#but yeah paypal SUCKS about legal names | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

champflexington · 8 months

Text

Status Update

Hi, Most people online know me as Champ Flexington, or my Spotify project Julian Minerva. My actual name is Mariano. This is going to be a long stream of consciousness style post. There's going to be mentions of a lot of hard topics and mental health stuff. If you don't want to read anything like that, this is your only warning. I tagged this post with a list of stuff this contains in case something I talk about may make you uncomfortable. If you continue reading, and care about me as a person, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Not saying if you don't read this, you don't care about me, just that if those 2 things are true, I appreciate it.

I've been going through some family hardships lately (the last year and a half specifically.) I've come to realize recently that in order for me to get better with my mental health, after years of emotional and psychological abuse and manipulation, I cannot do it while living here with my family.

I know that people will just say stuff like "suck it up, figure it out on your own" or tell me that everyone goes through stuff and I have to keep trying, or try harder.

I have been trying to get better and have a foundation to someday be able to support myself. I had a job that I liked but my back was injured on the job and wasn't able to move around a lot physically in early 2022. Yeah I got a settlement, but bills keep coming in and since I didn't have an injury that basically made me completely bedridden it wasn't a lot. I would have gotten more money had I been able to work the job for the amount of time I was out of work, the settlement only covers from when I resigned in order to receive the settlement. I resigned because I felt I wasn't being treated fairly and blamed for the injury. That's about as much as I am willing to say about that since I don't wanna get into any legal trouble by mentioning names or things like that.

The next job I had was a better job, it paid more, I got more hours, I felt like I had support from my management in case I needed anything. In the middle of working one day my dad kicked me out of his house and told me to move somewhere else. I quit the job turned in the equipment since it was work form home. Eventually after planning a move and starting to move things around in my life, I decided to give my dad another chance. He begged me to stay, said he'd change. Apologized. Told me he loved me. Basically did something a father would do not wanting to lose his son. The thing that I thought about was something my sister said to me a few months before she passed away. She said that I should try and fix the relationship I have with my dad. If it doesn't work out its ok, but at least I tried. She said she doesn't think I'm the type of person to want to regret not trying on something when I'm at the end of my life.

Things were ok for a few weeks after that. He slowly started to drink more often and in greater quantities. It ramped up for about 6 months. There have been several other things that happened to me and my family, but I'll just skip to the most recent event. I had been mainly working on yardwork and also helping with things around the house, taking care of our dog and walking him at 7am, working out, feeling better and getting better and a lot of personal growth, playing guitar on streams. Eventually a couple of people asked me for my paypal/cashapp to send me money because they appreciated my playing, requests I had played, and just liked how I was doing things during my livestreams.

On the Thursday night of August 10th, my dad came home way more drunk and started saying things to my mom, telling her a lot of messed up stuff about her and her family. Just a bunch of victim blaming and comparing them to his side of the family, saying they're not leeches, worthless etc. He then started saying worse and worse stuff because she wasn't really affected by it, he didn't get a rise out of her. She's been going through this for the last 30 years. I didn't hear what was going on until he got louder. I went to the bathroom and that's when he started saying that me and my mom are the worst things to happen in his life. That we're nothing but toxic horrible parasites to him, keeping him from achieving his goals and success. He said he just wishes we would leave him alone, let him succeed and that he doesn't want us both living with him because of how ungrateful we are. No matter how much we do, or what sacrifices we make, we're always going to be seen as ungrateful because we still need him for something. To be grateful in his eyes, is to no longer need him for anything and rely on his generousness.

I have been trying, a lot. But I have so much anxiety I get so depressed about everything that happens that I barely have enough energy to keep my mental health afloat and not do anything I'll regret. I'm not using it as a threat, it's just fuckin real. I constantly think things would be better if I wasn't alive. How many burdens I'd be lifting off people if I just wasn't here. It all stems in some way with the mental anguish I have to deal with being my dads son. I'm constantly being told how weak I am, how soft I am, how I'm nothing like him. How when he was a kid he got beaten everyday til age 14. How I'm lucky that he's never done anything bad to me. Gaslighting me into thinking that none of this is real. That if there's a problem, I'm the reason for it and I'm just being lazy. I just want things to be easy for me. It sucks.

