Today I am thankful for my latest life lesson.
Pay attention to your intuition. It can pick out red flags quicker than your conscious mind can.
It took me more than four decades of life to figure that out.
I am not accepting Facebook friend requests at all just because I am tired of Steve's drama. I must get two to three requests per day from fake Facebook accounts (accounts with no friends and one picture). It's crazy. Today, I had a request from someone who looked like Jane with a weird name.
I blocked her.
When I hire a social marketing guru to help me keep my pages up, maybe I'll change my mind.
There are a couple of websites where college students will negotiate to do such tasks with small business owners. I have someone revamping my website and branding now.
I'm going to focus on what I want. That was the advice from the legal assistant who tried to help me stop the stalking. The stalking stopped. I am not sure if it is because I am not here to annoy anymore or if it is because Michael has to stay here because he's unemployed. There is no need to stalk me if he always has eyes on me.
From this day forth I shall heed her advice.
Focus on what you want.
Give energy to what you want.
I am actually proud of myself today. I saw a red flag. I acted on my intuition. I left the situation due to my discomfort.
My washer broke. It's from the 70's. I bought on Craigslist for $65. It cleans clothes so much better than my new machines. I loved it!
The transmission wore out after a year. It was replaced. I worked for about two years before it broke down again.
The transmission wore out after a year. It was replaced. I worked for about two years before it broke down again.
This time the driveshaft broke and shredded the barrel that holds the water. The cost of parts is more than the washer is worth.
My ex-husband (bless him) and I have been driving around town trying to find another old machine.
We found a model from the 80's.
It was nearly $200. It was a bit more than the part needed to fix the old machine. The guy promised to recycle my old machine.
I asked if there was a warranty. He said 30 days. Thirty days should be enough time to know if something was wrong with the machine.
I whipped out my debit card.
Then the salesman's phone rang.
I overheard the conversation.
Someone was calling about an appliance he purchased from the store on October 2 of this year. It was broken. The salesman said that he was outside of the thirty day warranty period and he couldn't help him.
The salesman hung up, shook his head in disbelief and wondered why someone would call to complain about an item two days outside of the warranty period.
I wondered if the items they sold were not looked over thoroughly enough to last more than a month.
I left.
The salesman seemed shocked that I'd leave. I'm not sure Michael understands why I left.
That store is bad news.
I don't want to be the one calling them in thirty two days wanting help with a defective unit.
I want a working machine.
I will focus on that.
*******
That's the lesson.
Focus on what you want.
I want a working washer. I can't buy from a dishonest seller who doesn't do right by his customers.
I want a working relationship. I can't waste my time with jerks and their girlfriends who want to play games on the telephone or social media.
I want to make a difference in my community. I will spend time with people who try to be part of the community dialogue rather than pick other people apart for who they are.
I want to be a published author. I'll keep writing to see if I can get a story out of all the gossip I hear about myself and all the craziness I see in my life. I'll probably need to hire a college student to be my editor because (as you can tell), my prose is choppy and I write like an uneducated neurotic.
There has to be a way to turn it into an entertaining teaching tale.
What am I learning?
I am learning a lot through this process about people with personality disorders, the price of being gullible when faced with liars, not taking advice from police officers and letting people get my goat.
There has to be a way to turn it into an entertaining teaching tale.
What am I learning?
I am learning a lot through this process about people with personality disorders, the price of being gullible when faced with liars, not taking advice from police officers and letting people get my goat.
People can't get your goat if you don't give them the reins.
If this helps you.....
Focus on what you want.
Surround yourself with people who personify those qualities you want for yourself. Their good behavior will rub off on you.
Life is too short for anything else.
Love ya,
S.
Edit at 8:26 p.m. - This is interesting.......
I had an experience tonight that proves that the real world is much stranger than fiction.
I went to Craigslist and found a very clean 70's era washer for $70.
Get this......It was in the very spot my mother was killed back in '84!
I'm not joking.
It was in the kitchen of the apartment that I grew up in on Girard Ave. in a town called Sheridan.
The renters said they were given the washer thinking it would work in the apartment.
No. My step-father was the manager of those apartments. I pointed out what used to be the laundry room back in 1975. It is a storage facility two doors away from the apartment. I pointed out the underground storm shelter on the side of their apartment. They didn't know it was there.
We used to store our stuff there.
It was fun walk down memory lane. I gave the men $80 because I was too lazy to go to the bank for change. They argued about it for a bit and then decided to load everything up for me.
I was grateful to get the see the place I grew up. Too see the paint drippings on the wall my step-father made when he was not being particularly attentive to detail. It looks like someone didn't try to smooth them out when they changed the color of the walls.
