My Weekend in Westport with the Misogynistic Tyrant

It's supposed to be APRIL showers that bring May flowers. There's supposed to be snow still melting in March...... I'm back from the weekend in Westport. However, I've been rendered speechless the past couple of days, unable to relate the horrors of my trip until now. It was so bad, I don't even know how to begin to explain just how bad it was. So bad, so, so bad.

This past weekend was just the third time I met Larry Lieberman. Yet, one looking on as a fly on the wall, would have thought him my horribly overbearing, slightly mad, father. Or worse, a step-father who now feels it is his duty to discipline the much too old children of his crazy lover. From the moment we arrived, until the moment we left, this man had only one of two expressions; he was either creepily smirking, or frowning with frustration.

I can't believe how much work my brother, Scooter, has done for them down there, basically for free. It's really crazy, actually. This man started a business the same year he separated from his wife and was fired from his job. Now he's trying to get not one, but three businesses off the ground; and not a single one is closer than a hundred miles to any of the others. Does this make sense to anyone so far? Probably not, but wait, it gets worse. His previous job was, supposedly, as floor manager or something along such lines, at Macy's in New York. Whoop-dee-fricken-doo, you'd think he had been Vice President of the United States the way he puts on airs. I'm really, quite frankly, not surprised he was fired. He's a technological moron of ridiculous proportions. He doesn't even know how to set up his own e-mail. He just recently bought a digital camera one of the weekends my brother was down there acting as his indentured servant, and Larry hands him the newly purchased camera and tells him to go put it together. What, I ask, does he think there is to assemble? Basically he wants everyone to just do everything for him. But how does that work when the task comes down to simply being able to understand something? How can I know or understand something for someone else? I can't just carry the knowledge around in my head until he needs it then simply ESP it to him or something. But that's what he wants, really. That's what he wanted from me when it came to setting up their eBay site. He wants what he wants, and he wants it NOW. I can't believe he worked there for as long as he did. His personal skills are virtually nonexistent. He doesn't listen to a word anyone else says. He doesn't communicate his expectations, he communicates only when his absurdly unreasonable expectations haven't been satisfactorily met. Let me try to prove my point.

We arrived at Larry's rented home at approximately eleven-thirty on Thursday night. We had driven almost four hours from Exeter, after Scooter had been landscaping for his actual real job all day. I had been at home getting everything settled for our absence; buying groceries, cleaning bathrooms, doling out allowances, packing my own things, taking the dog to the vet, et cetera. Basically, it had been a long day and we were ready for it to end. Upon our arrival at the house, we realized that Helen (my Mom) and Larry were out. Fortunately, Antoinette, the woman who acts as a maid but who is really a home care giver with her BA (that is for later in the story) was home and awake, and she let us in to get settled. We had only been there for about ten minutes when Helen and Larry showed up with some groceries. I had spoken to my Mom earlier and she had said they were totally out of food because there had been a storm earlier that week that caused the power to go out; so she had given most of the food from that trip to Antoinette so it wouldn't spoil. So I was glad she had gone to the store that night rather than waiting to the next day like she had originally planned because we were starving. Already, though, Larry was disgruntled because he felt that it wasn't necessary to buy more groceries that night, or at all; so we started off badly because he felt put out I guess. Even though it was my mother who actually paid for the groceries, for us, specifically, to have stuff to eat while we were there. But you could tell he didn't really want us to touch anything. My Mom kept telling us we could eat whatever we wanted because she paid for it, and then he would say things like, "Who ate all my shortbread cookies?". When there were plenty left and they weren't just his at all, he's just so greedy he can't deal with anyone else using up anything. Actually, is it accurate to label him greedy, or should it be cheap? Or both? So, right off the bat he's pissed that my Mom spent money on food for us.

Then, as we're finally getting ready for bed, around midnight, my brother, who had been there before and knew more than I, called out to everyone in general, "Let's not rush out of here in the morning, it's been a long week for me". And how does Larry reply? "You're going to be getting up with me first thing in the morning to get started." Scooter didn't even say anything back. He knew there was no point because it would just be an argument, I guess. Plus, he knew he was driving me to the clinic, so Larry would just have to deal with that. And that is where things really began to turn sour.

