Getting Ready

We are getting ready to drive down to Virginia next Friday for our grandson, Dominic’s 2nd birthday. Very excited! First of all, I can’t wait to squeeze those babies; secondly, I’m looking forward to seeing Popeye who started back to work this week.

Remember the accident he was in on July 3, 2011? Well, almost 9 months later, he is finally back to work. He is still in a lot of pain as his hip still needs to be replaced, but I guess the money issue hurt worse than the hip.

Now, if he can just continue to use the pain meds properly, I feel that he and his little family should be on the road to recovery. Fingers crossed XXXXXXXXXXX

I must be sure to pack my sunglasses, my meds that keep me from freaking out about travel, my knitting for the long ride and my little box fan that lulls me to sleep. Other than that, I just need to pack jeans, T-shirts, sweatshirts and sneakers because my granddaughter told me she wants to play tag and hide and go seek with me…..Advil, I need to pack Advil.

Bradford Pear Trees

I changed my header to a picture of Bradford Pear trees.   I am not a huge fan of Spring but I do love this beautiful tree.  When we are ready to landscape the back yard, I’d love to plant a couple of these.

I spoke to our lawyer about possibly getting one of our local  TV consumer reporters to do an expose on our contractor and he gave me the go-ahead to do it.  My biggest concern is how Philadelphians sound on the TV when we are interviewed.  We sound so nasal – I can’t stand it!  I told Hub that if we are interviewed, we have to practice speaking clearly and non-nasally.

He dismissed me by saying, “You can talk to them.”

I yelled, “Yo, if I say you’re gonna talk to  ’em, you’re gonna talk to  ’em.  Now put down that cheese steak and get me a soft pretzel with mustard!  Then put on the Phillies and get outa here!”

My friend JK kept hiding from me and I was getting sadder and sadder as opposed to angrier and angrier.  Then something terrible happened.

A few years ago, JK’s mom left her a trailer home in New Jersey when she passed away.  JK lives in a small apartment here in PA and would spend all of her summer weekends at the trailer with her family and friends.  She loves the Jersey shore and loved treating her grandchildren to a weekend down the shore.

Well, apparently, her idiot son/my contractor told her to leave the water and electricity on in the trailer over the winter so he could do some improvements to it over the winter.  She left the water on – the pipes burst and the water heater ran for several months as it continued to heat the water that was flooding the trailer.  Her idiot son/my contractor was responsible for managing JK’s money and he ignored the electric bill until the bill was totalling over $1000.00.  JK finally called the electric company and they verified the amount of the bill and stated someone must be living in the trailer.  JK called the manager of the trailer park who immediately checked it out and discovered the broken pipes, the flood and every single wall, appliance, curtain, window, shirt, skirt and flip-flop that was covered in black mold.

The cost of rehabbing the trailer is about $20,000,00 – coincidentally about how much her son stole from us and how much it will cost us to hire someone else to finish our addition.  Yep, Karma sucks; however, I didn’t get any joy from this.

I called JK yesterday and left a message letting her know that I felt so bad for her and that I knew she was devastated.  Then tonight, I asked her to meet me at the local diner where we were able to sort out everything.  I gave her a short synopsis of what her son has done to us and where we are stuck financially, but I then told her that I didn’t want to discuss that with her again and that I am going to let the lawyers figure everything out.  I would have loved to have been able to pump her for every piece of information I could get out of her about her deadbeat son but I pretty much knew that wasn’t going to be very productive.

She just kept thanking me for coming to her and she said she was afraid to come to me.  I kept saying, “JK, did you think I was going to punch you or something?”  She said exactly what all of you said – she was embarrassed and horrified.

I’m glad that my friend and I are talking; however, I’m still going to nail her son’s ass to the wall.

You’re My Hero

We find heroes in the oddest places.

 

I found two this week.

When someone is fired at my company, the HR director wheels a library cart piled high with empty Staples’ boxes over to the victim’s desk.  The cart has one weird wheel that has a distinctive squeak-squeak sound.  Every time I hear that squeak-squeak sound, my heart skips a beat.  Because we’re all in cubicles, we can’t see each other, but we can narrow down who is going to get fired by the general direction that the squeak-squeak  sound is headed.

East means Medical Review, North means someone in auditing or Claims, and west means someone in my department.  I back up to a window, so it can’t be anyone behind me. 

Here’s where I saw my first Hero this week.  L.C. worked for this company for over 15 years.  She wasn’t the most pleasant person around; she was actually downright mean to most people most of the time.  But she came to work every day – sat at her desk and processed claim after claim after claim.  She took a couple of smoking breaks a day and ate her lunch at her desk.  Recently she was diagnosed with some kind of cancer and despite the chemotherapy, etc. she hardly missed a day. 

Yesterday Squeak-Squeak made its way over to Claims and straight to L.C.’s desk.  Apparently she had just been fired, but instead of going quietly, L.C. started packing up her things, muttering the F. bomb the whole time.  The H.R. director immediately started to “help” L.C. pack.  L.C. was having none of it and she told the H.R. director to “get your f***ing hands off of my  f***ing stuff!”  After packing her belongings, L.C. defiantly wandered over to our department to say goodbye to her friends.  There was a lot of F this and F that and she was promptly ordered out of the building, but not before telling the H.R. Director,  ”Just wait, someday you’ll get yours!  When you least expect it,  they’re going to fire your ass just like you’re firing me!” 

