Queen Of Chaos

Warning! If you meet her.... She calls herself Sara. In her late 30's, early 40's, she wears scraggly bleached blond hair, drives a red SUV circa 2005, and is accompanied by a little blond yap-dog, called "Baby Girl". Her "line" is showing up after a garage sale which hasn't cleaned everything out, saying she goes to swap meets and is looking to partner with somebody who has the merchandise for her to help sell. They'll split the proceeds 60-40, not bothering to mention whose share is the 60. Turns out neither is, because, after coaxing you into continuing your garage sale a few more days, she'll disappear with an incomplete ledger of sales and most of the proceeds from what is recorded in there. As well as whatever she can steal while she's in your house looking for what else can "go out to sell".

Let's back it up a week or so. The first weekend in November, Rich coordinated with the neighbor across the street to hold simultaneous garage sales. Both did fairly well. Problem is, Rich still had two more sales worth of merchandise. I had an unusable carport, patio, and could barely navigate a path through the lanai to take the dog out to the back yard. Which was - is - also a mess, by the way. I'm still waiting to turn the yard crew we hire loose in it to deal with a dying - or damaged - pine tree as well as clean up all the pruned branches from my last few weeks out there, and blow out all the accumulated leaf litter from the last year.

So when Sara turned up, talking partnership and connections and locations, Rich saw a solution to those problems. Besides, it's the only income around right now, and he/we insisted on mask wearing by prospective customers. Nearly all complied. 

The first day Sara showed up, Rich walked a mask down to her car for her. She rarely wore it. That was my first strike against her.

The second was her yap dog. Sara needed to use the bathroom, so Rich asked could she come in. Reluctantly, I said yes. Our pandemic rule has been nobody comes in the house. The whole 25 minutes or so she was in there the dog yowled as though it was being tortured. Imagine trying to watch TV or read to that background! The third strike came shortly afterwards, when I went to use it. She's one of those people who a: lines the toilet seat with toilet paper, and b: walks away without bothering to remove said paper from either the seat or floor. GAG! She was requested through Rich to find an alternative. For the dog too, whose entry into the house disturbed Heather Too so much she refused going through the lanai to outdoors with predictable results to have to be cleaned up from the rug. Mine to take care of again, of course.

I tried to simply avoid Sara. I could stay inside and in the back yard, she and Rich "owned" the carport and front yard. It was going to be for one day, Wednesday, for a sale, then Thursday would be packing up and taking things away for a Friday swap meet. Of course, she was totally scatterbrained and disorganized enough that he dubbed her Queen of Chaos. If only that were all of it! Resulting events make me think it might just be a ruse to encourage you to dismiss her.

I got talked into allowing the sale for another day, with Thursday evening being when the remainders were to be hauled off for the two of them to take to Friday's swap meet. Late afternoon, Sara loaded up her car for the "first" trip. We haven't seen her since.

Irritation started eroding trust, so Rich began the hunt for her ledger of sales and cache of proceeds from it. First the ledger listed less than Richard made in a single sale. Even of the puny recorded income, most of it had vanished with Sara. Then the real problems started piling up. The most valuable items which hadn't sold had vanished, carefully picked out and squirreled away during those times when Rich was occupied or in another location, or tucked in with other things she was loading into her car "for Friday's swap meet.". 

She'd come in and raided the lanai of his more valuable items as well. He'd come in and seen her going through his things, not sale things, and told her to quit or take off. Later going through the piles he'd seen her handling, he discovered many of his personal things missing as well. In a later conversation, I asked him who had paid for the supper that had been cooked outside the patio in the little Weber grill. He had, adding that she had offered to buy supper the next night "after her food stamps had come through.

Yes, I know it's not called food stamps now, but I forget the jargon. Anyway, her allotment was supposed to come through the next day, and she offered to pick up the tab for that next night's supper. Of course, it "didn't come through" on time. As soon as he told me that, I called "Bullshit." It comes in credit on a plastic card, renewed automatically each month on that date so long as the recipient qualifies. It's as regular as social security. At this point in our conversation Rich admitted it was then where he should have started questioning what was going on.

