Violet Sin’s Neighborhood

My landlord
failed to show for the possessory hearing.  I was so ready to pounce for the failure to accept payment from a charity.  I showed up early to see how the evictions were going.  Interesting to say the least.

One defendant
was being sued by a dental place.  The plaintiff was represented by an attorney.  The plaintiff's attorney questions the pro-se defendant and said his dentist office was supposed to apply a discount and didn't.  No proof was provided by either side.  The judge started to say I order for the defendant but the plaintiff's attorney interrupted and asked to be sworn in for testimony on some conversation ... she told him unless it has something to do with fact besides you collecting fees then, 'no you may not be sworn in.'  The plaintiff's claim was for $38 - denied.  Obviously this attorney did not represent his client well - and sacrificed one case for not upsetting the judge on the other 17 cases she heard from him in 10 minutes.  Plaintiffs won every case today except this one - and the ones where the plaintiff didn't show. So awesome to see common sense prevail.

You know,

On the job front,
the whole over qualified thing is getting very old and very frustraing.  I cant get a minimum wage job because of my resume and former salary.  I'm serious - 6, count 'em 6 different employers have told me no - not because they don't have openings but because they are afraid that I'd leave once the market opens up again.

For the first time
in my life I've had to accept charity assistance.  Well actually its the first time I've needed it.  Community Action Program-CAP (aka the Energy Assistance Office) paid my electric bill on Friday and gave me a $25 gift card for a local grocery store.  When they called Duke Energy to tell them that they would be paying my bill, Duke informed them that they had me on the disconnect schedule for today (last Friday).  After they were on hold for a bit trying to stop the disconnect they came back on and they said the truck was at my apartment but they stopped it in time.  Whew...

Then they offerred
to pay my rent. Would you believe that my landlord refused, Stafford Pointe Apartments in Plainfield, IN (Greed Central) is refusing full payment. They refused it last Friday because it was for $139 less than what I owed.  The manager told me that they needed a money order for the $139 and then they would accept the charity's payment so I got a family loan for that on Sunday. I dropped off the charity form and my $139 money order late last night. Today when I called them to confirm everything was ok so they could drop the eviction suit... 

Yep they are refusing
because signing the form means they are accepting a 'voucher' for about 4 days until the check arrives.  This charity says these vouchers are processed the same day - the 4 days is for US mail.  The thing is that court hearing isn't until April 6th...

I knew that they
were a little on the greedy side when they sued me in January. Rent is due on the 5th and if they don't have it on the 16th the sue. I settled that one by selling my car for rent money. My dad loaned me money to buy another vehicle since then.

Sooo, I'm at a decision
point. No other landlords will take me - even if I had steady income because I have an eviction on my credit and these guys seems hell bent on throwing me out - even after being presented with full payment including court costs and late fees. My adopted mom and biological mom have both offerred to put me up. Besides the inherent turmoil in having to make that choice I also have to contend with leaving Circle Face for an extended period of time as both mom's live 4 - 6 hours away drive time. I'm leaning strongly against taking my moms up on their respective offers and will most likely move into a homeless shelter or live in my car for as long as I can.

With a shelter or living
in my car I would not be able to have Circle Face stay over night but at least I could still see her weekly. That is something that I just can't get around. I think it is better to be homeless than to miss time with my daughter.  The time less about me missing her but more about her needing her dad on a regular basis.

This whole situation
is paralyzing. Do I sit here and cry, do I spend the $139 (if I can get a refund on the money order) for gasoline in order to go job hunting throughout the city ... do I move to Tennesee or Kentucky and leave my daughter behind for a few weeks/months (who really knows)?

According to Maxim magazine (yes, I have a subscription - don't hate):

In Ireland they say a pint should be drained in seven swigs, leaving seven foam rings (laces) inside the glass.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I decided to put this to the test. Unfortunately, I couldn't record my results until the experiment was completed and at this point, I may be too drunk to adequately convey the results.

