Tuesday, August 23, 2011

7 Year Old Hairdresser

So, this morning I was looking at my 7 year old daughter and I noticed something funny with her hair.  She had some chunks missing.   This is very disappointing because we have been through this about 3 or 4 times now.  My 7 year old daughter apparently deems herself a hairdresser because she keeps cutting her hair.  I don't understand why she keeps doing it because I flip out and fly off the handle everytime she does it.    Last year this time she had gorgeous long blonde hair that she decided to layer and give herself a little whisp of bangs, right before her dance recital and aunt's wedding I might add.  

The cutting of the hair is bad enough but when I asked her about it, she lied to me.  She knew what she did was wrong and she went to a new friend's house yesterday so she totally threw her little sister under the bus and tried to blame her.   I saw right through it and finally got the truth out of her.  Which I might add was so stupid.  She said she had some goober type stuff in her hair so she snipped it out.   Seriously, what is wrong with these kids?  

To some of you, this might not be a big deal.  But, to me there are two things that send me over the mommy cliff that I flip out over.  1.  When children take markers or pens and write all over themselves.  I hate that.  I am not a huge fan of tattoos or strange piercings so maybe that has something to do with it but I absolutely cannot deal with children covered in marker.  Just ask my prior daycare provider, she was always terrified when the kids got a mark on themselves with pen or marker....lol.    2.  When children cut their own hair.   It looks horrible and rarely can you do anything to make it look nice.  

So, now for the punishment.  In the past I have taken away all of the scissors in the house and made her ask me to use them while I watch her every move with them and constantly embarrass her by saying "your not going to cut your hair with those right?".  It obviously has not worked.  Time to take some extreme measures.   We already had plans today to go to the beach and it is with Jackson's friends too so I wasn't about to punish him.   Being Olivia's brother is already punishment enough sometimes.   And, she has a party for her old Girl Scout troop tonight so they can say goodbye to her since we moved to a new school district.  But, other that those two things, she is spending every waking moment in her bedroom and only allowed to come out to 1) eat a meal, 2) clean up the toy room when the boys mess it and 3) to go to Tai Kwon Do class tomorrow. 

I am also contemplating making her pay for her own haircut to fix it.  She has been saving up money to buy something she really wants and finally has the $21 it costs.  I am thinking that maybe that money should be put towards her haircut to fix the mess she has made before school starts. 

Thought?  

Friday, August 19, 2011

A Stream of Bad Luck

First off, I want to apologize because I am kind of having a feeling sorry for myself morning.   I realize that my life is not bad and I do have so many good things going on and how fortunate I am.   But, the last couple weeks have been one thing on top of another.    I feel like I either did something to piss off the karma gods or am going through a streak of bad luck.  I am over it. 

The first thing was the whole ex landlord thing.  Which still isn't resolved...we are in limbo waiting for him to come back with the "you have to replace the siding quote".   From our understanding, he has until August 21st to give us something.    Then, we will decide what to do from there.  I highly doubt he has a case but it's the whole point of us having to fight him to not only get our security deposit back but to get the judge to tell him he is not getting anything else from  us.     This is causing us stress, we are worried because the justice system isn't always fair.   I have anxiety and it's really hard to just let it go and forget about it when you have anxiety.

Then, this weekend I was excited because I sold a bunch of my stuff on ebay.   I listed a bunch of items for a friend who was going to give me a cut of the profit she made  but nothing of hers is selling so it seems that I wasted my time and hers with that.   I was looking forward to making a few bucks off of doing something that I like but I don't think it's going to happen.  In fact, I am just going to lose about 30 cents and the rest of my free listings for the rest of the month.  (I get so many "free listings" each month and I used a bunch on her stuff to help her out).   I'm not  upset over it so don't get me wrong, just bummed.    Anyway, back to my point.   I sold a bunch of my stuff and was in the middle of printing out labels and my printer died.   So, now I can't print out anything.  I had to  hand write all of the labels and then take them to the Post Office so they could get the postage.  Most of the time, the Post Offices get annoyed with me because I bring in about 20 packages and three kids.   Enough Said. 

My laptop also died this week.   I don't know what happened to it but it will not do anything.   It's annoying because I saved up my ebay money for months to buy that and was so happy to have something of my own, something that only I could use.   As most of you know, when you become a mom, you don't have much that is just yours anymore.  Plus, my desktop is downstairs and it was nice to have something to play on while I was watching The Beast in the living room.  I pretty much have to gate him into a one room space or he gets into everything.   With him around, I am trapped to basically watching tv because if I leave the room for a second, he gets into something he's not supposed to or is destroying something. 