Steve and I privately questioned later whether he has some kind of invisible sign on his forehead which says "Mark." He tries to be useful and helpful, and usually is. We think a certain kind of person reads that and takes advantage.

Friday turned into a day of packing up stuff to get hauled off to a thrift shop close by that sends its proceeds to support education. First, however, customers were still showing up, and Rich made enough to likely cover the actual cash Sara made away with. Not that he could replace all the stolen items of course, but his mood lightened somewhat. By Saturday things were lined up in rows inside boxes and crates for loading in the car. I had promised him I would happily drive him for however many loads it took to get rid of the stuff. Our last load arrived 10 minutes after they closed for the day, so tomorrow we'll head out in the morning and dump off a load  packed to the roof of the car. 

There will still be clothing to sort through, into categories of toss, donate, and how-did-Rich's-clothes-get-mixed-in-here? Some of the shelving and whatnots Rich used to organize and display sale items well be coming back into the house to help store Rich's possessions in the tiny space he's cramped into.

I'm hoping he'll be taking our strongly worded request to find himself some other way of supporting himself, hard as that is these days. Some of the stuff he brought here for sale was accompanied - or should I say occupied? - by bugs of the blood loving kind. Heather Too is getting her flea control to kill off any of those that find her tasty. We're not sure whether it's totally fair to blame the bed bug infestation on him, but he deserves full credit for some very stubborn lice. Those have gotten so bad out in his area that he's taken to shaving every hair he can find off his head and body so the nits have no place to cling to.

(I need to sneak up and take a picture!)

He does have one comforting thought about Sara. He thinks he witnessed her absently scratching herself in a very familiar way just before she took off. Likely she picked up something from going through stuff that wasn't ready for sale in her hurry to scarf up anything she could lay her hands on and stuff in a pocket. He hadn't gotten around to telling her what the hazards of such unanticipated misbehavior could be.

Tee. Hee. Hee.

Proud "Boys"?

 Seems like an oxymoron to me. I mean, if they are really proud, wouldn't they call themselves the Proud Men? Chronologically, most of them look like they have hit the age where males are called men. I sincerely doubt they recognize how juvenile they are acting, threatening tantrums if they don't get it all their way. And only they are supposed to be the ones getting... whatever.

Hey, you think if they grew up and became men to be proud of, they'd get whatever it is they think they deserve to have handed to them?

Perhaps their spelling is a bit off, and they are telling us they are proud of their toys, all that body armor and those long semiautomatic weapons substituting for what they don't have. 

They seem to be screaming, "See me!" Women don't appear to, see them that is.  This is a guy's club, so a lack of women can be ignored while they get together, suggesting it is their choice that only males are around.

Then again, perhaps they are showing that ironic streak of honesty. These people are just boys, however large their bodies. Just boys. 

Dangerous ones, however.

Replying To The IRS

Backstory:

About 3 weeks ago I got a letter from the IRS. They were requesting another copy of the information supporting my income on my Schedule C. Translation is my income from club sales of my jewelry from last year. Last year was a good one, just a hair over the mandatory reporting $600. Reading between their lines, they misplaced my 1099. I know I sent it to them because all my tax info goes into a single envelope and I only had state and personal copies left. I did fill in the bare minimum of lines on the Schedule C, my name, etc., amount earned, no deductions because 1: it was too much bother, and 2: I didn't need them because I didn't need to pay any taxes. In fact, the income is so low I didn't even need to file. However, this was back when "everybody" was saying on the news that those of who are retired needed to file because they wouldn't be able to find us for our $1200 stimulus checks. Considering who our president was at the time, it didn't seem too far-fetched that they couldn't figure out how to follow our SS automatic deposit checks and send the stimulus checks the same way.

Call me a cynic.

