Says it All: Look These Three Experiments Up....

 

Where are the Assanti Brothers Today?

 The Assanti brothers, were two brothers that appeared on My 600lb Life. I wrote about them both years ago on this blog. Malignant Narcissism on My 600lb Life.

It looks like some things have remained the same for Steven Assanti. He did lose some weight, down to 500lbs from 700lbs but spoke to Dr. Now of continuing difficulties. In the video, he claims he was able to overcome his drug addiction. 

My theory about Steven Assanti is that he has male Lipedema, his lymphedema is obviously serious. Notice how much thinner he is on the top than on the bottom. He definitely has other problems including food addiction but this is a problem that looks very neglected. This may explain why his weight loss surgery didn't take off more weight.

I am frustrated that this problem never seemed to be treated and his legs just grew worse. It was always shocking to me, they never even did the basics of compression therapy for his legs. Dr. Now focused on weight loss it seemed while ignoring his extreme lymphedema problems [no matter their cause]. Sadly his personality disorders are on display especially in the part of the video where he says he will get to focus on sex instead of food when discussing moving in with his new wife to be.

Steven says his wife is threatening divorce in this video due to his problems but it seems Stephanie Sanger and him are still married. I looked up his marriage online, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence they have divorced yet. 

Justin's life seems to have grown and his business running a hobby shop with models and gaming seems to have pulled off. I hope Covid didn't affect his business and it is still running well to this day. He had some weight loss down to the 400s but I don't know if he continued to lose or not. Both brothers definitely have some type of genetic and medical issue influencing things. 

Even my own brother got very heavy. I am no contact, but I saw a picture of him some years ago, where his weight was very close to my own. Sadly, my family never listened to me, I told my brother of my own Lipdema diagnosis, before I went fully no contact with him. It's doubtful he ever absorbed or dealt with the information. Before I was no contact, I remember saying "You and your son, show signs of this disorder". 

Justin seems like a nice person but he definitely has a lot to overcome dealing with his brother's personality disorders and abuse. Justin seems to have gone no contact with his brother, Steven, and I think that is a very wise decision. He should maybe turn an eye to his father, and take a look at that relationship too. The father seemed way too over-eager to make Justin reunite with Steven like a flying monkey. 

It was rumored online that Steven Assanti had died but he is still alive. 

A recent interview with Steven Assanti

Things That Have Been Normalized Since Covid19

 

The world is going downhill fast. What is sad, is very few realize or acknowledge what is going on. I supposed we all have to do our best to personally survive and take care of our loved ones. 

"Your Housekeeping Sucks!" Really?" White Gloved Apartment Inspections.

 Happy New Year to all my readers. The dial flipping over just tells me I need to get a move on. I'm always busy with something. I know Fat Pat got delayed, I'm trying to figure out "coiling" it, after all it is 236 pages long, but hopefully soon, I will be able to sell it electronically and with paper copies as well. There will be a visit to the printer this week. I am glad I got the book done, so I apologize for this delay. I considered just sending it out stapled, but it would look more like a real book this way. Hopefully this will be done in a few weeks.

This New Year comes with some feelings of sadness, as this will be the fourth time I and my husband are forced out of a town we have lived in for some time. Everyone knows I left my college town to avoid being homeless. Then I left Chicago to avoid dying in more severe poverty and to survive. Then we were forced to leave the small town I loved [can't go back there now, everyone's gone or deceased and there's very little medical care.] Now it's happening to this place. This is an affluent town full of amenities I stayed for, that is now pushing us out. Even if husband is able to get more work, he's working now, the bills are crushing. 

There's no future here as they pluck our pockets. I went to the grocery store two days ago and saw that some "Land of Frost" turkey lunch meat which used to be around 4.99 2 years ago, was now 7.99 and nearly passed out. I'm hoping a housing list will come up soon. I'm trying to change our circumstances. This can't last. The streets WILL fill up with the homeless. I'm surprised they are managing to hide and minimize all the poverty out there. 

I'm glad I got my art show done last spring and summer. I did sell some art work, and that went well. I also did book illustrations for a local regional author, and we shared a few projects together. I was glad to accomplish some of these goals. I also wrote a series of poems and kept attending a writer's group, I may do a chapbook of those later. We were busy with art projects and zines for some time. I did some art work for husband's zines too. I'd rather be spending more time on that type of stuff, but the housework fiends have their hands around my throat yet again.

