Four Days Off and Working at Home

Occasionally I bitch and moan about people, places, and things, and yes, sometimes I bitch a bit more often than occasionally. The past few weeks have been a bit stressful at the newspaper, but nothing compared to my home life.

Three weeks ago my daughter Kristine stopped making her daily visits to our home, and when I asked her why, she told me her van had broken down. I gave her my 1999 Dodge Caravan two and a half years ago when I bought my SL500 from eBay. All this time I have paid for her automobile insurance, repairs to the van, smog checks, license fees, gasoline, and new tires.

Last year I made it clear to Kristine I would no longer pay her way, and suggested that the boyfriend she lives with should start picking up her tab or she might even consider getting herself a job. Needless to say, she never had the smog check taken care of, or paid the DMV for her tags, and she was pulled over by the sheriff’s Department and given a warning before the van disappeared.

Well, here comes a letter from Sanders Towing in San Dimas stating the van had been impounded almost four weeks ago and to get the van back I would be required to pay $830.00. To make a long story short, the van had almost 300,000 miles on it, and would not be worth retrieving. I ended up paying Sanders $135.00 and signed over the pink slip.

Two weeks ago I ran a credit check on myself and found a problem from Sprint PCS, and anyone that knows me knows my nickname is Verizon Eddie, because I have been with Verizon for almost ten years. I called Sprint, and when you mention you would like to give them money, you’re connected to a live operator immediately. The operator and myself went thru the usual information from the Equifax report, social security number, and date of birth, home address to verify I was the person they were seeking. I mentioned to the operator this was most likely a case of fraud, but then she asked, “Are you a junior?” My answer was yes I am. Come to find out, this was my father’s bill, and the lazy Asses at Sprint placed this on my credit report, from December, 2002.

Mind you, I stayed calm and collected, then requested that their error be corrected. I was told I have to take care of this myself, so I called Equifax and gave up in despair when I was unable to reach a human on the other end of the phone.

Last week we had three visits from Child Protective Services at my home, they received an anonymous call about the welfare of my children and grandson. All of the claims were proven false, except for the floors being unkempt. Ms. Rivas was very nice and commented on how well I cooperated with the investigation, and I explained what brought this on.

My ex-wife asked if the children could visit Disneyland with her, and would I buy the tickets and give them spending money. Last year I would have agreed, and paid for everything, this year I said no. I explained how weird this situation was, and she could take the children with her, but she needed to buy the tickets and supply the children with spending cash, not me. I also reminded her that she pays no child support to the children, doesn’t have time to see the children very often, and works four blocks from our home. There is much more to this story, but that’s all I have to say about this Forest.

Today I awoke to find water on the dining room table, looking up at the ceiling; I could see the water was flowing from the upstairs bathroom. As I rushed upstairs, I’m wondering to myself if a pipe had burst inside the walls, no water leaks can be detected. As I looked behind the toilet, I see a small trickle of water behind the toilet. Seems the bendable pipe that fills the tank had sprung a leak that was spraying onto the bowl and trickling down the wall.

With the offer of taking today off from work was brought to my attention, I jumped at it and headed straight to Ace Hardware to buy the needed parts to plug the flow of water.

This is the end of today’s therapy for Edward, and I feel much better now.