The DW Accessibility Project Team

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Jake's latest ear infection hasn't been getting any better with the anti-fungal drops so he's got another appointment today. A RVN told me they might consider a sedated flush so they can closer examine it. Jake's started drooling more than usual for him as well so they'll check that out too. If they do a sedated flush, maybe they can clean his teeth and take a good look and figure out if there's an injury.

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The electrician is coming by today to replace our sockets so I'll be able to finish cleaning and prepping the sitting room walls for painting. I need to get some sandpaper if I'm going to try to extend the life of the skirting board

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I need to take some courses to do more work myself because Patrick is too lazy to do the stuff he's supposedly qualified to do. He hasn't touched the walls in weeks, for example. He planed the door the other day but he only planed the bottom saying the top and area where the latch is didn't need done. That door still doesn't close after he's planed it unless he forces it shut from the inside (which defeats the purpose.

Or maybe I'll just see about getting a barn door. That would be ideal anyway - then I can leave the top-half open for ventilation and still stop Jake from getting into the kitchen. We've been trying to put that off since we want to move the door/frame entirely and knock out the wall between the kitchen and burner room after the gas is put in to make it a kitchen/dining space.

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My dad is visiting for two weeks and we're having a good time but it's also a bit... Eh... Because he's freaking out, because he's dealing with house expenses and bankrolling my brother. And it's really hard not to resent him for especially the latter part. I mean he's subsidising my brother probably about £1,500/month, and he feels he has to because my brother has gone and had a kid, but you can't get him to realise that he's not saving them by funding them - he's 63 years old. Eventually, he will be unable to work.

I'm also disgusted with my brother for having a child he can't afford, and I feel like subconsciously, or maybe even more malicious and purposefully with the guidance of his wife he did this on purpose because our dad was at the point of realising he can't finance my brother anymore. I mean, my low-ball estimate is that he's given him roughly £200,000 over the last eight years. It's probably more because a lot of those years he was paying the full rent, not 70%. He paid for three months of rehab and paid off his debt a second or third time so he wouldn't go into bankruptcy - so that was probably almost £50,000 between rehab and bankruptcy on the table. I think my brother or his situationship at the time realised at some point he was going to stop and decided to have the baby to basically make Dad feel forced to keep financing them. For the baby.

And it's really hard to not resent this because my sister and I have always been so responsible. I mean, me less so than my sister, but not for lack of trying - I work hard and have great work ethic, and I do well at paid work, but I struggled with academics. I suspect I have some issues similar to my brother - I did test for a visual LD in college and based on my friends I do strongly suspect ADHD and autism. But I've usually managed to cope and dig myself out of my own messes. My sister had to deal with a divorce and cancer and Dad is living at her house because he can't bear to live with our brother, but he's not chipping in to the mortgage last I knew. I had to deal with a cancer screening, two broken limbs, a retaliatory eviction and pseudo-homelessness for three months.

So for him to be visiting and moaning about having to pay 70% of my brother's rent! And I've let him stay at my place too and have been cooking every day. At least he's chipped in for half the meals we get out when we're too tired from walking around all day. But you do think, it's just not fair. It's not fair on him mostly - he should stop financing our brother. He needs to. He needs to stop just saying he's going to and actually do it. He's not helping the grandkids. He's setting our brother up for failure because someday he won't be able to finance him anymore. He's going to die someday thinking our brother will be instantly homeless because he's never even been able to pay rent! He needs to stop to force our brother to figure it out!

And then to add insult to injury with all this, I don't know about my sister, but most of my dreamed-of works for the house are a cumulative total of at most £105,000. And I mean literally all of it:

Fencing/gates - £3,000 (front and back).
GFCH or heat pump - £4,000-10,000.
Kitchen - £5-10,000 (lower range self-remove with Patrick's dad. Possibly cheaper if we could find a charity shop kitchen and self-install).
Solar - £3-5,000
New roof - £10,000
Patio - £3,000
HRU - £3,000
Flooring - £2,000
Bathroom extension downstairs - £50,000 (I'm basically doubling this from the grants available to be safe, by the way).
Updating insulation - £10,000.

I could literally do everything I want in the house and not even touch half of what my dad has spent on my brother just in the last ten years. I'm not entitled to his money, but I am entitled to the resentment of disparity between siblings. Me more than my sister I think, even, because I'm eldest, I struggled with more childhood trauma than either of them (I was the only one alive for our sibling death and ensuing investigations/tortures, uncle death, poverty until my uncle got my dad a job with a computer company) and I had an undiagnosed LD and issues that my dad was desperate to get my brother diagnosed with because he was causing problems, and didn't realise I had the same issues because I was more prone to inattentiveness and daydreaming. Especially looking at my grades since he brought all my elementary school report cards - the signs were definitely there that I was struggling. I just coped better, because I had to, because all the resources and attention were going to my brother.

This is all old news, but obviously the times he's been glued to his phone fretting about money my brother has spent stirs things up again. Rather than try to deny I'm even entitled to recognise the disparities and inequities between siblings, I've accepted it so I can move on. He can establish boundaries between himself and me, and my sister and himself, but not my brother. Patrick thinks it's favouritism for him being a boy, and I try not to agree with that and say it's because he has more serious issues.

Except, I also had issues, which he ignored, because I wasn't as obnoxious or loud or annoying about it, not necessarily because they were less impactful on my life. So maybe it is more because my brother's a boy.

Let me put it this way, if I went and got pregnant, I don't think I'd be getting more support just because I had a grandchild. He's made it pretty clear that my sister and I are on our own because he can't afford to help, because he's too busy helping our brother. We're not entitled to help but it is a major disparity.

He says he has a therapist, but I wonder if he really does. If he does, I wonder if he's ever really honest about the disparity between the kids and if the therapist has told him he should be setting boundaries for our brother. He's going to die so much younger than he should if he doesn't. I hate it. I always want to ask my brother if he realises he's literally ageing our dad by decades with all the stress. Does my brother realise he is literally killing our father? Because sometimes it really haunts me.