Meet the Nielsens

Starting off with some history about myself: I don’t like to watch the news, never have. Its so depressing and I would rather spend my TV time watching something seemlingly mindless to take my thoughts off the downward spiraling economy, the upcoming rain, or the endless sorrow from murders, homicide, riots, theft, etc.

So, to my story: I get a call from my mom yesterday evening. Here is a partial diaologue:

Mom: OMG! Aren’t you SOOOO excited!!!!

Me: About?

Mom: Um, duh, Boeing!

Me: What about?

Mom: The strike is OVER! They have an agreement and its really good!

Me: Where did you hear that?

Mom: The news!

Me: oh, well, you know I don’t watch the news. Let me go get on the union website and see.

:end transcript:

Okay, so we have a tentative agreement that the union fully supports, so hopefully Ryan will be voting to go back to work in the next 3-5 days. HUZAHHH!

We are so ready for him to go back to work. Not only to get him away from Dominos, but also to get back on track financially.

Speaking of finances: We evicted our roommate/renter girl on Friday night/Saturday morning. Here are the details in sequence of events:

Friday 10/24/08:

2:15 Shannon gets off work, Ryan and Shannon leave to get Coltin from Ryan’s mom’s. We then go to Target to get a fireplace screen. We are gone for about 2 hours or so.

4 pm: Ryan gets into the shower to get ready to go to work at Dominos. Notices that his drawer he puts his wallet & keys into is a little messy, doesn’t think twice.

9:15 pm, Ryan gets home from Dominos, goes to put his tips away, discovers that $150 is missing from where he kept his tips.

We go downstairs to confront the renter girl and she isn’t there. We open her door and it is a disaster area with garbage strewn all over and clothes everywhere. I notice a boutique purse of mine near her bed area.

We wait until she gets home at 11 pm, wait about 15 minutes, go down to confront her. She denied knowing what the case where his money was, but when I asked about the purse, she tried to deny it and then fessed up that she “borrowed” it for a wedding. The issue is that the purse wasn’t just laying out on top of my stuff, it was packed away in a tote and you had to move a chair and a couple boxes and then crawl halfway under my craft table to get to it. It wasn’t something she could have just seen in passing. She had to be snooping through my stuff.

Anyways, I told her that we can’t have someone in our house that we don’t trust, so I told her to pack her things and leave immediately. She collapsed in disbelief and I summoned all the strength I had to be firm and tell her we do not have all night, start packing.

As she was slowly packing, I kept asking about the $150. She never said she didn’t take it or that she didn’t go into our bedroom, but just that she didn’t have it, but wouldn’t say where it was. I started asking about other rooms in the house and trying to see what else she had taken. She kept swearing that was all she took, just the purse and she was going to return it. I noticed some foot spray for shoes and asked about it. She said she just bought it. When I called her on it and told her I bought it at Haggen on clearance when I worked there and that it was still marked down for 99 cents HBC, health and beauty center. She just looked blankly at me with cold, dead eyes. I grabbed it and handed it to Ryan. As I did so, I noticed a band from a package of socks. I drive to Burlington to get special “world’s softest socks” for my mother. They are really expensive and when I asked about those, she tried to deny it, but they are clearly marked and I know they were in my gift closet. She said there were only 3 out of the pack of 6, so she thought it was ok. I told her that I can’t afford much usually for presents, so I bought a 6 pk and gave half to my mom last Christmas and was going to give the others this year and with the strike, we can’t afford to buy anything for Christmas. She got all rude and said she would pay me back for the full cost of the package, plus throw in a few bucks for tax. I lost it and told her she had no right to have an attitude with me after all that she has done.

So, for two hours I constantly stood and watched her pack up while asking about what else she had taken. She kept swearing that was all she took. Well, I found a brand new candle from my candle rack, she told me where some Mary Kay product was (I used to sell it, so she had about $200+ in MK products), she had some plastic tumblers from a tote in the garage as well as some memory foam flip flops I loved when I was pregnant. She also had been taking juice concentrate from our freezer in the garage and had about 12 containers throughout her room.

We took some of her stuff out to the driveway because I didn’t want it in my house anymore and I kind of tripped over a bin that was moved. The MK case that had all the product in it fell over and I saw one of my jewelry boxes. I checked and nothing appeared missing until I looked in the drawers that had a roll of $2 bills. There were 7 rolled up. She had those in a safe in the closet. So, I went through her safe and checked all the contents to make sure nothing else was mine. We took a ton of dishes out of her room and about 3 bags full of garbage. She also had taken at least 2 – 12 pks of soda after Coltin’s party.

She kept saying she didn’t have the money, and we also had found that Ryan was missing about 20-30 in change he had piled on his dresser. All the quarters & dimes were gone, just a pile of pennies and some nickels still were there. She never fessed up to that.

She also was kind of sneaky about putting some DVDs without cases into her bags. I called her on that and she said they were hers that she had burned and when asked about cases for the others, she said she didn’t like cases.

I let it go. She sat with her stuff for about another 15 minutes after we got it all out and so we took the dog outside to go to the bathroom and told her to leave. I told her that her stuff had to be gone by Monday or I was donating it and if I ever saw her after that, I would call the police.

I talked to my mom the next day and she told me that I really needed to call the police to file a report. First, I hate calling the police because they act like you are stupid and that you are bothering them. The SNO CO Sheriff told me that it wouldn’t be prosecuted because she gave the stuff back and she only took 150. Well, I also remembered that I had a 20 in my purse and when I went to fill up my tank the day before, it wasn’t there. I figured that I must have spent it, because I never have any cash on me. Nope, she took that too. I didn’t buy anything that I paid cash for.

