The Phoenix Police Department.
Please.
Last night, the same house that has had extremely loud parties, ie: bring in a DJ and BLARE the music on a huge sound system all night long - had what I assume to be a Cinco De Mayo party.  It wasn't Cinco De Mayo when they started, but it certainly was when it ended.

It sounded as  if a band was standing in my bedroom with amplifiers.  That's how loud it was and that house is on the other side of the street - the next street over. I wasted no time calling the police.  4 hours later, they had not arrived and the lady on  the phone informed it was Saturday night.  Their call volume is huge on that night, they proclaimed.

Okay, so if this is a known fact, why don't they have a contingent to deal with it?  Just like a business, when it knows there is a heavy volume day, they bring in more employees.  Makes sense to me, especially when it comes to public safety.  But whatever, that's the Phoenix Police Department for you.

When the police showed up, they told them to turn down the music, which they did, and then shortly after the police left?  They turned it up again, so loud that it woke up RIGHT up out of the deep sleep that I had finally fell into.  I called the police again.

It was a waste of time.  The police show up, tell them to turn it down instead of threatening to issue citations. That's what they should have done: issued a citation after the second time there.  I didn't call the police again.  The music went on ALL night long, into the morning and well into the day.  I'll be calling the police chief's office tomorrow and asking them why their department finds it so difficult to enforce the simplest of ordinances yet they seem to find it so easy to pull their guns and shoot people.  I won't just go away, either. I will want an answer from someone higher up about it.  I made 3 calls to the department and their response to the situation was, in effect, tantamount to having done nothing at  all.

If it happens again, I will simply start calling the police and keep calling them every half an hour until they deal with it.  There is no HOA in this neighborhood and going over there to "discuss" the situation with the homeowner is also a complete and total waste of time. They don't CARE.  Completely selfish people.  I forced myself not to go over there because that ending probably would not have been too good.

Whatever.

I'll be going to bed early tonight to attempt to make up for the lost sleep last night.

Despite all of that, I went to church early today to take the 2 meeting course on becoming a member in the church. It was actually quite interesting learning about the infrastructure of the church and it's accountability.  Very interesting stuff, indeed.

The service itself was very good as well.  I was glad, regardless of fatigue, that I went.

Today is Mark's birthday, so we all wished him Happy B-Day and also I cooked a ham dinner of which they partook.  Actually, pretty much the whole house partook of.  IN reality, I was attempting to teach Caleb how to cook a ham, which with pre-cooked hams is pretty easy stuff.  After the ham was cooked, I showed him how to slice and had him have a go at it.  After a while, the ham was getting lopsided so I took over.  Yes, he needs to learn, but I wanted my ham intact in it's cuttings and so, he has the basic idea.  I had him cook some garlic flavored instant potatoes that come in a pouch.  I was going to show him how to make home-made mashed potatoes, but my potatoes? Were bad.

Yesterday, I taught him how to make spaghetti.  We will be repeating that course before he leaves for the youth camp in the mountains.  He loves spaghetti and I want him to at least have the cooking of the noodles down pat.  That's the hardest part of cooking pasta, IMO, getting it right without overcooking it.  I also told him that if he cooked a ham, he would have lots of leftover and gave him mock examples of what he could do with it in frying it up for a ham and eggs breakfast; taking the ham-bone and making a navy bean soup out of it; taking slabs of ham and putting them into sandwiches; well really, you can do a lot with him and it lasts so long.

We are done with the cooking, I am waiting for everyone to get done with what they want and then cleanup, which I would usually have done by now but - people still wanting to eat.

____________________

Done with all of that.  I have some standards around this house and even with all these tenants? I demand a clean kitchen at all times.  Clean up immediately after you are done cooking. I apply that standard to myself - but I was living that standard long before tenants. Dirty kitchens - are dirty.  They don't feel comfortable, they look bad and it's just an atmosphere I choose not to live with.  But more importantly: dirty kitchens attract bugs.  You may get bugs anyway with a clean kitchen, but with a dirty kitchen?  You're going to get cockroaches sooner or later,  a plain, solid fact and it doesn't matter where you are at on this planet.

Umm, the point: it came to me as I was cleaning up that Caleb will be subjected to random inspections.  Even though he's in his "own" apartment, that apartment is owned by the Salvation Army and they will undoubtedly have a contract that has some sort of statement in there that states that they can come into his apartment at any time, without prior notice and do inspections without any reason any more than they want to.

I don't know much about the Salvation Army excepting the pre-cursory writings they have on their main page and nothing I have found yet addresses what to expect being in a "missionary" setting, but I felt without doubt that this is what can and will be subjected to.  So, we have time to address that.  A place for everything and everything in it's place.  A bathroom that is kept immaculately clean at all times regardless of what's going on, including if he has people over, which he will be required to do (I know this much coming from him) to feed 3 or 4 or however many others on a rotating basis.  I'm not the king of clean, but I definitely have a good idea about it.

I can only prepare him so much, the rest?  He's going to learn the easy, hard or "Wally Thorpe's School Of Hard Knocks" way.  Probably some lessons will be difficult, undoubtedly.  Some things will be extremely grating, I can tell you this from experience on the mission field and having had lived with multiple, dozens and dozens of other people in a community style setting.  But, I believe the Salvation Army to be a much more structured environment and at least some of the problems I dealt with won't exist with the SA just for the fact of a solid, functioning and strong leadership chain. This is very important in such settings and without it, you find yourself fending FOR yourself in many situations that shouldn't even be an issue.

Well whatever. The weekend is over, it's time for bed and I'm outta here.

ben