State of Our Affairs

Where should I begin? For the past 3 months (since June 1, 2010 actually) we have been dealing with a very sticky financial issue, all having to do with the MH Park that we have owned and operated for over a decade. The bank foreclosed on the Park on June 1, 2010. All attempts to solve the shortage in payments were denied. A new management company was hired to manage the Park. We still own the majority of homes in this Park. These were not foreclosed. So here we are, owning the homes and not the lots they sit on.

This “new” company, from Michigan, has no clue about how this Park was operated. So, to begin with, they seized all of the funds collected and to this day have not given us a full accounting of the monies collected from our tenants. For one month this amounts to thousands of $$. Nor have they provided us with a late tenant list so we can collect our delinquencies.

Into a third month (August), still holding our funds for home rents and six weeks of utility payments for which we are responsible. Therefore, we are behind in the utility payments we are responsible for (April 17 through May 31) being billed to us through the utility companies. The worst part is that we cannot pay our lien holders on these homes.

Over the last 2 months we have received eviction notices for all the homes we own that they claim are behind in rents. Then, they also had the nerve to send those same notices to our lien holders.

We have Section 8 tenants in some of those homes. This management company has said to some of those tenants that they will not honor those Section 8 contracts. They can’t do that by the way. They must honor them. Now Section 8 is holding all payments until this is settled.

The management company originally hired Tom to help in the “transition”. After 1 week they told him to leave the premises. It took them 1 month to pay him the agreed upon fee. And they have told him not to set foot in the onsite office. They take pictures of him while he is contacting tenants or trying to solve maintenance problems in the homes. We have had many of our tenants move out due to their unresolved problems or intimidation tactics by this new management.

Do the owners (B of A) know what’s happening to their property? Hell if I know, but I suspect not. Do they want to put us out of business? One might think so. Is there a little stupidity here? Or is it just plain vindictiveness? Yes, I really am taking this personally.

We have set up a collection center in one of our homes so that we can have a place for our tenants to pay their home rents. Yet, they are still being told they have to pay ALL their rent to the new management.

We have sought legal help. Last week the management company and servicing company were sent a notice of our intention to obtain a temporary restraining order. Before this was delivered we had not heard one word from their offices in response to our attorneys attempts to get a response from them for anything. The TRO told them we meant business. Hours before it was filed, there was a conversation between lawyers, setting up a conference call with attorneys, servicing company and their management company. It looks like they want to avoid a lawsuit. We should know more on Monday or Tuesday.

The entire situation is just bizarre. That management company even has the nerve to put 11 of our homes up for sale!! Who do they think they are?!!

Now I have to let it go.

Not my best day

This has not been a great day. As a matter of fact, it’s been a b**ch of a day. What started out as a great morning for me – up before 6, even went to church, then came home for a leisurely breakfast with no interruptions, then off to Sam’s to get new tires for my SUV. That’s when the rest of the day began.

While walking into the entrance via the tire shop, I slipped on an icy patch and went flying through the air, landing on my back, butt first. As Glen came to help me up, he nearly fell himself. The only positive thing about the fall was that it wasn’t on my side, otherwise, I would be in the hospital right now having a hip repaired. That’s #1.

Here comes #2. Reaching for my Sam’s Club card it wasn’t where I always keep it. A search (more than once) through the purse didn’t produce results. So, a trip over to Customer Service, where I reported the card lost. As soon as the card was “deactivated”, guess what I found in my purse. You got it. My Sam’s Card. Oh well, so now I have a new card. Didn’t like the old picture anyway.

#3. From Sam’s it was off to the dentist for my 6 mo. cleaning. I can’t decide which is worse. Falling, or having my teeth cleaned. It was time for X-rays. (I thought I’d done that the last time!) I declined. I’m watching every penny and no dental insurance. No breaks for cash customers. When my dentist reviewed my mouth, the news was not good. Two cracked teeth which will require crowns. $875 each. A few other minor repairs for a total of $2250. Not news I was looking forward to. I think I’ll go home and go back to bed for the rest of the day. Oh, no I can’t do that. I have to get to the office and pay some bills.