My mom also encouraged me to go through all our DVDs and see what was missing. I took out all the DVDs that were missing the actual DVD in the case, but most are Ryan’s and are probably either upstairs or in his CD case. But, I did pull open her dresser drawer outside and noticed the Ring & Ring 2, that we were missing. I grabbed those and saw she also had my brand new little mermaid DVD. I waited until Ryan got home and he wrapped Coltin in a blanket while I went through her stuff. First, I kind of pawed through, but then I was noticing that she had stuff stuck in between clothes and that some of the clothes were mine!

All in all, from going through her stuff in the driveway, I found:

A gold necklace & pendant my dad gave me, in its original box. It came straight from my jewelry box.

25 DVDs, they were w/o the cases and the sleeves, but I found 25 cases and sleeves to match. I also have about 20 more sleeves of ours, but no DVDs, and a couple DVDs with no cases.

10 CDs, plus their sleeves, no cases. Some CDs no sleeves, some sleeves no CDs

3 grocery bags full: new boxes of toothpaste (I stock up when its on sale and put it away. I had 4 boxes in my office and I found 3, she had opened 1), soap, shampoo, lip gloss, (I left the lipstick bc I wasn’t sure if it was used) lip gloss from my purse that I thought Coltin had messed with and misplaced, a brand new car wash mit from the garage that was in a tote, a bunch of plastic bowls from a tote in the garage, spoons from our silverware drawer, my favorite swimsuit, jeans, underwear (I left those & the jeans because thats just nasty! I had a tote full of too small undies that were nearly new in the garage), perfume, lotion, she had taken spices from my kitchen and dumped them in baggies and labeled them because my spices were numbered from a game at my bridal shower. She took cinnamon from a large container I had and some cinnamon & sugar mix, flour, sugar, pie filling mix, she also took a pyrex loaf pan and a pie dish that I didn’t grab because I forgot to go back out after I checked to see if the spices were mine. I left the spices and the food stuff because who knows what she did to them. 

Half of the items I probably would have given her if she had asked first. Granted, most items she had to dig in totes for and didn’t just happen to glance at them while walking by. And, some items she had to go into our bedroom or office for. Both those areas were to be off limits unless we granted her conditional use permission, ie to use the computer.

I am sure that she took more. Plus, she never fessed up to the money. When she came to get her stuff, a counselor from her church came as well. He basically told us she’s been in treatment for awhile and this is an ongoing issue with her. Now, looking back, I can see all the times she wasn’t just annoyingly following me around, but was scoping out what we had and where stuff was. And, I bet the gal that came with her to her interview with us was from her church and was a counselor, and probably the gal that helped her move in, too. I had thought at the time that they didn’t seem like the type of people that would be her friend, but I let it go because people can befriend anyone.

So, I did email her yesterday and told her how much she hurt us and how I hope she is getting counseling for her problem and that I would like everything she stole, aside from the food & spices, back and that someone from her church can drop the box off on our porch.

In faced with a friend’s upcoming move from their current home to a much more earnest home, I have become even more contemplative about our home. I mean, for months now I have been wondering what we are working for? What are we wasting our lives away for?

I feel like Ryan and I are working like crazy to be able to afford our home(s) and still don’t have much to show for it. I mean, yes, we own two houses, not by choice, but by default. Those who know us know that our first home didn’t sell and we were stuck with it after we bought our newest home. We rent it out and are about $600 short a month on the mortgage, which is made up by my second job. (Thank goodness for that second job!) It was my greed that came through when I decided, since I was pregnant, we needed a larger home. True, Ryan and I seemed to have already grown out of our three bedroom, one bath rambler, with a storage unit full of stuff. We wanted more room to stretch out in, more room for the dog to run in the backyard, a garage. So, we bought a 5 bedroom house with a two car garage. The garage is full of stuff. The rooms are full of stuff. I don’t know how we amassed so much, well, stuff. In theory, everything we have should have fit into the garage and then on the first floor of the house. It doesn’t.

I have been getting rid of stuff since we moved in. In total, I have had one garage sale, taken 3 of my mom’s truck loads to donate, taken 3 4Runner loads to donate and a few random boxes here & there. It doesn’t even seem like I have gotten rid of anything. We have cleaned the garage a couple of times. It isn’t spotless, but each time we get a half a giant recyling bin full and half our garbage can full of stuff. I think it multiplies at night.

Anyways, that brings me to my question, what are we working for? Before the Boeing strike, Ryan worked 6, sometimes 7 days a week, often more than 8 hour days. I work full time and have a second job. Yet, we barely seem to make ends meet and rarely get to do anything fun. We didn’t go on any family vacations this summer. I don’t even think we did last summer. Why work so hard if you can’t enjoy it? Why do we work so hard, but still aren’t able to enjoy our new home? We should be loving our new home and being able to spend the time to fix it up how we like it. Yes, its selfish.

In other news: I mowed the lawn this weekend. It was spectacularly beautiful and I felt fairly accomplished getting that done. I also trimmed my roses that were done blooming and did a little weeding. On Sunday, I vacuumed my stairs, the downstairs, vacuumed out our big air vent, did some laundry, washed the entry rug and bathmats and also scrubbed our master bath. I mean, hands and knees scrubbing. I did the same for the entry way. I feel good about it, but wish I could have gotten more done.

Its hard to focus on house work when Coltin is getting some serious molars in. He’s had blood pockets for about a month, but the neighbor noticed that they were really bad. I blew it off at first because I knew he had the pockets, but then later, Thursday night, I think, I happened to take a look and saw that his top gum where the blood pocket had been, was blown up the size of a raspberry! I felt awful! Poor baby has been miserable all weekend. The swelling has gone down a bit, maybe to a plump blueberry, but its still swollen and miserable. He’s such a good boy, though. He puts on a smile and tries his hardest to be calm about it. Bless his heart.