Tuesday

This morning, I came out to the kitchen to find that Mary had left a rather long, hand-written, almost illegible letter back to that of which I put under her bedroom door last night.

I spent a good deal of time attempting to read the chicken scratch that's hers in hand-writing. I can't say I'm any better, which is why I type everything out and print it instead of trying to hand-write things.

The contents of the letter were nothing short of outrageous.

But, getting past the "emotional" element that she added for extra flavor, I replied today after getting home with yet another letter.
Mary said that I had only given her $100 off the rent for the last 3 months. In reality, I have given her fully $345 total for the past 3 months, and $645 for the 6 months she's lived here. Hard to believe she's been here that long.

I then addressed her attitude. She has started in on me on numerous occasions - of which I either just walked away or put the fire out, depending on the situation and how elevated her mood happened to be. In this particular letter, however, I left no stone unturned. Including the escapade with waking my son up at 4:30 in the morning and demanding he get out of bed and come out here to turn the phone on. I later learned that this "emergency" of hers in needing to make a phone call? Whoever she tried to call didn't answer. She put the phone down and then started in on my son. Ken, the newer tenant, was right there and not only backed up the story, but gave much greater detail.

I also commented on the unbelievable gall she had in approaching Ken the other day, literally getting in his face, and speaking in very loud tones: "The food you eat is going to give you a heart attack"! You would have had to been there. I further brought up quantifiable lies that I have caught her in and also the situation with Justine, the person who used to live here before being ousted by means of an Order of Protection. I told her simply that I did not believe Justine's story OR her's (Mary's) and that if the truth laid itself out on my kitchen table, a very different picture would be painted, and that picture undoubtedly would include Mary doing MUCH more in this event that took place than what she's admitting to.

She also blamed me for her receiving a ticket - that of driving a vehicle with expired plates. This is when she wanted to start using my car. I only demanded that she get insurance. I told her the plates were expired and that she would be driving it at her own risk in terms of getting pulled over by police. I also told her my experience was that since it was only a month past-due, the police probably wouldn't give her a ticket. I said PROBABLY - AND - encouraged her to get the car registered before driving it. My letter today included those facts and that I certainly am not going to take responsibility or culpability for her taking a risk.

She then stated in this letter of hers that her license had been suspended. Folks, nobody gets their driver's license suspended for expired plates unless there is MUCH more to the story that I/we don't know about. Period. Somehow, I am also culpable for the fine for that, as well.

I addressed that and then left her with the final paragraph. Stated that her actions, including verbal abuse against every person in the house, would have to stop, and stop immediately, or her presence would no longer be welcomed. I also addressed the fact that she did not, in any portion of her reply, address the demand for rent. I have not given her the 5-day notice. Well, I take it back, she did address that she had spent money on the door for her new bedroom and that it would be helping me out, yada yada yada. My reply was that I wanted the rent and could not care one iota about a door being put in, rent is more important.

So, tonight, she comes in and says not a word. She left a few minutes ago. Dunno what she's doing, where she's going, but I am supposing that I will end up posting the 5-day notice tomorrow. I was going to do it today, but I put it off this morning in order to read this letter of hers.

Well, onto other things. Not much else going on, thank God. Work went okay today - some things to do in terms of deliveries, nothing great though. Tomorrow morning I will be driving to Florence to make a small delivery and then over to Casa Grande to pick up some pipe to deliver to a college in Coolidge. These are all small towns - well I assume Casa Grande considers itself a small city - in the southern portions of AZ. South of Phoenix, anyway. Well, Florence is more southeast of Phoenix, Casa Grande is almost due south. The rural driving is nice, I like that.

I'm waiting on word as to when whoever is going to get moved out of our branch. I have no idea when the decision is coming down. Could be tomorrow, could be a month, might never happen at all. Who knows?

