In the blink of an eye, it feels like Winter. Hills around us are dusted with snow and we're heading into two full days of rain (according to the weather people). I plan to go outside and do some yard stuff before we're soaked. I ordered some plants for "Fall" planting and they are not in dirt yet so...even though we seemed to have completely passed over the season known as Fall, I need to get them in a patio pot that will be protected from snow fall (by residing on the covered patio over Winter).
Let's see....stuff to catch up on.
The house blessing was absolutely wonderful. Beautiful ceremony and lots of really wonderful, fun, pleasant people to meet. The mother of our neighbor G. came up to J. and I and said 'you must be the lovely neighbors I've heard so much about'. T. & G. are two incredibly joy-filled people and they attract the same - so many friends and family there and everyone was just wonderful. We found a new hole-in-the-wall Mexican food restaurant here in Carson - best Mexican food we've had since we moved here. Everything was SUPER delicious and just the right level of heat. We had a blast. We invited T. & G. to be our guests at Atlantis Steakhouse this coming Thursday to celebrate their anniversary. T. was reluctant to accept but they took us to dinner for our anniversary at Fandango (also a great steakhouse) so fair is fair. Looking forward to a fun evening.
We made two trips to Atlantis this week (Th & Fri) and I came home even on Day 1 and up a smidge on Day 2 so that's great! I've started a new 'trick' of sorts: I 'borrow' an amount from J.'s fun money before we leave. That's the amount I use to play Dragonlinks - which are by far my most favorite slot - and I make it my mission to end my Dragonlink session with at least enough to 'pay back' what I owe to J. . If I hit something really big, I can cash out, pay him back and be in the black for that session. Otherwise, I play for a while and hopefully go up and down and end with enough to be back where I started. It's a form of discipline that helps me do better at not leaving Dragonlink machines down a ton.
(I have plenty of fun money at any given moment so I don't need to 'borrow' from J. - but that 'debt' to another person is a lot easier to force myself to pay back vs. just taking it out of my money and then playing past the point of being even). The psychology of slots is trippy, huh? LOL.
And our free play was also helping in creating play money and I did manage to be up a bit at the end of our session yesterday which was great.
We have a two night stay scheduled at Atlantis the first weekend in November so we're hoarding any wins to use for that long play cycle. It's a drawing event and I'm hoping to win free play. Or the Grand Prize of a Cadillac. (I'll take the cash option - no interest in driving a Cadillac).
On Wednesday, we went to Costco for flu shots. Made appointments in advance. The forms were ready for our signature but the appointment time really didn't make the process any faster - still took about an hour. Luckily, I didn't cruise the aisles during the wait so we managed to stick to our list and made it out of the store for under $150. Might be a record. I woke up in the middle of the night with a raging headache that was even worse when I got up in the morning. I felt pretty rotten most of Thursday but still made it to Atlantis for free play!
A smidge after 9PM last night, J.'s phone chimed - a text from the person who has been trying to find/talk to H. . S. said he did speak to him and basically, H. isn't ready to talk to us at this point. There are a lot of disjointed angles to that scenario - H. had access to a phone because S. reached him on a phone - so....that does seem like H. may have access to ways to communicate with us and isn't. By choice.
I get it - truly, I do. In August, H. and I had a very hard conversation on the phone - centered around his seeming inability to do a simple thing: arrange to put $50 in the Wells Fargo account he has to pay his monthly cell phone bill. Of course, I thought H. had a good job - making $16 an hour, guaranteed 40 hours - so coming up with $50 seemed like such a 'no brainer' - but he couldn't do it. Over and over....request made, commitment it would be done but no deposit in the account. Words were exchanged. And H. said 'Mom, please don't do this to me now' and my trigger was fully launched. 'Do this to YOU? Seriously? What about us? All the shit over and over...what about all that??'....I can't remember the specific exchange but it was ugly - so ugly that I phoned and texted him a couple times to apologize - back to thinking I was being incredibly hard on him.
Turned out he was contacting his beautiful friend P. (in Livermore, CA) and hitting her up for $100 to pay me. (He told her he needed $100 to pay his cell phone bill. He really needed only half of that. If he's groveling for $, he will always ask for more than he needs - covered his drug expenses for a couple days with the other half. Life of an addict).
Shortly after that, he stopped using the iPhone he'd just gotten (to replace the broken one - which he swore he mailed back to AT&T but which we were charged $300 for because they never received it. Now that we know he was homeless, we are positive he never returned the phone. Probably sold it to someone). The $300 was also an amount he owed us that he was not able to commit to paying me back - another in a long list of red flags that resulted in me being a detective and finding out all the lies.
Realizing his parents know what we know - I'm sure he isn't looking forward to the conversation. I'm not either. Though really our plan is to just let him know we love him and worry about him and that hearing from him on occasion would be good. We aren't committing to helping him; won't offer anything - no financial support, no rescuing plane ticket - just acknowledge we love him and hope he will make changes in his life.
We're working hard on focusing on all the amazing things in our life that make us say 'Life is Good' on a very regular basis. In a beautiful home in a beautiful place with nature everywhere. I saw FOUR rainbows on the way to Atlantis yesterday - so beautiful!
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