VIOLATED

It’s been a tough couple of days. Yesterday, I noticed a handmade barrette and a hairbrush missing from where I’d put them. I followed my instincts and went into my “roommate”s room. I found the barrette in her top dresser drawer. I guess roommate is the wrong term. Roommate would indicate one who shares in the expenses, wouldn’t it? Yeah, she’s not done that. Since she arrived in August, she’s bought perhaps $200 worth of groceries, mostly either bread, Dr Pepper, green tea, cereal, and the soy milk she likes. Not one penny toward the rent, the (almost doubled) utilities, or anything else to maintain the household. She still owes me a little over a hundred bucks on stuff I paid for that she specifically said she would pay back. She still owes a friend of mine $50 from TRF in October. This afternoon, when I got home, I got to wondering about some other things I hadn’t seen in awhile, and went in there again. This time I found 2 pairs of distinctive earrings, a distinctive pendant, a whole bunch of change, and a few other random pieces of costume jewelry, in the place where I had found the barrette yesterday. In another drawer I found another distinctive hair accessory. Now, I’m not the most organized person in the world, and frankly, I have so much stuff that never got unpacked completely, that I couldn’t begin to tell you where these things were prior to her appropriating them, however just because I wasn’t using them, and hadn’t for sometime, does not mean that she has a right to steal them. This is not the first time I’ve been stolen from. Back in ’91, my apartment in Dallas was broken into. Nothing was ever recovered. I thought I felt violated then. Yeah, that was NOTHING compared to the violation I feel this time. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that not just my space was violated this time, but also my trust in someone I considered a friend. Someone I did everything in my power to help. Someone I was naïve enough to believe when they told me their hard luck story. This week I will work on recovering my stuff that she’s hidden away amongst her things, and documenting photographically what I find, before I secure it safely away from her sticky fingers. I will also be talking with the local PD about the best way to get her out, with only her things, without a scene or retaliation. Her job requires her to have a firearm, and my friend who lives in Oregon has told me he wants me to have someone here with me when I tell her to get out. I honestly don’t think she’ll try anything, because 1. She knows she’s wrong, and 2. If I have to call the police on her, it may cost her job, as it requires her to be bondable, and with an arrest on her record, she’s no longer bondable. I don’t want to get her fired, I just want her out of my house. Once she’s gone, perhaps I can really get on track with the changes that I’ve been working on in my life.

1/5/09 Well, today was my first day back to work after the 3 weeks I had off between the holidays and recuperating from my surgery. I was up the first time the alarm went off, and was out the door by 5:45 in an effort to get to the office before the icy rain started. I made it by 6:15, and lasted until about 1:45 or so, which got me about 7 hours in before I had to come home and lie down on the couch. Dinner smelled fabulous. I did a chicken & rice thing in the crock pot with brown rice, 2 cans of cream of chicken soup, and some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. For seasoning I used some wild garlic dip mix. This was one of my learning recipes, I guess. Too much soup, rice was too mushy, not enough seasoning. Yeah, the chicken itself is pretty tasty, but the other stuff is just bleah mushy gross! So I’ll take the chicken out and shred it for chicken salad and toss the other stuff, having learned a lesson. I would have done all of that tonite, before I started getting everything together to throw into the big crock tomorrow for my soup, however, at about 8:15, our power went out. Yeah, it’s 9:30 now, and it’s still out. The whole block on our side of the street, plus the opposite side of the street behind us, except for a couple of houses on the next block in a cul-de-sac on our side of the street is out. Plus on the street behind us, there’s another little cul-de-sac that has like 4 houses with nothing, then 1 with full lights as far as we can see (porch light, etc.), then 2 houses with nothing, then another 1 with full lights, and all the rest are out on that whole street. It’s bizarre. The opposite side of my street is fine. I’m near a corner, and the other side of the cross street is fine. I went for a drive through the neighborhood to see how far the outage ranges, but didn’t find any power trucks doing anything for us. Yeah, it was like 34 degrees when the power went out. We had some rain today, but the power lines in my neighborhood don’t look terribly icy, nor do the trees, but perhaps the trees nearest the main transformer that our grid is on had a problem. Since I use a provider other than TXU because I have a better deal, well, I’m SOL on trying to find out what the status is because TXU won’t talk to me. So my house is currently about 65 degrees and dropping. I sleep better when it’s cold, but not when I’m shivering! Too many covers drive me crazy, but I’ve got my usual winter set of sheets, 1 blanket and my quilt, plus a flannel- backed lap quilt, plus 2 more lap quilts piled on top of me. Hopefully the power will come back on soon and I can actually sleep through the night. Ok, the power came on around 1 a.m. and while I'd slept some up to that point, it wasn't restful, and since my alarm goes off at 5, I got about half the rest I actually need to be able to function. *sigh* AND when I got online this morning to check mail, there's a 'past due' notice in my email about my electric bill, WTF??? So I went to the website and what do you know, they show I have a $0.00 balance. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is a big fat ZERO balance, because, well, I paid the bill on 12/17/08, and it was applied that day, a full 5 days before it was due. I dunno what they are thinking, other than they are clearly nuts.