 Why has my life been like this, always emergency mode? I'm not sure. I have to attend to cleaning this place out, and even today have to get a box and fill it up with books and crap. It's like a bucket out of the ocean. How am I supposed to physically do all this stuff? Oh I called up the social workers, and today have to work on looking for charities that may help with moving due to our physical problems.

And on top of this, our apartment complex has gone crazy with "inspections". Since society has "gone fascist" and just seems to want to destroy our fun and ability to make a living now they want to destroy our lives in other small ways. I am about to have the fourth inspection. 

The first inspection was a couple months ago, no one showed up. We were annoyed mildly, we shrugged and moved on. We had cleaned for a few days. We have to clean it for ourselves often enough.

The second inspection was the one we failed. We got 4 days notice, the apartment had someone literally almost walk in and walk out. Something does smell skanky in the hall right in front of our door, I sometimes worry we got judged for that. Whatever is causing that smell it's not from us. I think they fixed some pipe yesterday because the stink is gone.  The plumbing is so bad in this building, I wonder if they think our frantic cleaning will make up for it. There's always piles of dry-wall in the hall to fix the latest pipe burst.  We then had the building manager come and inspect who said we had passed, and now there's another inspection next week, the "city inspection". They ruined our holidays with this stuff. Would you like to get a threatening letter about evictions and breaking your lease for bad cleaning?

This is the fourth inspection in 3 months!!

 There is no longer any privacy or peace. Imagine being sick with chronic fatigue in my case, I'm so exhausted, and covered in skin sores too and having people wanting to bother you over cleaning. It brings back flashbacks of my mother. I never cleaned good enough! My whole life as a child and teen was nothing but cleaning. Everything was supposed to look like a museum constantly. Even if you live in a small box that you mess up just from cooking a meal or taking a shower within 10 minutes, it's supposed to look like a show room!

I've been in apartments for 25 years, usually if you take the trash out, are not a hoarder, don't have pests taking over the place, you are left alone in peace. Not anymore! The busybodies who ruined our lives with endless pandemic nonsense, now want to inspect the quality of your housekeeping. I had some weird thoughts, "Don't some working men live alone in this place? Are they all neat freaks?"

Then the class issues bug me, inside my head is thinking, "They are really throwing you out, because all your stuff is old, and they want to appeal to the modern yuppie who has fancy glass metal tables and all new things". They want to toss the old working class bums out. Well why can't they leave us alone? They are pricing us out anyway! So many of my neighbors have left, it's depressing and these were people who made far more income than us. Our desperate lurch from month to month didn't allow much moving plans. By the way there is no affordable housing in this town, nothing cheaper, no studios, no boarding houses, there's a neighboring ghetto town with crime but even the rent there is expensive for what you get. I'm not into moving into apartments where there's daily shootings. I left that stuff in Chicago years ago. 

We still need the maintenance man to come in and put a strip of plastic on the wall that came off from a leak new door and to use the RIGHT caulk on the bathtub and sink that doesn't come off. He showed up one day in the parking lot as we are going to an appointment to get our charity glasses so I didn't have to wear taped together glasses anymore. He claimed he would be here Friday, still haven't seen him. I wonder if they will blame me for the bad caulk that always comes off within the day even waiting 24 hours to make sure it dries and for the lining coming off the wall. He wrote the work order as "completed", it showed up in our email!

We had an episode where our sink backed up and we had to do dishes into a bucket for a few weeks. This place used to have a 72 hour turn around on repairs that has turned into weeks. They laid off some maintenance men. It's not the same as it used to be. How can they expect perfection in my housekeeping when the hallways are grotty now, the carpets look grungy and this building is not in very good condition anymore? The other week, I was leaving out, and a handle had fallen off one of the doors out in the common area, and I had almost fallen over it, I picked it up and put it on a table. This used to be a good apartment building. It seems like ever since Covid, everything just gets worse and worse. 

A draconian megacorporation bought this place, and now instead of just looking at fire alarms once a year, they want to inspect your housekeeping. It is constant. This is a private housing concern, I am not in public housing yet. This time, we got four days notice. I had working on "getting rid of stuff" knowing the rent is skyrocketing and we have to most likely get out of here but we cleaned up for the inspection. I put things away. I had already been taking trips to take things to thrift, and we took more to thrift in the days before the inspection.

