Well that's the kicker sushi. We have no fault here so each insurance company pays their clients damages. Even if he doesn't report to his insurance company our insurance will and his daughters premiums will go up even if they don;t claim anything. Given the door already had scratches and we were going to get it painted anyway, Clive told him that he would only ask for any costs that were above the original quote. No additional costs then we'd just forget it. That to me is more than reasonable. We did get the new quote and the additional costs over what we had been quoted is $300. That's all we would have asked for. Anyhow, he said what he did. So now Clive will claim the full repairs through insurance and the jerks premiums for his daughter will go up. I wasn't comfortable with charging for the full repair but the insurance company said the entire door needed painting as a result of the accident so existing scratches were irrelevant. The guy really wasn't thinking!

I'm in a similar nightmare now. My husband & I have pretty much raised our granddaughter since she was 5 weeks old. She is now four & 1/2 years old. My daughter is a lair, thief, & has been turning aggressive for some time. About a month ago she attacked me after calling me filthy names. The father of the kids got tired of the aggression, the drinking the pills, the stealing (7600 dollars out of his account) & the lying, he found another woman & ran for Florida. For seven weeks I baby sat for her son along with raising her daughter. The boy is large, he smells bad all the time, he has no manners, (blows nose on his clothes) he's three & 1/2 years old, not potty trained, has the biggest, worse smelling poopy. Talking to this child is like talking to drift wood. Not only is my daughter lazy but there is something terribly wrong with this child. He weights in at fifty some pounds & I am only 97 pounds. (He wears me out lifting him) My mother & I got together & got an appointment to have him evaluated. Mom took her cause I had my granddaughter & she lied to my Mom & said they SAID nothing was wrong with him. A few weeks later I get a phone call from them saying she & the boy missed the 2 hour evaluation. (Pull my hair out) I was only supposed to watch him for a day, which turned into seven weeks & she still wasn't even looking. (slit wrists) I have been taxiing her to work, stores, everywhere. (run cold water over bleeding wrists) This night I ask her why she wasn't looking for a sitter? Suddenly I'm a bad grandparent, we'd had a prior fight about her rent, I told her she needed to pay her own rent, she makes enough money, where was all her money going? She sure wasn't paying for a sitter, or food during the day, or gas & I didn't ask her to. I just wanted her to help herself. She went bonkers trying to spin it like I'm the bad grandparent, (this is a girl who we had in college, bought a new T-bird for she had everything I wish I'd had when I was a kid. She meets the father drops out of school, totals out the T-bird & turns up pregnant) Proceeds to dump the baby on me, which I took her, then gets pregnant again & wasn't happy when I informed her she wasn't dumping that one on me.) Anyway she is spoiled & thinks we owe her a living, she doesn't learn from her mistakes but faults others for them. I told her she was no longer welcome at our house after she attacked me. She comes takes my baby & now says we will never see her again. What a joy my daughter has turned out to be. I still see my granddaughter at my mothers, & she told me her mother locked her in the garage in the dark. She cries that she wants to come home with me & Papa, she cries for me all the time. She said Nana you got to do something, you got to try. (She talks like an old lady sometimes, I love it) So I called Child protective services. That was like 3 weeks ago, & I'm still waiting, in the mean time she has been evicted, & is due in court for a DUI. The girl lost her license years ago, has a DUI & is now driving a friends van. It's a crazy world & I keep thinking with time she will have enough rope & hang herself (I mean that in legal terms of keeps getting in trouble) & I will be able to bring my granddaughter back home to the only stability she has ever known. Her court date for the DUI is Tuesday. Thanks for letting me vent.

I have been a SF fan forever, but lately have more re-read old favorites than new writers, because mist of them are so negative. Maybe more realistic as far as the behavior of people goes as way back when. I have read several of Haldeman's books, but rather read old Heinlein.

I want to tell my union story. I was a member of the teacher's union for years, just paying my dues. My school district got into its head that nurses should also teach in order to maximize their value to the district, so I was assigned a bunch of health classes which amounted to several hours a day. One was an over-enrolled K class of students who mostly knew no English. That one was a nightmare, the kids ran around, the administrators said it was my problem, I knew not enough Spanish to keep order and safety let alone teach health. Not a lot of thought was put into nursing, and teachers would send sick kids into my classroom while I was teaching. So then the poor secretary was forced into being the nurse while I taught, and there were some pretty unfortunate issues, like a child with a fracture being sent back to class with an ice pack, that arose out of this although I know she tried her best. After a serious asthma emergency that was mishandled by the office, I called the union. Please note that I am extremely hard working, got to work at 7AM daily so that any parents who needed a conference before they went to work could have one, rarely took a lunch out of the clinic because my opinion is that students don't become ill on a schedule and I wanted to be there when they did, and I rarely refused a request, but this shoddily arranged teaching assignment seemed headed for disaster and I did not know what to do, the school administrators just wanted to show their bosses that they were following the latest edict. The union took care of the issue and my teaching assignment was rescinded. I dare any one of you to fault either me or the union for what was done. To me, the union was a life saver, not only mine but I was sure that there would be a fatal disaster involving one of the students sooner or later if the situation continued. I don't see how anyone could fault them.