The office was a normal, crazy first of the month kind of day. But I was already so flustered from the earlier part of the day, nothing was easy. It hurt to sit down, it hurt to get up, and the hurt worked it’s way to my head with a headache like I’ve not had in a while. Thank the lord for excedrine. By the time 5 PM came I was ready to “get outa dodge”. One more thing to do and I’d be ready. I wrote a check, distributed stuff around to others, then, went to deposit the check. It was gone. I mean, disappeared, poof! No where to be found. I never did find it, so rewrote the check. I know it’ll turn up – just like my Sam’s card – but in the mean time, I feel pretty scatterbrained.

Think I’ll take a nice hot bath and go to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. (Sigh). Oh, just heard the weather report. More snow due tomorrow night and Thursday. The last snow hasn’t melted yet. This should be a great week end. Snow upon ice, upon more snow. Haven’t seen this much at one time since 1993. I’m thinking that the ground hog had it right this time.

My Holidays

As much as I love the holidays (Thanksgiving through Christmas and New Years) I am also very happy to get back to “normal”. (Whatever that is). I’m not glad they go so fast, because I actually wish I could relish the moments. That being said, at least I can have some good memories.

Just having children around makes the holidays special. The glee that I see in their eyes when they see their packages under the tree. How many times they pick them up and shake them and their absolute wonder when they open and find something that they really really wanted. And one of my favorite things is to watch everyone else open their gifts just so I can see all those reactions. I am often accused of doing that so everyone has to watch me open mine. Oh well, so be it. I guess I am my mother’s daughter.

Another thing I like about the holidays. Chocolate. I forego my “sugar free life” in these few weeks (OK, a month) to enjoy the chocolate some favorite people send. Texas, at least Amarillo, is See’s Chocolate challenged. No such brand in these here parts. So I depend on good friends and relatives to take care of this for me during the holidays. And I do indulge myself until they are gone. No regrets, no guilt. Just plain pleasure.

The hard part after all of this is getting back to business at the business. Sometimes my heart and head just aren’t in it together. The Monday after New Year’s week end, I was in the office until 8 PM. That was my choice. No one told me I had to stay and finish anything. And that was even after I had decided I wouldn’t do that anymore. Mind you, it’s not a New Years resolution, just a determination on my part to change the way I do things. It means changing my priorities. After all, work is not the end all. It’s more important to spend time with loved ones and take care of myself. And really, I can’t be effective at work if that’s all I do. I know what “burn out” is and I can easily drive myself to it. If I made New Years resolutions, that would be the one – give myself some space and don’t be so anal about life.

The nice thing about owning a business is that I can name my hours. So, I can play tennis in the morning, have a lunch with friends and not be too concerned about getting back at a certain time. I can take half a day off (I just inform glen) to run errands or do something I like (shopping, sleeping, web surfing), and not take a pay cut. (As if I get a “pay check”). I just know I have certain things (like payroll) that has to be in by a certain time on a certain day. (Thank you for the internet!).

January through March is not my favorite time in the business. This is now tax season and we have so many reports to get out by Jan. 31, then gathering tax information for the accountants, and for clients so they can get their information to their accountants. Every year I promise myself to begin early. Not sure what that means. I can’t do a lot before December 31. So now I feel pressure to get it done in 3 weeks. To top it off, our laserjet printer is out. I mean completely! We waited for a part, he came to install it today and it was the wrong part. He said he put it back together so we could use it for non important things, but, we can’t. I keep getting this message “Download file now”. What?? I’m really afraid we’ll have to bite the bullet (again) and purchase a new laserjet. Yuck! I just got a new inkjet last week! Oh well, that’s business.