I had assumed that there would be WiFi access at Larry's house. It's in Westport, CT, and I figured everyone has Internet nowadays unless you live in the boonies and they don't have access. It just didn't even occur to me that he may not. So I had the address for this place in my computer. All I had to do was get to a place with WiFi; which anyone, who hasn't been living under a rock, would know can be done at any Dunkin' Donuts, McDonalds, or roadside pullover in major cities. But Larry, apparently, is a rock dweller because the man was clueless. He kept asking where the clinic was and I kept telling him that I needed to get on my computer in order to tell him. But he just wouldn't hear that. He kept asking me names of places and asking me if that was familiar. He was listing street names as if I would remember if I heard it. Despite the fact that I had repeatedly told him that I rely entirely on my laptop and I would not recognize the street name because I didn't read it, ever. I wasn't planning on caring until the moment I typed it into the GPS. But the man had clay in his ears. He pulled out a CT phone book and proceeded to bully me into dialing random doctor's offices in Norwalk (where the clinic was located) to ask if they were the clinic. Now, anyone on methadone knows that health care professionals who do not deal with methadone regularly, do not respond well to being asked about it. So he's standing over me, waiting as I ask these random medical receptionists if they know where the Norwalk methadone clinic is. And they're answering me like I'm crazy and really offending them. And this whole thing is making me more and more frustrated by the second. I've told him that I can find it just fine, and that calling all these places is just a waste of time because I can find it on the GPS in, like, five seconds. If he would just let us get going, we'd be back in less than an hour, or we could meet them at the store or wherever. But the man is relentless. Finally, I'm sweating profusely, my face is getting red, I feel sick to my stomach, I want to throw the phone at him; but I walk into the bedroom with him lingering at my heels and I motion to my mother that this has to stop. I'm facing her trying to make a distressed face and the cut-off/stop this motion with my hand swiping across my neck, like "kill me". She does get my point, thank God, and tells him to stop making me call random doctor's offices and let us just get going. He was, as you can imagine, not pleased with me for that. He's the type of guy who does not like to be wrong, especially when the person correcting him happens to be a women (more on that later). I could feel him fuming from the other room, I should have known at that moment that there was no repairing the rift that had been created by me enforcing my will over him, however minutely.

Then, after all that, he decided that HE wanted to drive me to the clinic because then Scooter could get started right away on the chores he had lined up for him. Get this, he planned for my brother to landscape the yard of the home is currently trying to sell with his not quite yet ex-wife. And Scooter has already done other work at his house, he took down his kids' childhood tree house, he cleaned asbestos out of the basement for a day before my Mom found out and put an end to it, and that doesn't even begin to cover the work he did setting up this guy's store. So, anyhow, more on all that later. Right now, I'm trying to write about this guy wanting to take me to the methadone clinic in the middle of this shitty part of Norwalk so my brother can do more work for him. I should mention, also, that it is eight in the morning, and his store doesn't actually open until ten. All his actual employees show up around ten fifteen and take their sweet ass time getting set up; but we, for some unknown reason, have to be there as close to the crack of dawn as possible. He seemed not to accept the fact that we were there for our mom, to see where she lives down there, to check out this business she's dumping money into, and most important, to get to know what this guy she likes is all about. And so far, he's making a really poor impression.

But we finally convince him that it would be best for Scooter to drive me and that we could find it, no problem, once we got to a place with WiFi and those are everywhere. It was like trying to convince someone that worms talk or something. He was dumbfounded by this talk of these newfangled devices called WiFi, Internet, Cell phones, Digital, GPS, it was like he'd rather we took a horse drawn carriage everywhere, for crying out loud. We didn't so much convince him as insist that that was the ONLY way it would work. And as I have said, he was not accustomed to a young women being so assertive and sure of what she wanted. I was being polite, but he was really getting on my nerves. At that point, however, I was still trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I kept telling myself that he'd been through a lot recently and he's was under a lot of stress. But the more I saw him in action, the more I thought he was just an ass. A pompous, misogynistic, self-centered, classist, sexist, greedy, delusional ASS!

