flights are too short to get enough sleep, and the earlier awakening is just too much to adapt to in one go. But before I could even _explain_ the plan I had to deal with the red-eye and time shift, I was immediately interrupted with, “oh but you will adapt in a day”.

*blink*

When I was younger, I would get cranky and become accident prone if I missed a meal or it was delayed too long. I was told by nearly everyone I knew back then that this was a Me Problem. I eventually decided to fix it unilaterally — I quit coordinating meals with people who created delay, I socialized in non-meal contexts, I brought snacks. After I had been doing that for a while, I realized that the people who were telling me that was a Me Problem _also were cranky and accident prone_, but me talking about it made it harder to deny the reality.

Hunh.

My son worked quite hard to have a work shift yesterday, the day after we returned from our trip. I had tried to talk him out of it. He wasn’t scheduled — he _asked_ to be scheduled. I told him very clearly to be very cautious driving because accidents were more likely when sleep deprived or when sleep rhythms were disrupted. That’s part of why we didn’t rent a car in Dublin (also, you do not need it in Dublin, and our visit was short enough that we did not really have time to leave the city). I just did not feel like arguing with him, so I was like, sure, fine, whatever.

He got into a fender bender.

*blink*

I felt like a terrible parent. I _knew_ that this was a risk! I did not bother to explain it to him! Why! I am a parent! He is still not an adult!

Step one: no more driving that day. I had two accidents in rapid succession (both minor) when I was around his age, the first was due to inattention and the second due to the emotional impact of the first. No _way_ was I going to subject him to the risk of that happening to him. Easy to avoid. Give it a day or two. That did mean I had to drive him to work and then back home, later than I wanted to be up. See above! Should have talked him out of that shift!

And then, on the way home from that shift, I explained to him in some detail that hunger and jetlag affect everybody, in predictable and dangerous ways. They make emotional regulation harder. They impair decision making. If someone says, when they haven’t eaten in longer than their usual time between meals, that they are not hungry or it does not matter, they are fine, they might lack self-insight or they might be lying, but either way, they are denying the reality, _and I know that_. If someone says, they are recovered from a multi-hour time shift in a single day, they might lack self-insight or they might be lying, but either way, _they are wrong_.

At first, he thought I meant him, personally. I was like, absolutely not! This is _everyone_. It took me a long time to learn this. There are no exceptions. We are human. We work in a certain way. If you think this does not apply to you, you are denying the reality of your humanity. It took a while (see above paragraph about exhausting) but he did get it. And that is _always_ true of my son. That’s why he is in the the group _before_ reality deniers, not in the reality denying group. They are not the same.

The reality deniers actually have at least two major subgroups. There are the people who deny entirely the existence of a thing like jetlag, or a thing like hunger impacting emotional regulation and/or physical performance or whatever. Then there are the people who agree that jetlag and hunger affect some people, just not them. I don’t really care, just like I only occasionally care (and never for very long) whether the shit coming out of people’s mouths is a lack of self-insight or lie. The distinction matters. When someone denies jetlag as a Thing, you can Science in response, and if they argue with that, they have sorted themselves into the Don’t Get Into the Mud with a Pig category and your next task is clear: walk the fuck away, and if people ask later, show the Science, and lather rinse repeat. I suppose you could find yourself in a situation where you cannot walk away but there is no point in talking to these people, so at that point, you are signing up for violence so think hard, and try to figure out a clever way to walk away instead.

But when someone acknowledges that jetleg is a Thing, but it does not affect them — or, worse, asserts it will not affect you so do not do anything to mitigate the Thing! Which is what happened to me in that recent conversation pre-trip. Don’t worry! I implemented on my plan, and I have been thinking carefully about that interaction ever since — it is harder to Science them. They are accepting the Science, and asserting that there is a range of impact, and the impact on them — or you, or whoever — is negligible. This is much, much harder to deal with.

Figuring out how to think clearly about this category of people is rapidly rising to the top of my Problem List.

Probate, or, That Rihanna Song Feels Appropriate Here

Watching the behavior of extended family after the death of FIL has clearly taught me something that I have been very slow to learn. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. If you ever find yourself in a situation where an elderly person in your life is worried about running out of money before they die, I’m not saying, don’t help them. Nobody wants elderly people — even unpleasant ones they personally find reprehensible — dying on the street. That’s why we have social security and similar. We suspect we are all going to be unpleasant, reprehensible in the eyes of those generationally younger than us and, hopefully, elderly at some point, and we would like to be treated with compassion and monetary support if necessary anyway.