That's why I came to realize that, yeah, in order to get better I have to get the fuck out of here. I can't build a good foundation if my progress is constantly being trounced and just ridiculed at every step of the way. Every time I show any kind of progress, my dad gets way more aggressive and vocal about his disdain for me and my mom. Saying that since I turned 18 legally I'm not his responsibility. So any help he's given me, is extra in terms of his fatherhood. He did it out of the kindness of his heart. The thing is, every time he gets drunk, he is always yelling at us telling us that how much money he's used for me and my mom. Pulling up receipts about how rent, utilities, food, everything we do is owed to him. I can't do this anymore. It feels like as if I'm trying to build a sandcastle, but whenever he feels like it, he'll come over and step on it making me start over. Saying, well this is my beach, if you don't like it leave. Or you should be grateful that you're even allowed here without me calling the cops, legally and morally you have no right to be here. You're nothing but a parasite and a leech, feeding off my success and keeping me from achieving more.

That's about as much as I can mentally handle to write at this time. I'm pretty sure I'll make a video with everything or another post going into detail about previous events and stuff that lead to this.

#mental health #suicidal ideation #trauma #gaslighting #manipulation #abuse #alcohol dependence #unhealed trauma #victim blaming

0 notes

yet-another-fan-girl9 · 3 years

Text

Blackouts at the Bank

Summary: You get locked into a bank along with Captain America during a city-wide blackout.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Warnings: Language

Word Count: 1348

Square Filled: Locked In with a Cute Stranger

A/N: This *is* a F.R.I.E.N.D.S. plot, buuuut it’s not an AU and therefore this will fill another square.

For @star-spangled-bingo 2021.

Star Spangled Bingo 2021 Masterlist

The bank sucked. Well, you weren’t even really in the bank, just the ATM room. Was there a better name for it? Probably. Your mind drifted off while you waited for the grey haired woman in front of you to withdraw some cash. Did people really use cash anymore? You were only here because you had to pay your grandmother back, and God forbid that she learns how to use Venmo or PayPal.

A glance around the room told you that the majority of the five people, the woman ahead of you and a couple at the ATM next to the right, were at least fifty or older. The only outliers were you and a tall man in the back, his cap casting a shadow over his face, his jacket collar pulled up as well. Oh, God, you hoped he didn’t have any malicious intentions. Tall, broad shouldered, good posture (albeit his efforts to make himself smaller), he, most likely, did not fall into the category of the others in the room.

He shifted and you realized that you may have been staring at him for a bit too long. You turned your gaze back to the woman in front of you and then to the window. It was already getting dark outside, the New York City lights flashing along with the chorus of cars honking.

The grey haired woman finished her withdrawal and you stepped up to the machine. Now, the problem with not using cash is that you don’t really know what you’re doing. Sure, the ATM gives you instructions, but you took your time. By the time you finished, the couple had left and the tall man was reading the directions on his ATM. You had gotten used to his presence and was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to cause any trouble, but you sure as hell weren’t going to be left alone with a strange man.

You walked to the exit, but the moment before you touched the door, the lights went out and you heard the bank’s locks engage. Oh, shit. You pushed on the door, just in case, but it didn’t budge. Great. This was fan-fucking-tastic.

The man you were trapped with was silent, save for the soft muttering. Your eyes adjusted to the dim room and you saw the man leaning against a wall. You moved over to the opposite wall and busied yourself with fishing your phone out of your pocket. You kept glancing at the man. Should you say something? Neither of you knew how long you were going to be trapped in here. Would it make things more or less awkward if you spoke? Luckily you didn’t have to make that decision.

“I guess we’re stuck, huh?” the man said. He had taken off his hat and it took you a moment to place his face, but when the realization hit, you almost evaporated. You were stuck in a goddamned ATM room with Captain fucking America.

“Yep,” you replied after enough seconds to make it weird and nodded. “Stuck.” Why did you have to be so fucking awkward? You fiddled with your jewelry and looked around the room, anywhere except directly at the Avenger.