I really have to end this installment of the Tale of the Dreaded Westport Weekend. My Mom is finally home and despite how angry I am at her, my brother convinced me, after a little while of being stand-offish with her when she returned, to keep it to myself because she would eventually figure out what an ass he(Larry) is on her own. He and my counselor both said that. I can't make her see this man for what he is. She already knows he treats her terribly, and she's acting the same way she has with so many other pathetic men she's had in her life. It's this shit that made me leave so young to begin with. I often feel as if I stepped out of this house just yesterday, that I may as well still be seventeen because so much is the same. I wanted to believe she had matured, like the rest of us have to some extent. We're all trying, some more successfully than others, to grow up. I guess she's trying too, because outwardly she seems to have changed for the better, at least somewhat. But she just still makes these hideous choices. I'm hoping she will see, in time, that she doesn't need this guy trying to control her. I can't wait to write about the way he treats women. I just promised I would start (and finish) to bake all the Easter stuff. She wants anise cookies, all these Easter breads, sugar cookies, sticky buns, I didn't even look at all the recipes yet. I'm going to be cooking for days. But I owe her, especially since this thing this weekend didn't work out. I'll fill in the details once I have more time. And I'd rather bake than do other things. At least I like baking. And I'm really perfecting some of these recipes, so I can make them for my own family some day.

Anyhow, it's snowing here today. It's going to be a good day. Despite the angry tone of this post, I'm feeling fine today. I didn't write about this weekend until it was processed somewhat for me, so the anger is more what I felt over the past few days. But now I'm just documenting it, and then moving on.

Just Another Day

Well, well.....after a whole, entire, gut-wrenching day of searching for this dang dog....and Mikey locked him in the frickin garage. I could seriously smack him silly for it. I must have asked him five million times if he remembered letting the dog upstairs or outside, because Chili is definitely his dog. There are some of the others who have bonded more with me, but Chili isn't one of them. I mean, he'll sit with me, and come when I call, but he's Mikey's little guy through and through. Mikey gets way more upset than I do when he runs off, but he still doesn't pay enough attention to him when he takes him outside or upstairs. It drives me crazy. I'm constantly telling him that he can't just let them out in the yard and come back inside to make coffee or whatever, you have to stand there with them so they don't leave the yard or go running off after someone's dog. Granted, I should have checked every nook and cranny in the house as well, I can't believe I didn't, I feel SO stupid. But Mike was so convinced that someone must have let him out whether they knew they did or not. He waited until it was almost dark and we'd been searching the town all day before he mentions that he went in there that morning to check on his glass and Chili was with him! Why didn't he check there first, knowing he'd gone in there. I'm so annoyed with him, as usual.

It's embarrassing to have to tell neighbors that you lost your dog, they think you're so irresponsible and thoughtless. And we called the dog officer and the local SPCA, and then you have to call them all back and thank them and tell them you found the dog. It just sucks. It took over the whole day because both Mike and I worry so much about our animals. We really are good pet owners, they get treated better than some people's children, for sure. But sometimes circumstances arise which are out of our control. But people are still very judgemental.
The stressfulness of the day was only exacerbated when we realized, shortly after we noticed Chili missing, that Seneca (our other and oldest dog) had done something to his right front paw. It looked as if he just broke his nail on something and busted his paw, but he was limping around and would screech if someone attempted to touch his paw. So we had to take him to the vet and couldn't look for Chili right away, at least not as thoroughly as we would have liked. So that probably contributed to making Mikey forget about going in the garage and messed up our search making it so much longer. It was just a bad, crappy day with a lot of stress over the dogs.