The reply:

First they wanted some information, nevermind most of it was already on the other side of the same sheet of paper. My name, SS#, just redundant silliness. I guess they are too busy to flip the page? OK, I filled them in. Number of pages I was faxing? Zero. They are reading this from the mail and can't figure that out? Phone number? check. Hours they could call me on it? That needed some commentary: "Anytime I'm near my phone, since women's pants pockets don't hold the things." Hey, that's as precise as I can get. I didn't bother mentioning that if I'm in the club or similar buildings, the phone is cut off the grid. Not smart phones, apparently. Just mine. They can leave voicemail. Or send another letter. (Good luck with that.)

They left a little space on the bottom of the paper, so I added a little bit more.

"I'm sorry you lost my original copy of the 1099. Perhaps if you quit refusing to let us use staples or paper clips, it might quit happening. I apologize that this (State) copy is less legible than the original, but if you still can't read this one, perhaps you can go to the original that our club sent you. They do still do that, don't they, so you can be sure we taxpayers aren't lying?"

I had tried to make a xerox copy of the state version, but the copier mostly left the blanks just that: blank. Cost me a quarter to find that out. And as for the originals sent directly to the IRS, it works for banks and everyone else, so I'm just assuming if they were really interested, they'd have access. Then I went on....

"I did not fill in all the blanks on my Schedule C because 1: it was too much work and 2: I didn't need to. My income was so small I didn't need to pay taxes, and wouldn't even have filed except "they" were all over the news telling us we needed to because otherwise you couldn't find us for the $1200 stimulus checks. I wanted to believe that you were smarter than that, but I'm beginning to wonder what else you can lose track of." Then I signed it.

It did wind up being more than fit in the bottom margin, so I had to write in an arrow to where I finished higher up along the right margin.  Do you think they can find that?

Am I wrong to hope they have a sense of humor? Oh well, I still don't owe any taxes.

Numbers

That's all we've been seeing and hearing these past few days, right? So you're sick of them, right? Well, these aren't those numbers. Time for a little change of pace.

Let's start with some good news, the number 6 I got in the cardiologist's office this morning. I love their scale. It's surrounded by a walker for those of us who sometimes have issues with balance. It's also got the long horizontal bars that have weights hanging from them, sliding from notch to notch. No guesswork as to how accurate it is, no needing somebody else to get your weight because it's reported in metric on an electronic system. When it balances, that's you.

I started at the usual place, that particular set of 20-pound notches which never changes. Except today it did.  I was 2 pounds more than that notch a couple months ago, last time I stopped in. Adjusting, I started sliding the other bar up the 1 pound notches. WOW! A quick little bit of math, and I'm down 6 pounds! This keeps happening, even though either I think I'm gaining and I stay the same, or I think I'm gaining and I lose a bit. It's not so much I'm actually trying to lose, but the activity level has increased - just ask my back yard and my sore legs at bedtime keeping me from dropping off - and I'm back to counting carbs (more) faithfully, now that I have a blood sugar meter. Neither is counting calories, it's just life happening. Still happening.

Now for a new number: 2. I just ordered two baby plants of the kind I thought I'd bought about a week ago. However, it had a single bloom. One tiny little all-yellow bloom. Still not what I wanted, though I'll keep it in its spot along the back fence. When it gets really going, those little blooms will bring in bees. Possibly hummers, but for sure bees. However, since I'm still looking for that very specific plant, I went online and found a grower. Right down in Benson, AZ. You know, home of Kartchner Caverns, a must-visit living cave. They ship in special plant containers, and guarantee to make good if shipping causes damage, provided you send them a picture. Just in case, I ordered two. There's another space on a different side of the fence where something as big as a pair of them can flourish, given enough prior work. Now, I thought I was done with all the digging and watering and planting and fencing to keep out rabbits. Apparently I was wrong. Again! 

I won't give you that number, though.

Instead, here's another number: 3. While planting those orange-blooming aloes last week, I realized that my ponytail palm needs a companion in that spot on the north side of the house. The other one is doing great, while the one under the front window - same side, more sun due to different roof configuration - is suffering from sun blasting through the summers. It's too big to move now, and I'm happy to start small and let a new one grow in the better spot. They will become a pair of taller accents among the aloes. So I went to a garden center looking for ponytails. Sure they had them, as trees! But hey, 50% off sale on large trees now, so only $150.00! Not only too expensive but completely unwieldy. So, since I was heading there anyway, Wallmart. After persuading an employee to unlock (!) the plants section, none were on offer. They have previously supplied several in the past, just not now. So, yet another garden center, where I had a choice between $75 big ones, and $13, 4" pots of multiple trunk babies.  Well, the babies, of course. Right now they are soaking up water, with planning anticipated next week.