The sound of a phone ringing startled you and you hoped the Captain didn’t notice. He answered and in an attempt to not eavesdrop, you looked at a poster hanging on the wall next to you. Unfortunately, it was too dark to actually make out the words, but you kept staring at it.

“Yes, I’m okay. I’m just trapped in an ATM vestibule.”

Vestibule. Was that a word? If Captain America said so, then yes. You brought your attention back to your phone when it vibrated in your hand.

Thing 1: u good?

You: yes. just trapped at the bank

Thing 2: We got lots of candles lit. Might cast a funky little spell

A photo of your two roommates with a shit ton of candles followed.

“No, I’m not alone, there’s a girl here,” you heard Captain America say. It was hard to not eavesdrop. “No, Buck, I can’t just break out, it’s a bank. Yeah, okay, bye.”

You: im not alone tho. im stuck with captain america

Thing 2: oMG really?

Thing 1: pics plz

Thing 2: That’s so lucky.

Thing 1: get his #

Thing 2: We’ll cast a spell to help you get his number.

Thing 1: im calling u

You: oh no

“Hello?” you answered your phone ready for the onslaught of questions from your roommates.

“We need proof,” they yelled through the phone. “Talk to him! Get a pic!”

Even though you were on the other side of the vestibule and your volume was relatively low, the Captain glanced at you. Doesn’t he have enhanced hearing or something? Ah, fuck.

“I’m ignoring you now, bye,” you said into the phone before hanging up, completely shutting it off, and shoving it into your pocket.

“So do you want a photo?” He grinned.

“Oh, no, I don’t need a photo,” you chuckled and looked at your feet.

You absolute fucking idiot. Of course you need a photo. You would die for a photo. If Captain fucking America offers you a photo, you say yes, goddamn it. But, of course, you said no. You could always change your mind. If you came out of this without even a photo, no one would believe you.

“Actually, a photo would be wonder-awe-great. A photo would be great, please.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Stop being so awkward. Please.

He walked over to your side of the room and you heard your rapid heartbeats in your ears. You hoped you looked okay. It’s not like you dressed up to withdraw some cash.

“Uh, sorry, I turned off my phone because, roomies, you know,” you explained and rubbed your palms on your jeans.

“That’s alright. I can always send them to you.”

You nodded and smiled for the photo, trying to not focus on his close proximity.

“Where am I sending the picture?” You gave him your number and began to fidget with your jewelry again. “You know,” he said with a smile. “One would think this was an elaborate way to get my number.”

“What? Oh, no, I-I’m not,” you stopped yourself with a sigh.

“Don’t worry about it,” the Captain laughed. “So,” he paused for your name and you quickly gave it to him. “What brought you here?”

“I needed some cash for something completely legal.”

“Cash is kinda going out of fashion, isn’t it?”

You shrugged and leaned against the wall. “I need to pay my grandmother back, hence the cash.”

Captain America was, what? Technically in his nineties? Older? He would still be used to cash right? But why did he have to come out here? Didn’t Tony Stark have plenty of resources at the Avengers Tower?

“Well, Tony’s birthday is coming up,” he explained when you asked. “And he’s actually quite good at figuring out what you got for him. We all have to be sneaky, some of us have even gotten decoy gifts.”

***

“My aim sucks,” you laugh at yourself and go to retrieve the hair tie that you had flicked at a poster.

“Well,” the Captain, or as he repeatedly told you to call him Steve, said, drawing out the word.

“It’s fine.”

“Here, let me show you.”

He moved behind you and put his arms around you to help you position the hair tie.

“See, if you place the band higher up, it flies off easier,” he whispered, his breath tickling your neck. “So we aim and we release.”

As the band flew off your finger, the lights flickered back on.

“Oh, well I guess we’re free to go,” you sighed. “I hope we see each other again.”

Steve opened the door, the crisp spring air washing over you. “I have your number anyway.”

He waved as he walked the other way. You got your phone out and turned it back on. The first thing you did was update your phone’s wallpaper to the picture with a giddy smile.