If Mike could just pull himself together and act like a man about shit, life would be a whole lot easier. But he's such a baby about everything. It's humiliating to deal with him when he acts like that. I called the vet beforehand to obtain directions, just to try to make things easier so we weren't searching for it with all the dogs in the car. Because we didn't just take Seneca who was hurt, we also had to take three of our other dogs because my brothers freak out if they bark while we're out. So we took three with us, put two in their kennel because it only fits two, and left one out because she's good; and Chili, of course, we thought was missing at the time so he stayed in the garage. So, we're all stressed about the dog missing, and Seneca is hurt, and the dogs are all stuffed in our little Honda Civic and we're on our way to the vet, just across town. It's not the regular vet my Mom goes to, either, because she refused to change vets when she moved and her vet is, like, over an hour away. So that was out for sure. No way was I going to haul us all that far away. So I found a different vet, in town, which is why I had never been there before. So Mike decides he's going to look up how to get there on our phone GPS thingy, which sucks and never gets us to the right place. And the stupid thing is telling us that the vet is right in front of us on the Exeter side of the highway, and I'm telling Mike that there's no way because I called for directions and the woman, who was IN the building told me that it was on the other side of the highway, in BRENTWOOD. Hence, the name Brentwood Country Veterinarian Hospital. But he's like, "NO, NO, NO it HAS to be here! The red dot is saying it's RIGHT here!" And I'm like, "Those fuckin' things are wrong all the time. It's just a satellite or something and it's just getting you sort of close. It sucks man, listen to me, the woman said it was OVER the highway. She made it very clear. It's a big green farmhouse, with a big red BARN, do you see a barn anywhere near us? Hum, DO YOU SEE A BARN?!?" And he just won't give up, and he's driving onto little side roundabout streets into office parks and shit all, "IT MUST BE HERE! It's telling me it's here!" And I'm finally saying to him, "Then you call her, you ask her what she meant if you're so convinced it's on this side of the highway." And after yelling at me that there was nowhere for him to pull over to use the phone and why didn't I just call her; and he's driving like a total asshole, pulling u-ies (is that how one would spell such a thing? You know what I mean), he finally calls the office himself. And of course, unsurprising to myself, she explained that they were, indeed, located on the OTHER side of the highway. That he needed to drive a bit further than he had gone the first time." And when I said, "Well, there now. Why can't you ever just listen to me, man. If you ever listened to me, we'd be there, and we wouldn't be this upset, there was no need for this. I think you owe me an apology." Do you think he gave me an apology? Oh, No. He actually had the nerve to continue to blame it on me; because I should have been more definite and sure about where we were going and I would have known that it was further than a mile down the road on the opposite side of the overpass. Because he did drive over the bridge just less than a mile initially, just to try to prove I was wrong. But the way the road is, with all the trees and houses, you can't see ahead very far, and they were basically just around the corner. How annoying is that? He does shit like that all the time.

With the way he acted on the way there, and the way he acts in general, in public, I didn't want him to come inside the vet office with me. So I made it seem like I just thought he should wait with the dogs outside because it was pretty hot yesterday. So I brought Seneca in and got him all signed in. No sooner was I inside the office with the doctor than I hear him out in the reception area harassing the receptionist. Asking her questions about the cost of this and that, and what about advantage, and what about the tracking device you can put in the dog's ear, he just goes on and on. He tells everyone everywhere we go that we're opening a head shop. Now that's fine, if you happen to be speaking to your target audience. But when the person you are conversing with is, say, a very elderly woman who clearly does not smoke weed, and probably doesn't even know what a head shop is, just spare the poor woman the confusion. You should see some of the looks I get when he's talking to people. He'll tell them really personal information they didn't ask for, or the worst is when he asks someone for help in a store when I already know what I want and where it is, I'm just still deciding. Like I'll be looking at the meat, thinking about what I should get, and he'll go to the butcher counter and make someone come out and stand there and tell him about each cut and ask a MILLION questions, it drives me CRAZY. And I can't even go anywhere without him because I don't have my drivers licence. Dear God, I hope I get it back soon, it's all a matter of money at this point. As soon as I pay up, I'm good to go.

Man, I have to stop bitching today. I have so, so much to do today. My brother wants to leave to get to Westport tonight at six. So I have to get the house all cleaned up so that it's not a disaster by the time I get back on Sunday with my Mom. I mean, it will probably be a disaster anyway, but at least I'll know I did what I could. But besides cleaning up the whole house, I have to get myself ready too. I really should go to the storage unit where all our crap still is from when we just moved, I need to get some clothes. I only have a small bit of my clothes out because we're staying in the basement, which really sucks. It's not really refinished; it's not dirt or anything, but it's not a real living space either. We're supposed to be refinishing it slowly, but it's going much slower than anticipated because it's expensive and time consuming. So we've made a bedroom size area as livable as possible, and it's alright. It's livable is what it is. But dreary and dusty and I don't want my clothes down there until it's all painted and stuff. But if I'm going to be working in my Mom's store I guess I need some nicer clothes. I've been told this Westport place is kind of fancy, it's, like, all mansions and rich people. We'll see. Last time my brother was down there, that girl that was in that show Sabrina, The Teenage Witch came in to buy mirrors or something and Scooter waited on her. That's kind of weird. I wonder if I'll see anyone famous?