Back to work for me.

The last eight days were a blur of endless poker playing in Vegas.

The purpose of the trip was originally to visit my son, Buddy, who lived there. Last time I saw him was nine months earlier. That was supposed to be an intervention, to encourage him to check into a hospital’s behavioral health facility, or at least stay with me 24/7, eating right, getting massages, self-care, and poker playing.

Buddy was brilliant as a child. But corrupt court officials and his evil family destroyed his life. They went so far as to sever all communication between mother and child from the time Buddy was 13 until he was 18. (No, I did not use illegal drugs, rarely prescription drugs, have no criminal record, never was reported for abusing a child, except by the paternal family and DCFS closed that case without any finding of wrongdoing by me. I didn’t even play poker yet, and didn’t gamble in any way – unless you count turning to courts for help to enforce one’s rights as a gamble.)

Buddy, as a child under the sole custody of James and Helen Lynn, his grandparents, and Tim Lynn, his father, had a 0.4 GPA. Yes, zero point four. A procession of judges acted like that was perfectly ok; (Judge Elizabeth Feffer (doing arbitrations, last I checked), Judge Marjorie Steinberg (who retired in 2011), and Judge Thomas Trent Lewis (retired in 2019).)

Buddy told me he started smoking weed young.

When he lived with me after he turned 18, he voluntarily went to rehab for drugs and alcohol abuse. Sadly, he never recovered from the addictions.

Buddy stopped speaking to me after the unsuccessful April-May intervention. We had a big blow-up. Buddy was as good at poker as I am, when he was sober. He could have gone pro. It was a perfect job for him, if he stayed sober. (Most pros don’t get drunk while at the table. If they did, they wouldn’t win.) We were at SouthPoint. He busted out of a tournament before I did and started drinking at a cash table.

Two of the last three accounts I have about Buddy included substance abuse. He was drunk at the Lynn Christmas gathering and then he took some of a housemate’s prescription methadone and died of drug toxicity.

I had a trip planned to visit Vegas with my older son. I was going to reach out to Buddy again. I wanted to surprise him. Because recently, I was with my older son in Tunica, Tim Lynn found out and he came to the casino as a detour on a trip from California to Georgia. I didn’t want the same kind of drama during the Vegas trip.

Buddy died on January 27, 2025. I decided to use the February trip as a memorial, to try to find closure.

This past week was enlightening.

To be continued…

(I am crying and exhausted, at three in the morning, the winds are kicking up and I think I can fall back asleep now.)

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Wow. My phone was off and I slept right through a doctor’s appointment. Woke at 10:48 a.m. I must have needed the sleep. My last dream was about food insecurity. Is that a reflection of my current economic status or because of observing so much homelessness in Las Vegas?

There was one man walking that looked like he had serious mental health issues, but he was not frightening. I handed him a pack of pretzels I got from Southwest Airlines. (I have to eat gluten free.) He thanked me like I gave him a hundred-dollar bill and tore the package open. He gobbled them down.

I was going into Ross Dress for Less to find some food for dinner that didn’t cost two or three times what restaurant food costs outside casinos. I had used up my comps and it was the last night of my trip. I found six individually wrapped bags of Skinny Pop popcorn for $3.49.

Then I was walking from the Aria to catch a free tram to the Mandalay. I saw the same hungry man sitting on a wall. There was a younger black man sitting next to him. The younger man didn’t look so rough. He got up as I approached with a couple bags of popcorn in my hand. I extended one to the younger man. “No thank you” in a kind voice. “But” he indicated the older man with a sweep of his hand. I gave the older man the popcorn. The younger man thanked me and I realized he was trying to counsel the older man. Maybe he was a Christian. Maybe an ethical atheist. I hope he brought some comfort to the one in need.

Later, after winning $300 at the Mandalay, I took a bus to the Encore. During the short walk from the bus, there was another man lying on the sidewalk, wrapped in a sleeping bag. I offered him the last bag of popcorn. “A dollar. Do you have a dollar? Can you give me a dollar?” “No, but you can have this popcorn.” “I am full. I’ve been here all day. Give me a dollar.” I walked past. I had won $900 that day, playing poker. The other seven days of the trip, I was up a grand total of $20. $920 wouldn’t even cover my travel expenses.