#ssb2021 #Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #marvel #mcu

48 notes · View notes

kaikhaos · 5 years

Text

The Hurricane Sandy Saga Continues…

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle committing to right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals/Friends: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

#transcrowdfund #trans crowd fund #please help #please consider donating #donation #donations

20 notes · View notes

nsw4133 · 6 years

Photo

Hi! I’m NSW4133, the one-person show behind this blog page! So first of all, thank you for reading this, thank you for checking out the stuff on my page, and thank you for liking/reblogging/following my stuff! Thank you so much for spending time on me when really everything in 2018 is all about grabbing your precious attention and phone time. Long story ahead, so if you don’t like reading, please skip :)

Why NSW4133

For a good while, I was going to go for Not Safe For Work, but then it became Not Safe for the World. The numbers was really because in the sea of IDs, you need numbers to distinguish your email accounts. I will retain the pseudonym NSW4133 for stuff I put in here, unless life changed course and suddenly I think it’s cool for me to have my real name associated with this page. Because to be honest, there are so many things I would like to explore artistically that I simply can’t do it IRL, with my actual legal name. Not necessarily sexual themes, but also, if the art direction calls for sexual/genital/minor fetish stuff, I don’t ever want to feel like I’m holding back either. The only thing I hope to do with it is to make it tasteful, not trashy. Disclosure: I was raised in a Christian home. I can’t call myself a Christian. A lot of people in my home community cannot accept me if I ever tell them that, er… I am queer and I do a shit ton of tarot art. So while I do mention a lot of Christian stuff or biblical themes in my work, please don’t feel offended. I’m not here to make fun of anyone, or convert anyone, or threaten anyone of going to hell with my work. I’m a living contradiction, all these religious experiences are still part of my personal history, and I find it important to allow it to come out if the card triggers something in me. It’s not the most pleasant existence, and I allow that to show through in my work. The only good thing is that right now I’m not kicked out of the house just yet. This is my tiny oasis out in the vast internet space, but it is a growing place, so perhaps by next year I will say something totally different instead.

Why I draw tarot

I graduated in 2017 with an art degree and the scariest thing they talk about in college is not about how terrible the assignments were, but everything that happens after college. Will I be a starving artist? Will I even be doing art? Will I survive my day job?

This year has been challenging in the sense that I am discovering a new side of myself, post grad. I have no idea how/when I create stuff. Or what I even like to draw when the pressures of homework are removed. And how to balance that with my whittling paycheck and my unstable job situation. And the fact that I’m transitioning between countries. All I know is that I do not want to be like this super bitter professor who barks at us to get better at design by drawing more, but he himself can’t draw to save his life. I hated him, but I hated how pitiful he must have looked compared to everyone that graduated the same time as him. My school is not a big school and it is stuck in a rural(read: Pokemon town sized) part of Missouri. Yeah, not a good look. But I recognised that this could have easily been me. I too, could be like this jerk, if I’m not careful. So that’s why I’m scrambling to find a way to make sure I’m at least doing something artistically, even if I don’t earn the big money. Enter tarot.

There was this one time I attended an Adobe Creative Jam and there was this speaker who was talking about her journey in tarot designs, but really she spent the first half convincing the audience that tarot is not occultic lol. But that sure got me thinking that hey, maybe this is a really good practice on my art and not many people can claim that they completed a full deck, so why not right? My mind was envisioning tarot to be the creative equivalent of the Boston marathon and lenormand to be the creative 5k. All these ideas came while I was in a position ready for change. And I went for it. And this page happened. What really struck me about tarot is that it has a certain structure, yet it can also hold infinite permutations, which is great for artists like me who obviously needed guidance but acted like they know better.

So when will I sell my decks?