But don’t give them any money until their money is gone. Here’s why. If you supplement their money, and they die before their money runs out, you will have spent all that money — and might be expecting some reimbursement from the estate, say — and all the other heirs of that estate will be highly interested in not repaying you. The result of helping the elderly person with money before their money runs out will ultimately be the other heirs trying to screw you out of reimbursement or compensation. You might think they won’t. I hope you are right. But it seems easy enough to wait to supply funds until after the recipient of your largesse is already out of funds. And that includes make sure the house or whatever changes ownership.

Why do I say this.

Well, because I have inlaws who are lawyers, and two of them are responsible for shepherding this probate process along. There are some additional lawyers involved (the decedent, and also the husband of one of the responsible for the process people). One of these lawyers texted asking me to minimize the reimbursement I asked for because if I asked for all of it, there would be no estate, and she wanted to be sure some of it went to a particular heir.

I still have the text. I’m still entertaining taking this up with someone unrelated to the family as a matter to present to a bar association. I’m not _seriously_ entertaining it, but wow. That is not what you are supposed to do when in that particular role.

I had been paying half the decedent’s old folks home bills for quite a while and did not ask for that to be reimbursed. I just wanted him in the home and not running red lights and crashing into other people any more (the other person shepherding this thing along had helped ensure family did not learn about the repeat interactions with traffic enforcement — that, too, is part of a larger pattern involving the heir that the other lawyer was trying to benefit). However, when the decedent was in the last months of life, I was also — with a verbal agreement of reimbursement — paying for round the clock nursing. I did not want to. I wanted him to transfer to a skilled nursing facility, because that would have ensured much better coverage. But the rest of the family didn’t and my husband and I agreed that it was not likely to last long anyway and it did not.

Anyway.

I am the major claim on the estate. The husband lawyer sent me a form to sign saying I released the claim because it had been paid, and told me that when I returned it signed, he would subsequently pay the money. The other in-family lawyers were cc’ed. I’m like, uh, someone care to explain why I would say I had been paid when I had not? I got a bunch of, I’m just trying to be efficient. In an ideal world, we’d be in a room together. Dude, I have done real estate transactions. I know closings. Paying a debt owed by the estate is NOT like a closing. You fucking owe me the money. The money is already gone. Come on. If I wanted to make trouble, I could sue the estate for a bunch of additional money. I would probably win, too, because of those texts your wife sent. Even if I did not win, I could carry on long enough to exhaust the estate completely, and honestly, at this point, that would be enjoyable.

However, I said none of that. I instead said, hey, you have described an escrow process. If there is a proper way to do this, then we should do it the proper way. I can’t really respond fully anyway, as this all occurred while I was overseas.

Upon my return, I had a letter from the real lawyers (hard to think of the corporate lawyers in family as real lawyers after this round). It included an ordinary check for the amount of the claim, and a SASE and another copy of the form. I’ll deposit the check tomorrow and mail the form on Friday, sooner if I see the full amount deposited first. My husband says, the check will clear. I’m like, they are all your relatives, and I know bad judgment when I’ve seen it a few times in the same person. Which I _also_ did not say out loud.

Meanwhile, lawyer couple — remember, they attempted to reduce my claim to benefit a specific heir — did not want to write a check to me, because they had a duty of whatever the fuck. And I’m sitting here going, I am not a lawyer. But also, I watch the news. Lawyers do crimes, too. And y’all have a multi-year pattern at this point.

The other lawyer (so, so, many lawyers! Decedent was a lawyer, too, and gleefully took credit for the carried interest rule in taxes, so this is the kind of people I’m related to, and they used to scare me, but seriously, they just fucking don’t any more, because I keep contemporaneous documentation. Also, I can afford to hire real lawyers) was fine with writing me a check. But readers who read the post about how people respond to me will recognize when I say, that was also the person who said I’d recover from jetlag in a day. So. There _may_ have been some soul searching and change over there, but probably coming in under the Too Little Too Late category.

Long story, simple rule. Do not pay bills for an elderly person until they run their money out. If that policy is good enough for Medicaid, it is good enough for you, too. If there is no money in the estate, there is no probate. And there are no problematic family relationships to be destroyed by bad behavior during probate.

I’m trying to figure out if I _really_ regret having erred in this way, or if I will ultimately feel satisfaction at having received such a pointed lesson in life, but at least you can learn from my mistakes.