I was walking through a little used entrance to the Encore. The Encore is one of the most expensive hotels in Vegas. There was a poorly dressed, frightening looking man in the shadows. He was counting out a wad of bills. I think the one I saw was a $1 bill. He glared at me. He was twice my weight and half my age. I could not have posed much of a threat to him, even without the look. I was considering alerting the security to the dangerous looking man. Then I saw him bringing his wad of money to a slot machine.

My guess is that he begs all day, then tries to parlay the money into a fortune at the slot machines. Fool! The only one who wins from any game but poker is the casino owners. And only the top poker players will be able to come out ahead overall in that game.

I am a rare person who is able to play poker and break even. I wrote a book with my older son titled “Balls of Crystal and Steel: What it takes to play poker without losing your assets”. I am still barely breaking even. The real problem is that the government tells us we are not allowed to hold games for profit in Arkansas without a license and gave a license to only one entity that offers a poker room. Saracen acts like a true monopoly. They charge too high a rake, have dealers who talk about how lousy the tips are, and serve unhealthful food for outrageous prices. Unlike the Vegas casinos, Saracen won’t allow players to bring in outside food or drinks. So, even though I think I can start playing at a profit, I would need to be away from my husband and my peaceful home, living in hotel rooms or air bnbs, and paying the extra travel expense.

A big bummer is that some of the casinos don’t even stop the cheating. At the Encore, for example, there was a young tomboyish woman playing PLO. On her right was an older Mideastern looking man. Both of them were in a hand with a third player. The third player blurted out “Hey, she showed her hand to that man!” The Mideasterner said, “I was going to fold my hand anyhow.” So, does tomboy have secret powers and know that before he folded? The dealer got the floor manager over, which is the right thing to do. The manager decided to “kill” the Mideasterner’s hand, but not the hand of the person who showed her cards. She and her victim chopped the pot. (They had hands of equal strength.) Had she not showed her hand to her admitted “friend” on her right, he might have added to or even raised the pot. The Mideasterner tried to further excuse their conduct by saying, “she is just learning to play.” I call bullshit. No one is playing Pot Limit Omaha for hundreds of dollars per hand without practicing at home until proficient.

Why does the government regulate our ability to offer places to play poker, even though the places that are sanctioned allow cheating, and then allows big corporations to sell us food that is killing us?

On the bus ride to the Encore, there was a frail woman sitting on a scooter. She had on a face mask and medical gloves. She had leery eyes. She had the wary, closed-off demeanor of someone unwilling to engage with the world around her. It looked like she might have an autoimmune disease. I can relate. If I eat cow dairy or gluten, or many chemicals, or too much coffee, I get so ill I can’t get out of bed. So I try not to consume those foods. In the sad woman’s basket on the front of the scooter was a bottle of soda and a bag of weirdly flavored chips. She did not seem receptive to human contact, or I would have testified about my healthful habits and implored her to change her diet.

Vegas is a sad place in general. Women are encouraged to sell their bodies or the illusion of sex. The housekeepers and restaurant hostesses I spoke with had two jobs and unattainable dreams of ending their poverty. Buddy never had a girlfriend in Vegas. Of course not. He had no economic benefit to offer the women. Besides that, he drank too much.

On the airplane home, I sat between two women. One old lady looked like a librarian. She watched a movie on an I-pad the entire time, with earplugs in. The younger woman in the window seat did the same. She was obese, and her fat encroached quite a bit into my seat area. With no one to talk to, even though there were humans literally pressing against me, I looked out the airplane window. It was a gorgeous day. The clouds below us looked like whipped frosting. In between patches, the landscape changed from the rugged golden canyons of Nevada to flats, and finally to the beauty of the lush greens and bodies of water of Arkansas.

It perplexes me that the two women beside me seemed unimpressed that we were traveling halfway across the country, flying above the clouds in under three hours. A hundred years ago the journey would take months, and likely end in death.

All our lives pre-rapture end in death.

What will I do with mine? It will include writing. It always has. Hopefully, my writing is as helpful to others as it is to myself. Hopefully I help expose cheating in our courtrooms as well as in our card rooms. Maybe, someday, it will give me an economic profit, to help feed my body, as much as it heals my soul.