I like the idea of money, but ugh, I’m not ready for everything that goes into social media promotion, making sure I print the decks out, and ship them to good people like you. But also another part of me is wanting to keep it as accessible as possible to broke ass college kids, cos I was one too. It sucks to only see only parts of the deck being posted online. I wanted to let people be able to enjoy the deck freely, and only buy them if and when they are ready. Because the whole point about this page is NOT TO MAKE MONEY, but to keep me away from the bigger demon that is creative death. So eventually I will open up some paypal/ko-fi so y’all kind hearted souls can send me some tips if you are feeling it, but even as of right now I am not in a stable postal code. This isn’t like going from one city to another. This is moving to a different country, and not in the sexy way. Don’t ask me why, but this has a lot to do with the Malaysian (some Malaysians, not all) fixation on migration. Americans may have been talking about moving to Canada or Mexico when Trump gets elected, but bruh, this is exactly what Malaysians have been doing for the past few decades and this migration thing is not as great or easy as you think. My own family is quite invested in this idea, but as a result, my personal life have been in a halt. I can’t plan what kind of jobs I can take because I think of maybe I need to be ready to move out, I can’t take freelance jobs as easily because it requires a permanent address for Paypal and I don’t have that, and I can’t form relationships (not even romantic ones!) properly because I’m just temporary. I’m just a fresh grad. As much as I struggle though, at least no one is dying in this story. All I can say is that please send some good thoughts/vibes/spells my way so I can finally not have to struggle with moving.

PS: Originally I wanted to make this into something more of like an artist statement, because that is what artists do, but then I realised that I will change, even on an every-3-months basis. Then I wanted to make this into more of an about me page, but all the other examples I see online are so corporate-y, and I don’t think I would fit in either. But it’s weed day (happy 4/20, folks) and I don’t ever want to operate this page as a super capitalistic venture, so I decided that this is going to be somewhat like an about me page, but also like a yearly check-in on why I draw. Really, why the heck do I draw when I don’t earn good money out of it?

#announcement #nsw4133

5 notes · View notes

3amsnek · 10 months

Note

saw your answer about stripe ask and i just want to say for anyone out there: don’t use paypal unless that’s the only option for you.

i made a paypal account and immediately, within a minute of making it, it got permanently limited and after days to contacting paypal they still refused to fix it (saying they can’t reveal why it got limited for their safety) and didn’t let me close my account. basically i can’t use my account and i can’t delete it either so my info will always be stored on paypal, which is ridiculous and not safe.

anyway, like i said, if you have another option besides paypal then use that because paypal sucks. be careful!

^^^^^^ no yeah exactly same hat (og ask)

I have a solid guess on why mine is dead so tiny psa if you’re making a paypal account & have legally changed your name in the past like year before that pls triple check that everything official is as consistent and already changed over as possible and you have new IDs already Before you make the account bc they’ll find one tiny thing that hasn’t fixed itself yet and shut you down for possible identity fraud no matter what you do :)

(also if you feel like you need to have paypal so you have an option for customers who don’t have a card I will once again recommend stripe bc I’ve discovered their direct email invoices allow you to accept bank transfers as a payment method (including internationally) so people can just pay using the online banking account their paypal is linked to without having to go through paypal)

#more than anything they seem to loveeee to break accounts :)#and then ghost you when you send them ids to try to fix it :)#like thanks man glad you have even more of my information now that was soooooo helpful /s #buddy I’m not some carefully organized crime ring im TRANS #I’ve also heard that if you Do manage to delete your p.aypal account it will probably never let you make another one so #I haven’t tried to delete mine bc it’s such a commonly used thing that I feel like I need to keep the option as open as I can #just in case shit changes in like. years.#which Sucks #so if it’s broken and they won’t tell you why trying to just start over will likely only land you in More trouble/fraud suspect from them #so we just get stuck in this stupid position #of them having our info and refusing to let us use their service or properly Stop using their service. wtf man #and the only way they say it can be fixed!! is by giving them more information!!! that they then ignore!!!#anyway. thank u anon for joining my anti-pa.ypal yelling team #for the record none of this frustration is at you at All im just tired & mad at paypal #support beams to you for that stupid website that sucks #snek asks #anon asks à la snek #edit:#ok i will concede that there is One good thing pay.pal has done: apparently it’s how we paid my baby doggo’s adoption fee 7 years ago #but that’s it

8 notes · View notes

kaikhaos · 5 years

Text

The Hurricane Sandy Saga: Feb 2019 Edition

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

Thanks, Fish Head.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

Not so fast.

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link can be found through the big PLEASE HELP button at the top of my page on desktop as well as will be pinned to both of my twitters (MihaelKai & HedonistInk) and I’ll also be regularly reblogging a version of this post here WITH the link.

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

#trans crowd fund #please consider donating #donations #transcrowdfund #homelessness #please help #hurricane #hurricane sandy

11 notes · View notes