That's because of another number: 2. Our rabbits are so greedy down here that they eat even these, and even after they are well grown. So I need a chicken wire cage for it. Not "2" you say? That's because the other cage will host the plants being shipped. However, currently all our cages are hosting other plants, so I need to get out in the yard and uncage another established plant in order to spread the joy. I just did that with a plant that came home years ago with white blossoms rather than purple, and half died this summer. It is currently about a foot tall, with branches cluttering up the yard next to it, but their removal allowed the cage to be slid up over the remains of the plant for this other use. As for the seriously pruned plant, Mother Nature will decide if it survives.  I don't care. It was spectacular when it bloomed once - two days before a hail storm. You know, back when we had rain and stuff. It also played host to a very tall weed for a couple years, growing straight up out of its center, impossible to remove or kill. So yes, I'm holding a grudge.

The other bush I need to uncage really needs pruning as it's struggling to support what grew last year before it quit raining. It won't get such a severe clipping, so there will be a lot more physical work involved in removing this cage. Apparently that will do me some good. Aside from new sets of puncture holes in my arms, of course.

So far these have all been pretty small numbers. Let's jump to some bigger ones. For a modest jump, let's start with 11. You may recall months ago I was recording and blogging about covid numbers. Just because I quit hassling you with them doesn't mean I quit recording them. No, it's been a daily habit, keeping track of several sets in columns in a multi-page (now) file on my desktop, each day's changes. One of the incidentals was watching where Arizona stood in relation to other states in terms of highest case counts. A while ago we were 7th highest in the country. Then we gradually got surpassed by other states. Today we slid down to only 11th worst. Our daily counts are starting to climb again, but we've had plenty of days in the 3-digits of new cases. Too many others are doing as badly as 4,000+ to 8,000+ daily cases, and have overtaken us. Maricopa County instituted a mask mandate months ago, and our cases dropped and held relatively steady. Until just these last few days. While we are increasing our daily counts like everybody else, we're just not as bad right now. Arizona's relative ranking, from when I first noted it, changed as follows:

6/28: 10th   7/5: 8th   7/9: 7th    7/20 8th    8/16: 7th    10/7: 8th     10/19: 9th    11/4" 10th    11/6: 11th.

I follow Minnesota counties where my kids and brother live. Hennepin numbers started getting recorded after George Lloyd was murdered and the BLM movement spread. I was curious how the protests would affect case counts, and at first they didn't, much. Now it's going crazy there, 40,559 cases, 1016 deaths, but I have trouble pinning it on the protests because the numbers took so long to rise after that. Beltrami county started rising once summer tourism took hold, along with their death rate at a faster rate than many other rural counties with similar case numbers, today at 1154 cases and 13 deaths.  Chisago County held steady for so long, but now is jumping way up there in cases at 1561. Surprisingly, the death count is still sitting at two.

The latest numbers I started tracking were after the cases for the country started their recent dramatic climb, following all those super-spreader Trump events. Recent analysis by those with more information than I have directly linked the steepest rises to those events/locations. Here are my recorded U.S. daily increases, starting with October 28, as reported by Worldometer, which I have always trusted to have the best information available:

10/28:  91,630    10/29:  104,831     10/30:  101,461    10/31:   86,293    11/1:  71,321    11/2:  88,905   11/3:  93,947    11/4:  106,453    11/5:  118,204   11/6:  132,540.

Remember how Trump said those cases would just magically disappear on the 4th because the libs were lying about them to get votes? Yeah, me too.

Holding My Breath

It's election night, USA. At nearly 7PM mountain time, results are starting to trickle in. Pundits are finding ways to keep trickling what passes in their minds for information on these results, while we, the voters, hang on the results.