On the lighter side – it’s Ceil’s 1st birthday today. Wow. How time flies. We just had to call and sing “Happy Birthday” over the phone. We’ll stretch it out a little since she won’t get her gift until about Monday. Yes, late as usual. Never claimed I was punctual. Just anal.

Hope everyone is enjoying this winter weather like we are. Today, 13°.
COLD, COLD, COLD
Even at that, we broke no records. It was 6° in 1988. Funny, I don’t remember that. My long sleeve, turtle necks are getting lots of wear this year. To my family in San Diego – you’ll get yours one of these days.

How Time Gets Away

I've got my feet up, having quiet time before bed, everyone else is asleep and I realize how blessed I am. I realize I don't need for anything and there are few things left that I really want. Oh sure, I want a new car, new washer/dryer, refrigerator, new kitchen actually, but I don't really need them. I've got a roof over my head, a warm bed to sleep in, plenty of food to eat (more than I need), clothes on my back and in my closet, a man I love and who loves me, five wonderful children (spouses included of course), and six exceptional grandchildren, good friends, good health, and lots of memories. There is so much more. I could go on and on.

So what is the problem? I am reminded of the thirty years or so that we spent raising our five. What would I have done differently. The answer, a lot of things. I would have spent more time on the floor with them. I would have laughed more, played more, cleaned house less, been less concerned about being too perfect or raising perfect children. I would have gone to the beach more often (they loved the beach and so did I), had more "tea parties", played ball, pulled wagons, colored, sang, danced, screamed much less, said "I love you" more often, made mud pies, watched balloons fly, see pictures in the clouds, searched for 4-leaf clovers, blow bubbles, fly more kites, swing higher, and hugged more often. I'd like to slow time so I can relish the moment, live in the present, not always looking forward to tomorrow, the next day, next year, or the next. That's what I would do different.

With grandchildren, I now have the opportunity to do those things. And yet, I still find myself doing my busy things first, then doing the fun things. It is so engrained in me I really have to work hard to fulfill this desire. I have a hard time with it. Thank goodness my children are not doing the same things. I watch with envy as they play games and act silly with them. They learned that from their father for sure.

I realized on this last birthday that a year flies by much faster than ever. My days are faster, one day it's Monday then the next is Friday. The weekends are so fast and the weeks turn in to fast months. Before I know it, Christmas is here again. Just think, it seemed like yesterday that we were so concerned about Y2K. Now we are looking at 2010. I'd love to hold it back for a little while but I know I can't. So my job is to enjoy every moment I'm allowed, to know what is more important in my life, and to be in the moment. Easier said than done. But nothing worthwhile comes easy. The rewards are greater when we have to work harder for them.

Children

When children are little we have such dreams for them. Little do we know about what the future holds. As parents, we hope they will grow up to be the adults we can be proud of. And in this, we have not been disappointed. Our children are good, strong, diverse, opinionated, kind, loving and adults that we are very proud of.

Their diversity, however, can add to my already graying hair. I have always tried to stay out of their discussions ( I refuse to call them arguments), although, it sometimes takes me back 30 years or more when I would worry that they would never be friends and would hate each other forever. In their adulthood, we have made it a practice to not discuss politics or religion since we don’t always agree and it can become somewhat volatile.

Since the advent of e-mail, IMs, blogs, FB, tweets, and none personal discussion groups we no longer have face to face discussions and we sometimes fail to see beyond the written word. That’s not all there is to communicating. There are no facial expressions, body language, voice inflections, eye contact or gentleness. It’s all been reduced to black and white with a few emoticons. The written word cannot replace real people and real voices. I believe it has had a detrimental effect on our relationships with each other.

Over recent months I have had occasion to read the back and forth comments on FB between several of our children. It’s fun to read their banter back and forth, but sometimes things get a little heated. And sometimes it gets a little too personal. At least, that’s the take I have on it. I tried for the longest time to let it go. It’s not my business. As young children, when they would have very heated arguments and act as children do, I could end up making things worse if I tried to interfere. And I often did. Parents have to walk a very fine line between knowing when to keep our hands off and when it’s time to break things up. To break things up I would often just tell them to go to their rooms and stay there until they could apologize to each other. And I would do this in a very loud voice.