Then, my cell phone won't connect to the internet.  I use my cell phone to play on facebook and do foursquare plus twitter and games like words with friends and I can't right now.  It is driving me crazy.   It's also a touch screen and it's very "sticky" like right now.  I can touch something and it hesitates or gets stuck and the phone is only one year old.    I just don't have the money to go out and buy another $400 phone.  

Those things are trivial yes but put together it's kind of annoying.   There is also another thing that is going on but I don't want to talk about it publicly right now.   I have a decision to make and need to without the people involved knowing.   It's nothing big, just something I have to figure out.   Let's just say it affects the only socializing I get around here right now so it's frustrating.  

This week I have also taken Olivia, my 7 year old to 3 dance studios because she is dying to get back into dance.   She is good at it and she needs to stay busy.   It is frustrating because dance is so expensive.   Where we used to live it wasn't bad at all and very affordable.   Here, the prices are crazy to me, especially since we are living on one income.    I hate feeling like I am not contributing to the family expenses.  I hate having to scale back and not do everything we want to do or want the kids to do.   We are not poor and my husband makes a good amount of money so I don't understand how all of these other one income families can afford to have their child in every single activity and go on all of these family vacations, etc.    I don't think we are doing anything wrong.   I keep applying for jobs but I can't even get called for an interview.   It's very frustrating and it's making me feel like I am worthless and I don't like that feeling.   I hate being a stay at home mom and I feel each day I am getting more and more depressed.  

I'm sorry this blog is such a downer.   It's just the mood I've been in lately.  I need to snap out of it, I know.  It's just figuring out how. 

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

THE LIST

  As you guys might know, our prior landlord is trying to screw us over bigtime.  He is not only NOT giving us our $1000 security deposit back,  but he is trying to get an additional $689.96 out of us.    Here is the "List" of why he is not giving it back to us.   

PARTS
Salt for water softener $37.40,
Whole House Water Filter $ 10.99,
Fridge filter $39.99,
Light bulbs pink room $2.58,
Light Bulbs downstairs $0 Lost Receipt,
Light bulbs dining room $3.99,
Bug spray for foundation $5.88,
Shampoo for carpet cleaning $8.49,
Murphy soap for cupboards $2.97,
Mr. Clean for floors and exterior $3.19,
Mouse Poison for crawl space $0 Lost receipt,
Air Fresheners $0 Lost receipt,
Wood for screen door $5.48,
Garage Door repaired $169.00

INSIDE HOUSE TASKS COMPLETED
Clean inside windows, wash window screens, wipe trim of all windows and doors, scrub paint

from carpet, vacuum all carpets, shampoo all carpets, fill water softener tank with salt, change

whole house water filter, clean out dryer lint trap, scrub stains from bath tub, scrub stains from

kitchen sink, replace 3 light bulbs in kitchen light, replace one light bulb in pink bedroom, clean

out “J” trap in bathroom sink, replace 9 volt batteries in both water alarms (under kitchen sink

and laundry room wash basin), replace 9 volt battery in upstairs smoke alarm, put trim back on

basement wall, put screen on washer discharge hose, clean stove top burners, clean oven, clean

out microwave, put dining room curtains back on, mop bathroom floor, put living room curtains

back on, wash hand railings on both interior stairways, put shower curtain back on, put bathroom

carpets back in room, wipe dust from all 5 ceiling fans, replace 2 bulbs in downstairs family

room lights, wipe out inside and outside of all kitchen cabinets, mop kitchen and dining room

floors, pick up expired poison boxes and put new mouse poison in crawlspace.


OUTSIDE HOUSE TASKS COMPLETED & PENDING
Trim tree limbs off of roof of house, unplug rear gutter on screened patio and clean out, clean out

front and rear house gutters, trim bushes off front split rail fence, fill hole from septic servicing,

mow and water yard, clean mold off of garage door, sweep out garage, wash front entry way of

house, clean outside windows, fix fence post in back yard, fix torn and broken screen door on

patio, scrub mold from cement on driveway apron by garage, spray foundation for ants and bugs.

(We are also getting bids to reside the house, which will properly return the house and siding to

pre-lease conditions, as your cable installation was done against our instructions and damaged

our house, you both will be responsible for this repair also).

