Thanks you guys. I didn't mean to sound like I was willing to concede on not getting paid. Suzy hit the nail on the head, explaining the bottom feeder pecking order of the small contractor. There's steps or a process that we take to up our chances of getting paid other than running to a courthouse. Surely, you all know that once one opens that can of worms, you can add months,costs and the risk of not collecting the full total amount. In addition, knowing your adversary and treating these situations on a case by case differential is to our advantage. Trust me, it's better to play detective, using your understanding of what is really happening, to get what you want rather than to threaten too early. As far as the guy who has empty promises, we are in the 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' step in the process. We're camping out in his front yard, so to speak. Jimmy and I both know how many aces we hold in our hand. We know when someone's ego and reputation is at stake. I am friends with two of his sisters, one of his brothers and his mama adores me. Jimmy knows the same 300 or so people this guy knows,lol. This alone ensures us that he won't stiff us and is more threatening than any call or letter from a lawyer. My Jimmy is very personable and charming. Yesterday, he exposed a few of his serious peacock feathers, so to speak, to this guy while discussing this debt and handing Jimmy some cash that amounts to not even a lousy tip to what he owes us. Although not being openly discussed, all the players know what's at stake here, where we all are on the time line and when push comes to shove. Jimmy and I know when to burn our bridges. I also know when the ball is in Jimmy's court,not mine. It's to my advantage to let these boys be boys, if you know what I mean. ;o) The good news is, that your kind words,prayers and sunflower thoughts made a big change yesterday. Half of what is owed to us came in the mail! But more importantly, another prayer involving money was answered yesterday. Even more needed, this little miracle made Jimmy and I feel a much missed breeze under our wings that really uplifted us. Oh good lord, you're all gonna get a kick out of this. But first let me tell you about what our day was like after I wrote this journal yesterday. Like I said, I knew writing out my feelings would throw me into some level of action so I started with the basics and cleaned the house while Jimmy was working. We both agreed that we would put 2 hours into chores/work and go to the beach. Heat index predictions were 110 degrees. We had no idea that a thrilling roller coaster ride of utter fear and joy would unfold the rest of our day. While I was cutting up watermelon and lopes for our cooler, Jimmy let me know that he put the cash with the checks we got in the mail in one of our dressers but had 2 twenties and some ones on his person. Boy, did we get lucky with parking. The closest spot to the beach on the street we picked. So rare, we had to high five each other. Virtually impossible when you consider it's the busiest week of the season with 300,000 people in one 13 mile long stretch of beach. We claimed our turf on the sardine packed beach and the oppressive heat got us to the surf sooner than usual. The temp of the water was a perfect 71 degrees. Chilly to the toes at first but easy to wade on in without hesitation. And the there was such a nice sandbar with waves strong enough to keep a good eye but spaced well enough to have a blast. Many of the beach goers were taking advantage of the wonderful surf. It was so nice for us to be exchanging those, "Gosh, this is so much fun" smiles between us. Whew, talk about good for the weary soul. My senses seemed to be in overdrive when leaving the water feeling a formidable under toe against my calves. My sinuses only smelling the sea and my taste buds salty, I was thrown back to a place in time feeling as if I was walking out of the water with Lindsey after a swim. Her presence was so strong I could taste and smell it. I'm feeling better by the minute. For the next few hours we snacked, did some word puzzles and swam about every 1/2 hour due to the heat and the fun surf. I couldn't help but overhear a man behind us, with a new york accent, conducting business on his cell phone. Then his son, about 11, his daughter, about 14 and his wife joined him drying off from their swim. The boy was very loud throwing a bona fide fit yelling at his mom and stomping his feet. Jimmy and I dipped our sunglasses down our noses a tad and exchange that "look" while the people in front of us picked up their sand chairs and reversed them facing us instead of the ocean. It got weirder by the nanosecond after that. The boy gets even louder, screaming at his mother for not bringing his chair to the beach while now the people in front of us that are now facing us are also moving their sunglasses exchanging that "look" to us. Seconds later, bad turned to worse as the father started screaming as loud as his son throwing empty threats of leaving the beach, packing up the car and cutting their vacation short. The teenage girl, who remained quiet through her embarrassment get the brunt of her father's scolding, not the boy. Then all eyes on the jammed packed beach grew large when the man announced to his children "I wished I never had kids". I grabbed the arms to my