On Wednesday, April 29, Henrietta turned 87 years old.  There were festivities as you’d expect from a festive family like this.  I do, in fact have pictures that I would like very much to post, but this stupid thing won’t let me as the file size gizmo has pissed off the maximum load of shit thingy.  Or some such crap.  And it’s not WordPress’s fault this time.  It’s that rat bastard, Vista.

Have I mentioned how I loathe Vista?  I do.  We are getting an Apple sometime in the near future and all I have to do is find a way to finance it….  Hum.  I have children I could sell.  They are 18 and 19 now, but really, if I list them as “slightly used”, won’t that cover my butt?

Anyway, as I was saying before I got all sidetracked, H had a birthday with a beautiful cake I made and Kes iced for me and presents and whatnot.  She had a grand time.  Only her daughter never showed up or called.  So about half way through the day, I’m figuring she may have forgotten and I started trying to call her.  I left messages and never heard back from her.  John did the same from work.

The next day, Thursday, she showed up with the most gawd-awful looking pot of almost completely finished blooming tulips.  Some of them were lying over the side of the pot.    She said she hadn’t called the day before because she was out of minutes on her cell phone and she never gave any idea about why she didn’t come.

She doesn’t own a car, but drives a 14 year old piece of junk Accord that belongs to her boyfriend.  And I DO mean junk.  Rust showing through, no A/C, dings and dents everywhere.  Ugly as sin.  She always parks right in the middle at the end of the sidewalk.  We always make a point not to park there because it is directly across the street from my neighbors driveway.  It’s the elderly couple with the red door that I have posted about before.  They are very sweet and terrific neighbors.  It just makes good sense to not park right where someone has to back out.  You know, the courteous thing to do.

We should have told her not to do it too.  The man that lives there was backing out and hit that piece of junk and dented the front quarter panel.  So he rang the bell and asked me if he could talk to me and I went out and he showed me the dent and said that they were going some place right then and just tell SIL they’d be back in a little while.

So SIL called her boyfriend and told him.

Here’s where I get politically incorrect.

He’s a wet back an illegal alien.

Of course he wanted the insurance info.  **Sigh.**

She stayed here longer than usual visiting with her mother that day so that she could go and talk to my neighbor.  That’s the only good that came out of this.  He gave her his phone number and asked her to call him when she got an estimate.

That was all on Thursday and Friday SIL was calling saying that she’d talked to him and he’s supposed to be bringing a check over.

For $244.00.

To fix body damage on a car.

Yeah,  right.

John was appalled at the whole thing of course and we are both embarrassed.  So when the neighbor came over with the check, he talked to him and apologized.  When the guy left John told me that he’s going to tell his sister that he brought the check but needs a copy of the estimate for his records. He didn’t believe for one minute that $244.00 was going to fix that car either.  And, he and I both know the car will never get fixed.  It will just be an embarrassing reminder every time she comes over here of what happened and how she extorted money from our retired, on a fixed income, neighbors.

She came back on Saturday earlier than she has been here in many, many months, (1:15), and while I was surprised to see her that early, I wasn’t.  My first thought was “OK, at least she’s in time to change her mother’s diaper this time.”.

She stayed 10 to 15 minutes and left.

H promptly rang the bell to be put on the bedpan.

This is my life.

The copy of the estimate she brought looks legit enough.  It’s barely legible, but has the name of the garage stamped on it.   So… whatever!