LABOR TO COMPLETE THE ABOVE TASKS
Saturday July 30
4Hours each x 2 people = 8Hours for day

Sunday July 31
8Hours each x 2 people = 16Hours for day

Monday August 1
8Hours each x 2 people = 16Hours for day

Tuesday August 2
8Hours each x 2 people = 16Hours for day

56Hours x $25per hour = $1400.00

I am at a complete loss of words - I cleaned that place from top to bottom before we left - he also locked us out two of the days that we paid for so if he had problems, we couldn't even go back in and fix them if we wanted.   There are a few things on there that are completely reasonable but about 95% of it is crazy.    I don't even know what to do.......

Monday, August 1, 2011

When have people become so selfish?

This is a question that I have asked myself for a while now.   Don't you feel like everyone in the world just purely cares about themselves anymore and kindness and appreciate, not to mention respect for others have gone out the window?  

I have many examples of people being selfish.   But the one that put me over the edge happened to us just yesterday.  I hesitate even posting about it publicly because it's kind of embarrassing but I feel that blogging will help me "let go" of the anger I have about the whole subject. 

As many of you know, we just recently purchased a home in the northern Minneapolis area.   Anyway, last August we signed a lease to rent a private party's home in Stacy, Minnesota.   It was a nice enough house but nothing special.   We found it on Craigslist and never met the owner because he lived in South Dakota at the time.  We went and looked at it and were happy with it at that moment.   It was the right price and fit our family until we found a home of our own.   We were honest with the guy that we had a pet and children.    He was honest with us about how he wanted someone who would really take care of his home and emailed us a long list of things that were required of us if we live there.   This list was so long, it scared me at first because it was a lot of things that landlords should be doing, not the tenants.  But, we signed anyway and lived in the house for just under a year.    The house has 5 acres and a lot of pretty landscaping, including a huge pond with flowers everywhere.    The house was very outdated, I'm talking 1970's peach outdated and needed a lot of work if you were to buy it.     We paid our rent on time every month and took care of the home like it was our own.   We never left a mark on a wall or stained a carpet and we put a lot of our own money into fixing some things and making the yard beautiful.   I even asked the owner if I could update the paint for him, he would pay for the paint and supplies and I would do it for free.  And, let me tell you, painting every room in a house with three kids is not easy.  Throw in a car accident right in the middle and it made it even harder.  But,  I got it done and used nice light colors to brighten up the place.   

This weekend, we moved out of the house and my husband met up with the owners on Saturday morning to walk thru the place.    Everything seemed fine.  Our Ranger was in the pole building and we had some garbage in the garage but  the owners said to take our time getting them out because they hadn't found anyone to rent the place.   (He really wanted to sell it because they now live in Texas but they are quite delusional on what they think the place is worth, the appraiser and the realitor both told him that they would never get near what they wanted for the place).   Anyway, yesterday, the guy owner called my husband and started going off on him about how pissed off they were at us and how we "trashed" their house and completely "destroyed" their yard and how the place was left a "disgusting mess".    My husband thought it was a joke because we cleaned that whole place from top to bottom and made sure it was in better shape than when we moved in.    When we moved in, it was a horrible dirty mess, cobwebs and dirt everywhere and bugs in the windows, you know, you could tell it hadn't been cleaned after the last people left.   Not to mention, the kitchen was just primed and when they did paint, they dripped everywhere and did a horrible job.    The owner also said that (even though we were paid thru today) to come over immediately and get all of our stuff out right away, he is done with us.    We are completely dumbfounded because it doesn't even make sense what he is saying.   Anyone who has been in the house would support us in the fact that we did not destroy the house, that we have improved it.  

What I have decided is that they are mad that nobody else wants to rent the place so they are taking it out on us and trying to  have a case to keep our $1000 security deposit.    That is the only thing I can think of because it is not destroyed at all.   My heart just aches that someone would accuse us of destroying their home, we are not that kind of people.   We are kind people who take care of things no matter whose things they are.    We are certainly not the kind of people who would trash someone else's house and destroy their yard.    I wish I could just let it go, but I just can't, it makes me so sad that other people can be like that.    People are so shady anymore and only looking out for themselves.  

I hate to say it but it has really changed me in the last five years.   I used to be that person who was always thinking about someone else and doing things for others.  You know, that person who when someone's mother dies, I would cook a meal and bring it over.  Or someone was having a baby and I would cook a meal and bring it over and give you some baby clothes that I had laying around the house without asking for a thing in return.    I would do my best to remember events going on in other people's lives and remember to email or call and check up on them to see how they are doing, etc.    Gradually I am finding myself not caring anymore because it seems like nobody even appreciates it.    That makes me really sad.