chair to rise up and Jimmy said: "Oh no you don't Diane." I tried to settle back in my chair. About 90 seconds later with more screaming out of all of them except the mother, the father called his daughter a b--ch then yelled to his two kids: "I wish you two were both dead and buried." I jumped out of my chair like a bat outta he11. "Take it off the beach, now," I said. I said some more stuff but because I was seeing red I can't recall exactly. I know I was brief and didn't curse. I sat back in my chair for only a minute telling Jimmy and the now audience on me that I was going in the ocean, "I needed to cool off in more ways than one." To my hopes, Jimmy soon joined me in the water and was met with, "Lindsey made me do it" with a big grin. "Oh, I know, he exclaimed, but she would of been 10 times worse than you!" When we got out of the water this sad excuse for a father and his family were no longer there. Four people approached me and thanked me. Jimmy dubbed me the "hero of the beach" for the remaining hour we were there before we headed home. After some down time, around 6pm we both decide to run up to the produce stand together to get some corn for dinner. Jimmy pulled into the food store because he wanted something and I went to the trunk to get some money out of our beach bag. Earlier on the beach, I noticed Jimmy threw his cell phone, car keys and what certainly looked like a 100 dollar bill to me in the side pocket of the beach bag. With all the excitement and the fact that Jimmy is ADD, I never asked him about this bill. When I went to the trunk, the beach bag wasn't there. I gasped as I realized I left it on the street next to the car when we left the beach. We set land speed record getting back to the beach where we parked. We're both scared as he11 because even though Jimmy said he put the cash in the dresser he knows himself all too well and might of not put it in the dresser. With me trying to convince him that I did in fact see a 100 dollar bill in the beach bag earlier, we both were so scared that Jimmy somehow put all the 500 in our beach bag earlier before we left the house. I'm convinced that is exactly what happened and I apologize to him for making such a mistake. He graciously offered up, "Welcome to my nightmare. We'll never survive if my ADD rubs off on you!" Meanwhile, it's the busiest week of the season and we are in deep dinner rush hour traffic. I keep closing my eyes and Jimmy weaves in and out of traffic. I prayed. Low and behold, we pull into the street we parked at earlier and there it sat on the sidewalk. He pulled up, I opened my door and yanked it into our car,lol. We gasped as we saw what we suspected and thanked God. So, here our beach bag with 500 dollars in it sat on a public street, in a very crowded resort and the only disturbance was tire tracks. There was no argument that we knew darn well that Lindsey protected it for us! Heck, we felt so good the rest of the night, I skipped watering my plants and excepted their "cooked-look" from the day's oppressive heat and only had ONE scoop of ice cream (with dark chocolate kisses and Heath bar pieces.) That snack choice alone should tell you that things are much better now. ~di, going back to the beach today wishing for more excitement but not as scary as yesterday. :o)

Looks like the ducks are in a row. Happy hunting...

I swore to myself yesterday that I'd evoke all the power of positive thinking I could muster and this week would be GOOD. I NEED a good week. I DESERVE a good week. I overslept this morning. No big deal in light of last week when nothing went right. Work was a disaster every single day. My Christmas vacation was canceled and I was told I will have to work every single day straight until the 22nd. I barely made it out at night in time for DS's basketball games. Thursday night, I left 10 minutes late and assured him I'd ONLY be 10 minutes late. And I would have only been 8 minutes late if it wasn't for the fact that some idiot ran a red light at 50 mph and creamed me in the middle of a busy intersection and then left. As I was talking to the 911 dispatcher, he came back...he had to drop his buddy's girlfriend off at the mall. I'm afraid to take the truck in for an estimate for fear they'll total it, I LOVE that truck, even if it does legally belong to the XDH. When I finally got the XDH to answer the phone, he gave me a blow-by-blow play of the game as it happened while I dealt with the other driver and the cops. I made it to the game in time to watch the team score the winning basket. As I left the game, I ran out of gas in front of the gas station. Lucky for me, there was a Sheriff Deputy standing by to give me a ticket for driving an "unsafe" vehicle. After explaining what happened (ok, after getting irrate and then explaining what happened...), he let me go with a "you're lucky, this time" warning. On those words, I bought a lottery ticket and went home. Haven't checked the ticket yet, but no one won the big one so no hurry. Friday and Saturday were bitterly cold and I got to work in a building with no heat. One of my employees took pity on me and built me a cardboard igloo and equipped it with a space heater. I'll probably catch on fire in it, but when it was 25 degrees inside, I didn't much care. Saturday morning, a Lieutenant Colonel I befriended a few months ago drove 22 miles