I can't stand it. It's too important, and nothing anybody says now without a time machine that can see ten days in the future has any meaning whatsoever. It's all speculation, a way of keeping our eyes glued to their particular screens in hope of getting the results we need to see. It's the horse race. It's always been the horse race. After being unable to call out the lies, the cruelty, the grift, the voter suppression, the relentless crimes of all sorts over the last 4 years, it's suddenly needful for them to make up for it - as if! - by giving us their play-by-play as a last ditch effort to make themselves relevant.

As if.

300,000 mail-in ballots sit in post offices all over the country right now, despite DeJoy being ordered by a federal judge to get busy and make it a priority to find and deliver all of them on time. Lets have news about warrants being written in affected states to arrest him and all others for defying the judge's order. From a state level, a certain resident of the White House can't counter with a pardon. That's the kind of news which would give me a reason to watch election coverage tonight.

I really don't care, tonight, just which categories of voters in which areas have voted in which ways. That analysis can wait, useful for planning the next campaign, but not so much tonight.

Trump is behind his "unscalable" new barricade surrounding the White House tonight. Supposedly this will deter rioters. After seeing coverage of the sections being put in place, I had two questions. It's pretty easily put together. Isn't the converse true? And even if not, has everybody forgotten about ladders? OK, let's make that three questions: what rioters? Businesses are setting plywood barricades around their properties with expectations of looting. Already? Before any real results are known? If patterns follow this summer, it will be Trump's minions doing the looting, and with months of his encouragement behind them. "Stand back and stand by" simply asks them to wait a bit, not cease and desist.

This is not the America I grew up in. This is not the America I want to see. Previous elections have been easy to watch, results more trusted, and whatever voter suppression there was remained fairly well hidden. Politicians worked with each other, compromising and becoming friends. Now it's war, and the country, our democracy is at stake. 

I just can't watch yet.

Moon Valley? Or Summerwinds?

It started out as an ambitious day. I had to get up and out early for another (fasting) blood draw to see how the recently changed doses of meds were doing: too much? too little? Or a Goldilocks version of just right? 

Of course, when I started the car, the low tire light came on. They weren't that flat, and I'd just been through putting more air in them, so I resolved to look for a tire store on the way home. WalMart has closed all its automotive work departments (covid), so I needed to get actual new tires at a likely not-so-welcome price. I already knew they needed to be replaced, but had been putting it off due to property taxes, car license renewal, new dog, etc. I actually passed a tires place on my way to the doctor, but by the time I got out of there, the line for tires was about 8 cars long. I told myself this particular errand could wait till tomorrow.

After finally being allowed to eat, now that the blood draw was done, I had breakfast and returned home to plant some more of the baby octopus agaves. Much of what was newly planted already or being rescued from this summer's baking needed watering, so that got done as well. But the process reminded me that I had promised myself I was going to get a yellow version of what is called down here a Mexican bird of paradise. Caesalpinia mexicana if you want to look it up. I have the orange one - it came with the house - but the yellow is showier. And October is a great planting month if you want to spend a summer away and leave plants pretty well accustomed to the desert by then. That gives them 8 months.

A local nursery - Moon Valley - has a branch also on my route to and from the doctor's office. I looked them up from home, called, and asked whether they had my plant in a small size for a modest price. Yep. Off I went. It turned  into my kind of a nightmare. The site is huge, no indication of what is where, and I didn't even know what the foliage of my plant looked like. There were helpers around, and I spied one at a cash register, ringing one customer up, with another couple in line. I decided to make myself #3. That's when the cash register guy vanished, informing me he'd be right back in two minutes, after arranging assistance for the couple ahead of me. He never returned. (I looked for a deep sinkhole in the parking lot as I was leaving, wanting to be sure I didn't also vanish into one, but didn't find any.) There was no place to sit, the sun was hot, my legs had already been used enough, and I watched as a plethora of new customers  walked in and immediately received the attention of other staff while I was completely ignored. 

