Frustration

I've got myself in a fine kettle of fish. Or maybe porcupines; yeah, with cactus.

One of my siblings was incredibly helpful when Mom X had heart surgery and during her long, difficult convalescence. My other sib travels on business a lot -- routinely -- and I work awkward hours. So a lot of it fell to her: taking care of Mom's devoted doggie, hospital visits, evaluating and checking up on nursing home staff, transportation and so on and on.

In the course of this, my sibling's car went wonky in an expensive way (my siblings and I share some traits; one of them is, we're not especially car-proud and are like as not to be driving near-clunkers. We're no great shakes with money, either; and we're effective and devoted procrastinators). But that was no problem, since most of the transportation duties involved Mom's larger sedan anyway. The broken car was parked, to be dealt with later.

So later came and sib had been whacked hard with heating bills (Um, renting a place with an ancient thermal/gravity furnace? Not a good idea. At 65F, it can't move enough air; at 72, you'll go broke. Live and learn). So it had to wait; then a lump-sum check was late.... Hey, I've been there, maybe not as bad or as long.

And after a month or so of this, with Mom home now but generally carless, I had to go and suggest sib and I meet up at a nearby car-repair jernt and I'd pay for it -- no-interest loan, however long it took. (Yeah, even forever. Remember, none of us are all that good with money). Given the other loans, etc., probably a good idea if no extra funds passed through my sibling's accounts.

The reaction was...less than positive. As in, there was no way sib would ever wanna be beholden to me, didn't want me to be in a position where I could dictate her activities, yadda-yadda-yadda. --Some of that's on me: we're not close, I have refused to loan money (when I didn't have it -- I don't have it now, either but I'd've paid credit-card rates to resolve the car tangle).

All I wanted was to remove one of the impediments to Mom's getting into physical therapy. I've had to do PT and it's hard to make yourself do it, very easy to find reasons not to.

But all I managed to do was make the mess a little bigger. That'll learn me.