One of the things I really look forward to is our family gatherings whenever we can arrange them. I just love having our growing family together. We’ve always had such a great time. And I’ve always been so proud of them because of their ease of being with each other and love for one another. I hope that never changes, because, after all, what is important is family, not who can out argue the other. Sure, we all have our own opinions about things and so what if we don’t all think alike. If we did, it would be a very boring life and we would accomplish nothing. We didn’t raise our children to be mirror images of us or each other.

I can only hope that this next family gathering will be even better than the others since everyone plans to be there. Our Thanksgiving meal will be both traditional and non-traditional since we do have such a diverse family. The important thing is that we all be together and have a good time. I love you guys.

Cruise Crazy

I know it's been a really long time since I've written anything. I've just really been a "busy little woman". However, I've got to tell you about our cruise.
It was awesome. Probably, the most relaxing time we've had in a long time. Our stops were: St. Maarten, San Juan, and Labadee.
Our flight to Miami left from Lubbock at 5AM on Saturday, Aug. 15. Tom and Kathy drove us to Lubbock at 2AM. Flight got to Miami just fine - that was my biggest concern. We sailed at 4:30PM and sailed for 2 days.
The ship activities were so varied and so many that we spent those 2 days just relaxing and visiting all the activities. There were, at least 3 swimming pools and 5 jacuzzis, a rock climing wall (no, I didn't try it) a flow rider (that's like surfing on boogie boards - I didn't try that, either. Didn't want to be laughed at so I watched and laughed), a casino, of course, a water zone for kids that had all the sprays, buckets that filled and tipped, spray guns, climbing stuff, etc.

Our ship was “Liberty of the Seas”. This is the largest cruise ship on the water at this time. Once the Oasis of the Seas is launched, it will be the largest. Liberty’s capacity is 4,400 passengers and 1,400 crew. I think it was fully occupied. Oasis will be about 5,400 passengers and more crew. Of the fellow passengers we met, many had been on this ship previously and said they preferred this cruise line and this ship to any other.
The Royal Promenade had shops, cafes, artists, vendors galore, and always, sales everyday. Every evening there were shows.
We went to the Ice Show (they had a real ice rink where guests could ice skate), a variety show, an audience scavenger hunt (called Quest) and much more.

During the trip, we again, tried our luck at Bingo to win another cruise. No, we didn’t win it. A guy, who was also on the cruise won in a bingo game, won this one. I thought, for some reason I don’t know, we were unique on this cruise. Guess what? Several other guests were on their “won” cruise. And, they were all trying to win another one.

Anyway, I digress.
After sailing 2 days our first stop was Tuesday in St. Maarten.
There were many things to do, but we just decided to walk around the town a bit, do a little window shopping and picked up a few "freebies". Before returning to the ship we looked for a place to eat, and because it was so very warm and humid (you know how we don’t like humidity), we ended up in an air conditioned BURGER KING! No comment.
There are 2 sections to St. Maarten, the Dutch and the French. We were on the Dutch side, but some guests went to the beach on the French side. They said it was beautiful (and they had nude bathing on that side  ).

Our next stop, Wednesday, San Juan.
This is the capitol of Puerto Rico. We toured the “old and new” San Juan. We stopped at the capitol building
and the San Cristobal Fortress,
drove down very narrow brick paved streets, and viewed the old buildings in the area.

Thursday was our last stop. Labadee is an Island resort developed by Royal Caribbean. Our day consisted of relaxing on the beach, and an outdoor feast provided by the staff on the ship. We toured only part of the resort and spent most of the time on a lounge under the trees by the water.
Wow! I could (should) do that more often.
The resort had water activities like a water park with ice bergs to climb and jump into the water, water trampolines, a huge water slide,
jet ski tours, a zip line across the water,
and, of course, the shopping ( we didn’t even go there).
It was a fab day!