After a full twenty minutes of that, I said "To heck with this!" - literally - and returned to my car, where I called the nursery I was now sitting outside of, got passed from unanswered phone to unanswered phone while a recording asked me to be patient each time, finally asking me to leave a message. Boy, did I! In case they care, they now know exactly why they lost a customer who knew exactly what she was going to buy, and was now going to buy it elsewhere.

I have fond memories of another garden center, not quite so local, where I've shopped before, those few times we didn't get plants at the Desert Botanical Gardens semi-annual plant sales. It's called Summerwinds, and is a ways east on Bell Road. However, they have a large lot, and their entrance is organized so that you go in past the cash register where they have three cashiers assisting customers speedily through their purchases. By the time I walked up to them, all were available to be asked how I could get help. Immediately a young man was flagged down, we got a flatbed type cart, and he took me to the exact spot where my bird of paradise was waiting. He even picked out of the lineup the one with the best shape. By then I remembered I had wanted some aloe vera plants which bloom with orange blossoms rather than what my yard is already full of, the yellow flowering ones. He knew exactly where those were also, though the exact variety I wanted was harder to find. While he looked in one direction, I found two packed-full pots on the next table. Their version is a variety called Safari Rose Aloe. The tag informs me I can text #----- to ----- for more information. If I texted, of course. Luckily, it's an aloe. I'm going to treat it like ... an aloe. They like me. And rabbits hate them! Win-win.

They are no longer in the store. 

He stuck around until I had paid for them, then assisted me in getting them into the car, for which I thanked him sincerely. During our walk to each of the plants' locations, we'd had a chat about my earlier experience at Moon Valley. He agreed that they were terrible. Not only was the service nonexistent, but it turned out that the bird of paradise here at Summerwinds was $10 cheaper!

Tomorrow I'm getting up early and doing some more planting. Likely Saturday as well. You have to soak the ground in order to get anything through it, from a stake to a shovel, and it advances in about 3" depth increments. That's fine for the little pots of agave babies, but now we're talking dirt by the gallons!

I had just enough energy this afternoon, once I sat for a good while, to cut chicken wire cages removed from well established plants, now needing more room for growth and past the yummy-for-rabbits stage, into half sizes for the short plants remaining to be planted, with one tall and wide cage left for the bird of paradise. The number of cages and plants needing them now match exactly!

So, where's the ibuprofin?

Ya Just Gotta Love It

 email to club treasurer

subject: I'm finding this funny....


Hi _____,

I got this letter from the IRS today. Kind of a surprise, for many reasons. It's the second time in my lifetime when they "lost" one of my documents. Reason I'm telling you is the one they "lost" is the 1099 I sent along with a Schedule C. I know it was them, because I don't have theirs, just mine.

Reason I find this funny is it's so pointless. First, you sent in club info early in the year, and they should be able to instantly locate it via computer. It works for banks if you send in erroneous info.

Second, they insist on no staples, paper clips, or other fasteners, so loose things just... "magically" disappear.

And third, I didn't even come near to needing to FILE for last year, but did during that time when we were told it was necessary in order to qualify for those $1200 checks. (You know, because they couldn't manage to find us after sending us SS checks for years, right? Until they figured out they could.) I didn't even bother to claim any expenses on Schedule C, and commented on the form that I wasn't going to bother because I wouldn't need to pay taxes regardless.

So now, they need a copy of the 1099. Think I'll pop into the club and see if the copier is working, donate a quarter, and pop it in the mail to them. (Can't REALLY call it a club expense after all.) I just know they'll tell me it was the wrong one because it'll say it's taxpayer's copy of whatever the terminology is. And I still won't owe any taxes.

Anyway, hope you can appreciate the humor. Wish they could, but I doubt they'd be working there if that were the case.

So-o-o-o nice to be retired.

Heather

PS: I had almost as much fun applying for a loan once. In filing I'd run out of Schedule C forms due to mistakes, and filed at the very end. Back when forms were in P.O. and not online. So for my copy, I just put down "Line 1 _____, Line 13______, etc. Loan officer flipped his lid that it wasn't on a "real" form. I just told him to look one up and fill the numbers in their right places. They never changed the things. Got the loan too!