It was nice to see that the old gas stove replaced. The tile and the cabinets were new. The hot water heater was no longer in the kitchen.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The garden, lawn and tree we planted in the early 80's was still there and well kept. When I give speeches about how the government needs to shrink, I see myself with my step-father pulling weeds and hearing him talk about how one should never accept blankets (or other gifts) from the government. I used to hear that story before we watered the garden because he couldn't believe a government could charge for something the Great Spirit gave so freely.
I think of that garden and those stories daily.
I wonder if my reddish calico cat is still buried there. Her name was Spice. My step-father shot her when I was twelve. Yes, I spent so many years in therapy that I wound up with a graduate degree in psychology.
I wonder.....
If there is something to this spiritual stuff when the veil is thin?
The veil between our world and the spirit world is thin.
If you hear me talk, I call the spirit world the Ethernet.
Get it?
It's lame but that's my name for the creepy stuff that we cannot explain.
I wonder.....on some very basic level.......
the mindset of a child that going back to my childhood home brought out of me.....
I wonder.....
if my mother led me to the machine when she did.
At least that is what I want to believe.
I came home and a neighbor told me that someone came to my door and pounded on it several times just a few minutes after I left.
The person was on foot. They must have seen me ride away in the Mini-Van I gave Michael.
My neighbors didn't get a good description of the person for me.
They said that the banging was loud.
I have to check the security footage. I've had trouble with the camera since the day some jerk turned the hose on it.
Maybe there is a reason I found myself far away at that point in time.
Maybe something unreal was protecting me?
Maybe it was just a coincidence.
I'll never know.
On the bright side, I had an interesting walk down memory lane that I would not have had if the appliance shop salesman wasn't a dick.
My life is crazy.
The crazier the story, the more apt it is to be true.
May all your crazy stories be the fun kind of crazy.
Love ya,
S.
Life is too short for anything else.
Love ya,
S.
Edit at 8:26 p.m. - This is interesting.......
I had an experience tonight that proves that the real world is much stranger than fiction.
I went to Craigslist and found a very clean 70's era washer for $70.
Get this......It was in the very spot my mother was killed back in '84!
I'm not joking.
It was in the kitchen of the apartment that I grew up in on Girard Ave. in a town called Sheridan.
The renters said they were given the washer thinking it would work in the apartment.
No. My step-father was the manager of those apartments. I pointed out what used to be the laundry room back in 1975. It is a storage facility two doors away from the apartment. I pointed out the underground storm shelter on the side of their apartment. They didn't know it was there.
We used to store our stuff there.
It was fun walk down memory lane. I gave the men $80 because I was too lazy to go to the bank for change. They argued about it for a bit and then decided to load everything up for me.
I was grateful to get the see the place I grew up. Too see the paint drippings on the wall my step-father made when he was not being particularly attentive to detail. It looks like someone didn't try to smooth them out when they changed the color of the walls.
It was nice to see that the old gas stove replaced. The tile and the cabinets were new. The hot water heater was no longer in the kitchen.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The garden, lawn and tree we planted in the early 80's was still there and well kept. When I give speeches about how the government needs to shrink, I see myself with my step-father pulling weeds and hearing him talk about how one should never accept blankets (or other gifts) from the government. I used to hear that story before we watered the garden because he couldn't believe a government could charge for something the Great Spirit gave so freely.
I think of that garden and those stories daily.
I wonder if my reddish calico cat is still buried there. Her name was Spice. My step-father shot her when I was twelve. Yes, I spent so many years in therapy that I wound up with a graduate degree in psychology.
I wonder.....
If there is something to this spiritual stuff when the veil is thin?
The veil between our world and the spirit world is thin.
If you hear me talk, I call the spirit world the Ethernet.
Get it?
It's lame but that's my name for the creepy stuff that we cannot explain.
I wonder.....on some very basic level.......
the mindset of a child that going back to my childhood home brought out of me.....
I wonder.....
if my mother led me to the machine when she did.
At least that is what I want to believe.
I came home and a neighbor told me that someone came to my door and pounded on it several times just a few minutes after I left.
The person was on foot. They must have seen me ride away in the Mini-Van I gave Michael.
My neighbors didn't get a good description of the person for me.
They said that the banging was loud.
I have to check the security footage. I've had trouble with the camera since the day some jerk turned the hose on it.
Maybe there is a reason I found myself far away at that point in time.
Maybe something unreal was protecting me?
Maybe it was just a coincidence.
I'll never know.
On the bright side, I had an interesting walk down memory lane that I would not have had if the appliance shop salesman wasn't a dick.
My life is crazy.
The crazier the story, the more apt it is to be true.
May all your crazy stories be the fun kind of crazy.
Love ya,
S.