to bring me a hot cup of coffee. And I wonder why I do this job? He's getting ready to spend a year in Iraq but still takes time to think of a lowly civil servant. As he got ready to leave, he told me "Maryanne, the one thing that makes you different from anyone else is that you found your calling..." Maybe. Maybe not. Saturday night when I got home from work, all I wanted was a bowl of soup and to curl up on the sofa. The house was a little chilled so I turned up the heat a bit, heated up some soup, threw on my pj's and curled up under my security blanket. Woke up about 2 am freezing to death. Went to turn up the heat...nothing. I had no heat. Not much one can do at 2 am except throw on more clothing and crawl into bed. Thank goodness for down duvet's! Woke up around 8 am Sunday and decided that I wasn't going in to work until the heat was repaired. Tossed a load of laundry in, made some coffee, took a shower (Note: Do not use a hot shower as a means to thaw out if you have no heat. It's twice as cold when you exit the shower!), hung the laundry on the line and started another load. After getting dressed, I called the repair guy and left a message. As I went to get the second load out of the washer, I was greeted with a flooded laundry room. The motor pump decided it was a good time to go out and all that soapy water went all over the floor. It was at this point I sat down and laughed. And laughed. And laughed. When I regained some control, I called the XDH and pleaded for help. He was going to pick up DS from a camping trip with the scouts so we switched...he came and bailed and mopped, I went (in his heated van!) to pick up DS. Of course, DS was an hour late in arriving back. By the time I got home, my dryer was sitting in the driveway and the XDH had his head under the washer. It was then I mentioned that I had no heat either...he wondered why it was so cold but thought maybe I was really turning into an "ice queen". Twit. After condemning the washer motor, he went to work on the heat pump. Seems a bug crawled across the circuits and fried them. And himself. It was 3 pm by the time he found some new fuses and got the system working. We were all starved so I took them out to dinner. It was the least I could do. So, now I have heat but no washing machine or dryer. The Volvo broke down again 2 weeks ago and now the truck is a mess (since the bed of the truck is slightly off kilter, I get to "crab walk" down the highway at 60 mph!). I haven't even begun to do any Christmas shopping, but I did drag DS out to the tree lot last night and told him that come hell or high water, I was going to have a Christmas tree! So we picked out a nice one, drug it home and put the lights on...nothing else. DS will spend Christmas with his father this year. I'll spend Christmas with my head under the covers, shifting position only to refill my mimosa glass. You don't honestly think I'm going to touch the stove, do you? Oh, and I have an $1800 property tax bill due in 2 weeks. Ho Ho Ho. DS said to me last night "Mom, I've been thinking about the Army..." Sweet Mother of God! I held my breath while waiting to hear what he was thinking. "I was wondering...if I joined the Army, would I get to spend more time with you? Or would they deploy me? And if they deployed me, would you deploy with me?" I wasn't sure if that sound I heard was my heart breaking or if my blood pressure spiked and I ruptured a blood vessel, but I did my best to explain to this child that while the Army is an honorable career, I wanted him to go to college and follow his dream of becoming a vet. I apologized for not being able to spend more time with him and promised him I'd work hard to fix this, but sometimes we must make sacrifices for others and that sacrifices such as this are always rewarded in the end. And, of course I'd deploy with him if he deployed! But, we still have 5 more years to figure this out. A lot has changed in the past 5 years, a lot will change in the next 5 years. Especially me. Starting today. I WILL have a good week, even if I oversleep in the morning. At least I left work at a reasonable hour, picked up my child and cooked dinner for him. I got him to scouts, made sure his homework was done, helped him study for mid-terms, and baked brownies for his band party. So what if we're the only house with a dryer in the driveway and a mountain of laundry piled up. So what if the car is broken and the truck is off kilter. Who cares if Christmas will be slim and I have to call the tax assessor and ask for an extention. It will all change. We have each other and nothing can be better. Yeah, it's going to be a GOOD week. Maryanne

I got Johnny's seed catalog today and I might have been more tempted if I hadn't looked in my seed drawer. I have lots of old seed and probably it would grow if I had a place to plant it. I have been sprinkling poppy seed in the snow. That also makes me think I don't need seed. It is hard to find a good place to sprinkle the seed I have. I have a dug up place planted with hyacinths. If I put seeds there it will shade the hyacinth foliage and they may not return next year. I may sprinkle some alyssum seeds there. I am so hard up for places to put seeds that I am thinking of moving my burn barrel, raking that area and planting shirley poppies there. There is a nice bare area there but it isn't good soil.