Once again, life is like a soap opera

I swear, I have more drama in my life because of Eric's sisters.

A little background: Eric's younger sister now lives in the Twin Cities area, and I have been paying her to come and clean my house every two weeks or so, so we can help her out, and so I get cleaning done without having to do it all myself (she does the bathrooms, sweeps, mops, vacuums, general cleaning...). She was not able to make it on the appointed day (ill) and since I was having people to the house on both Saturday and Sunday that weekend, Eric and I did a pretty thorough cleaning ourselves, plus post-party cleanup, things were pretty good. She called up and asked if she could come and clean, because she needed the money to pay for her prescriptions... Okay, so I ask her to come and do some seasonal cleaning (windows, inside and out, dusting the curio cabinet, etc) and leave her a list with the agreed amount of cash.

I came home from work after she was supposed to be there, and the money was gone, but none of the work was done. Needless to say, I was not pleased. At all. She called a couple of days later and left a message on the machine to have Eric call her, because she screwed up. He was thinking that she got arrested again, or something like that... since she got herself thrown in jail over this last New Year's, and it would not be out of the realm of possibilities.

So last night, Eric finally got a hold of his sister. He talked to her on the phone while I was sitting next to him, so I got to hear the whole conversation. She came into the city that morning, with the intentions of hooking up with a guy that morning at his house, and he wasn't there, and he wasn't there, and so on, so she started drinking. Came to the house, took the money, and evidently spent it on more booze and drugs. Ended up parked next to some park because she needed to sleep off the alcohol because she was too drunk to drive, then went home at some point. She said that she was truly sorry, and she knows that she really messed up, and promises that it will never happen again. She also said that if I wanted to call her, she would fess up and explain the whole thing to me too (not knowing that I could hear her already), but she wanted to talk to Eric first, which is why she asked him to call her, rather than me. I think she might be a little scared of me.

I don't know if I want to believe her. I have definately given her the benefit of the doubt several times before. When she has her shit together, she can be a good person, a hard worker, etc., but when she is using, as per the norm with addicts, you can't trust her further than you can throw her. She is the same person that stole money out of my wallet when she was staying with us. She did pay me back and apologize, when she was going through the rehab program at Hazeltine (and no, she did not run into James Frey there), and she was clean and sober for over two years. I just don't know what has happened. I'm actually not sure that I want to get into the details of her life, it's just so far from mine. Although I suppose I can identify with some of her feelings of inadequacy, and using sex, drugs and booze to try and make yourself feel better.

I guess I am saying that I feel used. We were trying to help her out of a bind, or so I assumed, and she took our generosity, and misused it. She is on a fixed income (she actually has a mental disability that she turns catatonic when dealing with "stress" and cannot hold a "real" job), and I wanted to help her out. And I really think that you should not shit on your family. I, perhaps am not a "real" christian, because my capacity for forgiveness is limited. But then again, if I know it is going to happen again, why forgive and forget to just go to gnashing your teeth again when they do it to you again?

My SIL would like to continue cleaning our house. She asked if she could come this Friday, to do the cleaning she was supposed to do last week. Do I let her? Do I ask for the key back, and only let her come when I am home? Do we tell her we will only let her come back if she starts attending AA meetings again? How do I start trusting her again, and if I do, will it be worth it?

It's a dilemma. And I hate that she has put me into this position, again.

Sigh.

On that note, need to get some stuff accomplished before I need to leave - traveling to the exotic port of Fargo today. Yay.

Oh, and I got in a 5-mile run this morning. Did not go out yesterday, I could not motivate myself, darn it! But the run took me a little over 52 minutes, and I felt pretty good doing it.

(I could not post without talking about running, I really am truly obsessed!)

Ta!
~a