Friday we sailed all day and docked back in Miami at 7am Sat. Our flight home was uneventful and we arrived in Lubbock where Tom and Kathy and Marcello were waiting. It was a perfect weeks vacation.

Back in the “real world” again for the last week and my “relaxed” mode is still working.

“METEOR”, A MADE FOR TV MOVIE ON NBC.

What is it with the networks? Did anyone watch this insane movie? I enjoy a disaster movie as much as anyone. I enjoy the suspense, the special effects, and usually the acting. But this?! I just wasted 2 hours watching the worst movie I’ve seen since the last one! And, it’s to be continued next Sunday night. Will I watch it? Who knows? I do have some short term memory so I may forget how dumb this whole thing was and how much time I wasted watching it.

The story line: A meteor and asteroid collided in space, causing the meteor to change it’s trajectory and head towards earth on a collision course that would destroy the earth. In the meantime, the fired scientist, who had the coordinates, and his assistant were heading back to the states from Mexico, when he was hit and killed by a hit and run driver. (BTW, they were the only ones who know exactly where this meteor is going to hit). She hitched a ride from a Mexican truck driver in hopes of crossing the border. He decided not to drive her to LA, so she stopped at a Tijuana police station where she comes upon a murdered policia, was in the process of almost being raped, ended up killing the rapist/murderer and his buddy, stole a police car and drove to the border where she was stopped, taken in to custody and she finally talked the officer into letting her call the center tracing and trying to shoot down the meteor. Then the VP (that would be the VP of the US) calls and says they need her at the center so would the officer please drive her there asap. While they were on the road, in a tunnel, an asteroid hits in front of them on the other side of the tunnel and hits a tanker truck, and the driver of the truck comes into the tunnel right at them. The officer backs up with screeching tires, gets out and spins around before being hit and knocked over an embankment and rolls. As yet, don’t know what happened to the officer and the assistant scientist. She had just discovered that the meteor the first missile destroyed after her first coordinates were given was the smallest of two giant meteors and the bigger one was on the way. (The collision divided the meteor in two. Something we didn’t know before this).

In the meantime, a fugitive was after a cop’s daughter to kill her in revenge for the loss of his family. He grabs a ride with a “fluzzy”, to get to the college where the cop’s daughter goes to school, eventually kills the “fluzzy”, takes her car and gets to the college. He tells the room mate he has to find the girl because her dad is his partner. He then kills a cop, takes his motorcycle and gets to the cabin where the girl is staying. (how she got there with 2 other girls is a whole other story). The dad gets there in time to see her held at gunpoint ready to be shot.

In the meantime, a rancher and his wife and son were in their ranch house when an asteroid hit in their field and almost destroyed their house and kill them all. But, they survived, and Michael (their 13 yr old son) went off to school and mom went to work at the hospital. She’s a doctor. An asteroid hit the bus Michael was on, turned it over, many children were killed – of course Michael was only injured – and they were taken to mom’s hospital where she, of course, saw her injured son while she was working, and she had to continue caring for the more seriously injured. Then, the hospital was hit by an asteroid and though the hospital was completely full, we don’t know what happened to all the patients. But she had to run back in to find Michael. All the while, dad was racing to the hospital in his slow truck, made it just in time to see the fire in the hospital and ran in to find his wife and son.

While all this was happening, the chief of police of this small town is trying to calm the panicked residents of the town while they are making a rush on the grocery store to stock up on supplies. The local bully in town is going to use his rifle to protect himself. The cop is trying to peacefully get everyone in to the fall out shelter and is confronted by the bully saying “no one pushes him around like that”. Cop talks him into putting his gun down and bully says “OK, what can I do to help?”

Now, aren’t we all so wrapped up in this story that we can’t afford to miss the next installment! If I watch this conclusion of the movie, somebody, please, put me out of my misery. Put a bag over my head!