I call her a Hero because she is the first person that I’ve seen fired from this organization who did not go quietly.  She let Management and everyone else know that she was not happy with the way they sneak up on you with their squeaky cart and terminate you.  I question why they fired her now – in the midst of chemotherapy.  Did her production fall because she has been sick – maybe spending more time in the bathroom?  I heard today that when she was called into the H.R. Department she told them all to go fu** themselves.  Gotta love it! 

My second Hero is the woman I saw standing at the bus stop this morning as I was turning into Starbucks for my daily Chai tea.  I’ve seen  her around town before and she is obviously mentally challenged  She looks to be about my age (54) with a short grey haircut that’s never styled and always windblown.  She is obviously extremely myopic and wears a pair of large, outdated  glasses that rest on her rosacia, red cheeks and make her eyes appear huge.  She walks all over town sometimes pushing one of those collapsible shopping carts.  She has the most trusting smile on her face all the time.  

I’m sure there are those who might say that she’s smiling BECAUSE she is mentally challenged – that she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing.  That may be true, but that gentle smile almost brought me to tears this morning.  Her life is obviously so much harder than mine.  She stands at that bus stop in all kinds of shitty weather.  She wrestles with that freakin’ collapsible shopping cart.   

 Her smile humbled me this morning and still does as I write this.  I have been so blessed in my life and I have to start extending that blessing to others.

Lost Money, Lost Friend

How do you work in an office with a woman who has been your friend for over 25 years and whose son has just stolen your life savings?
I now know exactly how the people felt who lost their investments to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Devastated! I don’t know if we will ever see any of that money again and my house is torn apart. After taking a multitude of pictures this weekend, my husband has begun cleaning up the piles of construction debris from our yard. The monstrous blue tarps are unusable as they are riddled with holes and covered with mud and slimy water so he is going to cut them up and put them out in the trash.
There are ragged boards and bent nails littered across the yard. Huge boulders are piled up in one corner of the mud waiting to be moved. We will have to rent a caterpillar or something like that to push the boulders to the rear of our property along the creek line.
Hub collected 6 black, construction bags full of pizza boxes, ice tea and soda bottles, food wrappers, coffee cups, pieces of siding and roofing material. He put them at the curb for trash removal this morning and unbelievably, the trash men took the bags. We will probably have to rent a dumpster to get rid of all of the big stuff like wooden pallets, etc.
That’s just the clean up – I’ll talk about the rest later.
But, back to my first question – How do you work in an office with a woman who has been your friend for over 25 years and whose son has just stolen your life savings?
She works five cubicles up from my desk. Last Tuesday night, when this all came to a head and we realized what was happening, I emailed my friend and asked her if she knew what was going on. Later that night, I called her three times and left messages asking her to call me back. I was crying – not screaming.
She never called me or wrote me back – she told my coworker that she didn’t know what to say to me. All she needed to say was something like, “I’m so sorry”. Her silence makes me think she knew all along that he was going to screw us.
I am devastated but I am grateful my house doesn’t look like a pile of matchsticks like the homes in Alabama. Those families are in much worse shape than I am.

My Contractor is a Douche Bag

Haven’t updated because I’ve been too busy writing letters to our contractor who took all our money and then abandoned the job. Below is the most recent letter:

Can you guess how many cars my husband had to fix to earn $50,000.00?

Here is a list of just some of the jobs you abandoned. Be sure to show your lawyer this.

I know there is SO much more that needs to be done but I composed this list around 3:00 this morning as Don and I sat in the livingroom thinking about what you have done to us. We haven’t slept since your email on Tuesday night.

THIS IS NOT A FINAL LIST

Our deck was never built
There is a door going from the addition to no where – if my grandchild should accidentally walk out that door, they will fall into the yard and be severely injured
The debris must be removed from around the addition and backfilled. – (per Liz’s email)
All of the corrections to the addition have to be addressed per Liz’s email
The drainage pipes must be installed
Our driveway needs to be repaired.
The gutters need to be installed
We have no heater / air conditioner
We have no electricity in the addition
We have no plumbing in the addition
We don’t have doors on the “garage” part of the addition
We have a door on Don’s office, but there is no doorknob
We have no way of accessing the addition from the driveway except by stepping on a wooden plank on top of two cinder blocks
The siding has not been completed.
There is no stucco on the building
The tile that I picked out for the mudroom has not been installed.
There is paint on the brick in the addition that needs to be addressed.
The kitchen door is still there.
The pass-through from the kitchen to the addition was never done.
Our cabinets in the laundry room have not been installed
We have no exhaust for the dryer.
Landscaping – our lawn looks like a mud filled quarry

THIS IS NOT A FINAL LIST.

There’s Money to be Made!

Did you know there were places to go if your kid has head lice? Check out this website Lice Lifters!

Or, for your added convenience, there is Nit Picky or Lice Beaters, companies who will delouse you or your child in the privacy of your own home!

Where the hell were these companies when my kids were growing up? Pre-Effexor, one of my OCD challenges was head lice. Every god damn spring, as soon as that letter came home from school with the words “possible head lice infestation”, I would start picking through their hair like a long-tail macaque sitting in a hot spring.

Get over here, kid!

Fortunately, I never found anything! God knows what I would have done if I had discovered one of those louses or nits setting up camp in their heads. I would have treated those kids until their hair follicles fell out!