Anyway, I'm off to get some things done around here. Hmmm, gotta visit Dorrie's forum and see what juice is getting spilt over there.....
kinda starting, just a little, to get the feeling of the community we once had just because so many of us are making real efforts to find each other and visit each other's blogs. That's a good thing, and if we keep that community spirit together, that is, in the end, worth more to me than all of those words I lost - though I definitely will be "lamenting" that loss for a while.
Good evening, folks, have a great night!
ben

Monday

Not a terribly slow day at work considering there really wasn't that much to do - but when the other driver doesn't show up, then it sorta spreads what there is to do out a little bit making things take longer.
News came again today that if the other driver doesn't go to Albequerque, one of us (drivers, that is) is going to get transferred to the main branch.
Of course, I had to ask: who.
The boss said he put his 2 cents worth in and it's up to the general manager and the ops manager to decide what's going to happen.
It came up because I was asking about getting tires replaced on both the semi and the smaller (but still quite large) truck.
The boss responded he was waiting to find out which truck was staying - which was the instant, obvious clue that our branch is only going to have one driver. No point in having 2 drivers at one store with only vehicle to drive.

..........
Now, of course, if they were going to transfer me to the main branch to do something other than driving, that would be a totally different story. There is no word when this change is going to happen - like most things, the decision will be popped onto my boss and then he will have to dump it on whoever gets the news. I don't think the other driver wants to go to the main branch and apparently he has changed his mind about moving to Albequerque. I would consider moving over there - but - I have my son here, not there, no way am I moving.

As far as blogging home, I'm just sort of throwing my hands up in the air. If JS is ever resurrected - and I mean to the way it was before, not some "new" way that is inferior - I will be heading straight back there. I dislike ALL of these blogging hosts immensely. They are not near as user-friendly as JS was. I suppose I will stay here - but I'm not really just here. I have mirror blogs on both LiveJournal and Wordpress with the intended result that if any blog ever crashes like JS again, I have 2 backups that will still have all of my "old" posts on it. If all 3 blog hosts crash at the same time, losing all my date forever - good sign to quit blogging, permanently.

Another - interesting development here as Mary has decided that she is putting off my rent until Tuesday. That's tomorrow, which is also 6 days past due. I'm posting a 5-day notice on her door tonight. She claimed that she didn't get paid for 10 hours of overtime. Great, what about the 80 hours of regular time at $22 per hour? Even with the 25% garnishment that she is "suffering", and even after taxes, she still has plenty of money left to pay rent.

I've been through this with her before. She says she's going to get money on some day in the coming week. It never happens. More excuses - the point is that she never intended to pay anything out of that check. I have already written a letter, the next thing is to do up another 5 day notice. If paying her rent is so far down her list of priorities that she doesn't offer to pay me ANYTHING when she has at least a grand in her pocket, she can just move onto the next place.

Ummm - nothing else, really. Not now, anyway. I have some dog dung to clean up outside and other things I want to get done out there before the sun sets.
C'yall later (or tomorrow)!
ben

Some Pics of my Trip

Okay, try to figure this out. The top pic is well underground at the mining operation in Tombstone, AZ. The man in the pic is the tour guide, we are at least 60 feet down, I think they said it's more like 100. It's very dark in there, they have lights set up here and there, but this guy was doing this in almost total darkness. There are 2 pics of holes. They aren 't really holes, they're shafts where they were removing the silver. The explanation was that the entire crew of people were give 3 candles to work under there. That's ONLY 3 candles for everyone. He further explained that they were basically working in the dark, but could tell the "feel" of the silver. And yes, we got to feel the streaks of silver in the walls and it did have a unique feel to it - though not so unique that I would be able to identify it in the dark.

The odd looking machine? An engine that produces steam. It would "drive" the piece of machinery that drills a hole into the rock. They would then put a stick of dynamite into the hole and blow that portion of wall apart.

Dad was having a hard time getting back up out of there. It was a lot of steps up and even people in good shape were panting. Ihad to stand behind him all the way up to make sure he didn't end up falling.

I was pretty impressed that he still has such desire to go do such things considering that it is obviously not that easy for him to do.

We all had to wear hard hats under there - the ceiling in man places was so low I had to duck WAY down to get underneath.

This is at the entrance to the building that gets you into the Kartchner Caverns. Can you guess which one is me? Lol. I don't remember being that much taller than my dad.