Much of this experiment relies upon your definition of "swig" - I interpreted the data in "gulps" vs. "swigs." If taking one swig is filling the mouth and any number of gulps is allowed to finish the drink, then yes, I was able to finish a pint in seven swigs. However, if we are counting the number of actual swallows - or gulps - then my minimum number is 24.

As I said, I'm really too drunk to convey this information. Let's hope the pictures do this experiment justice:

Oh shit! They uploaded in reverse order, but that totally reminded me of what I wanted to say! The experiment was flawed from the beginning...when I got my crappy bottles of Guinness home, I discovered they are only 12 fl. oz., not the requisite 20 oz. that I needed to make a full pint.

Also, my beer didn't even make rings on the glass!

Therefore, I am calling this whole study flawed - I think I probably need to be in the company of real Irishmen, in Ireland, to be able to convey this data in it's purest form and to obtain the guidance I obviously need.

Having said all that - FUN! Yay! Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody! I'm going to continue on now and get lit! WAAAHOOOOO!!!

Oh, before I go, I should give credit to my faithful assistant on this project:

I have been staring at this blank page for about two minutes. Whenever I try to write about this topic, I find I cannot, because it is something very close to me, that effects me very much. I don't really know where to start, so I'm just going to write what comes out off the top of my head.

When we moved into our new place a year ago, I was immediately drawn to the filthy plot of hardened earth on the sidewalk outside our building. It looked like this when we moved in:

Well, actually, it looked much worse than that. The photo at left is after I took out most of the used plastic utensils, old batteries, orange peels, assorted rusty keys, nails, a single razor blade, and a condom wrapper. It took awhile to aerate the dirt and mix in a new layer of top soil. I then bought 500 worms to mix in and planted some flowers. Here is what it looked like after all that:

Unfortunately, those flowers did not prove hardy enough for the foot traffic coming in and out of the parking spot adjacent to the garden. The stone border got kicked to shit and the flowers trampled upon. After a little while of continuing to water & nurture the soil, as well as keeping my worms happy and removing trash daily, I decided it was time to upgrade the garden, which I refer to as "the bum patch" with some hardier succulents and ground cover plants.

 

My husband rented a car for us, and we visited Home Depot to procure my new babies. I briefly considered planting nothing but cactus, but my conscience wouldn't allow me to actually do so. Instead, I purchased aloe, some ground cover with pretty hot pink flowers, and a succulent of some varietal I could not name. Thus, I cultivated bum patch 2.0 and for about a week, it looked almost as though people were going to respect my little plot. There were still daily deposits of trash - lighters, cigarette butts, styrofoam coffee cups, and animal feces - none of which bothered me, as I have grown accustomed to picking these items out of the patch.

The real offense came this past weekend, when some godless fuck went to the trouble of digging out and stealing my fucking aloe plant. Now, I don't know the street value of aloe or if it can assist in the procurement of crack or crystal meth; nor do I know if this vermin simply decided to take my plant because it was there and not chained down...but really - REALLY - is that REALLY what we have come to as a society? That anything not nailed down is free for the taking? That it is okay to destroy someone else's property, just because it's unguarded?

I know that I should not be upset; I knew this could happen, even that it was highly likely to happen. I even gave my plants a little pep talk when I put them in the ground - I told them that they had been selected for a tough job, because they were the best of the best and I knew they could take it...but now I just feel bad. For humanity. For my stupid abducted plant, which for all I know ended up in a dumpster or a crack house. And it's hard for me to talk about this shit, because no one, EVER, should be this sensitive to the world and I hate that I am this vulnerable.

Here's the current state of my garden:

I will do what I can to maintain what is left, but in 75 days we will be gone and it will be totally on it's own. While the plants will likely go unwatered and the trash will undoubtedly pile up, my only hope is that the 500 baby worms I mixed in the soil - which are huge fatty's now by the way - will continue to be nourished from my efforts. I did the best that I could do for them, and for this tiny piece of urban landscape. What happens next is no longer in my hands.