 There's been discussions even of putting things in storage, etc. etc. Anyhow, we cleaned and this woman from corporate not even our building manager, walks in for 4 minutes or so walks out and we are given a notice that the housekeeping is sub-par and we are in possible violation of our lease.

My actual kitchen at the time of the failed inspection [yeah it's really just a hallway, but this was one of the pictures I took]

Before all inspections, I photograph the hell out of our apartment. They are all time stamped. I have too many disabled friends who have had problems from inspections so it's just something I did to protect myself. I post the pictures on Facebook and wrote, "How bad do you think this apartment is?" All my friends were in shock, said, "It looks fine", and added, "They must want you out of there!" I told them I have been living here for years with no problems and never been late on the rent.

I said, "We cleaned it", but their expectations were a full deep extreme clean. I remember the day before, I even had gone out to Dollar Tree and got some Mr. Clean Magic Erasers so I had scrubbed at the walls too. Later to pass the now third inspection, I had a friend help me and we cleaned all the cabinets down with Murphy's oil soap, and I scrubbed down the walls even more. I was told, to scrub down all the appliances, walls and more with Fantastic and to make sure all the baseboards were clean. We cleaned all the closets, after all, I was already getting rid of stuff before. 

The corporate woman actually wrote on the report, there was trash strewn all over the apartment during the second inspection. I kid you not. Some friends have theorized that the megacorporates want to drive everyone out, so they can remodel and raise the rent. One wrote that this is very common, apartment complexes will want to upgrade and will find their ways to drive people out. Since this area is gentrifying massively, I get the feeling our old funiture and humble belongings aren't cutting it for the new beautiful and rich people they want to move into this place. I noticed with dread, they had jacked the rent up by 200 dollars on their ads online. It already had gone up by 200 dollars in 2 years. 

I wish I could relax, and not be nervous about cleaning all the time. I already was having problems with it. I feel like it's ruining my life. Remember I spend 2 hours a day in my leg machine, [in it now] 1 hour on nebulizing my lungs, and more time wrapping. I also have to cook from scratch which makes a mess because too much processed foods make me sick.

 I worry our lack of money has impacted everything too. I wanted to get the carpets cleaned a long time ago but now they want $250 instead of the $117 I paid two years ago. Our things have gotten old and worn. I needed new [even used] furniture very long ago. My clothing is worn too. My health has led to worse skin problems that I can't hide. I have giant dark patches on me from my Dermatomyositis and other patches of Psorasis within it and now my forehead is turning red and peeling. At least I got my Duct-taped glasses replaced with new ones from a charity. My walker is old and worn and the handles are Duct-taped too. I need so many things.  I get nervous about discrimination. Wouldn't I have a reason to?

What gets me is there is no mercy for the disabled out there. Some disabled friends have told me, they have been abused over housework. I wrote all these charities years ago and applied for a cleaner, I even included a letter to the agency telling them, that my husband had major health problems and was having a hard time keeping up. Did they care? Nope. They told me we weren't poor enough...[lol] like I could afford cleaners? Are you kidding me? That's the dead end I constantly hit. I needed the help years ago. Do any of these social workers help anyone? It's never me.  I'm glad the friend did come to help in cleaning for the second inspection. 

Now instead of relaxing and being able to do art work, or focus on other things I have to do, I have to worry about more inspections, more prying eyes. I had a few appointments the week of the second inspection, and have medical things I have to do this week too. 

Have you ever had anything like this happen? What do you think? If you are an apartment dweller tell me your stories. This society is going psychotic. I have to clean more today for the 4th inspection in 3 months. I feel like these people are never going to leave me alone. Hopefully after we move, I can get a cleaner in the new town. I hope so. What scares me is we did clean it. I throw things away. Who are all these perfectly clean people? 

Please Help My Husband With a Job or Job Ideas!

This may be a different way of doing things, but if you know of a good remote job, or someone who can use my husband's skills, please write me here. Any ideas for higher paid work are welcomed too. He already makes minimum wage now. [around 10 dollars an hour for 40 hours a week] He has plenty of past experience in professional work too. Indeed has been a dead end. He applied for at least 40 jobs there in the past few months. It's like the algorithims just kick everything out!

 He has a decent computer, and in the past worked for newspapers. At present, he does transcription for an online transcription company he's been with for years, and does freelance proofreading and writing for a newspaper. He is open to government and other paper-pushing jobs. Remote is preferred. Any ideas, thanks.