After this, I will be wary of October forever!

Well, I’m back…and hoping that the last days of October do not continue the trend of disasters, large and small, that have plagued me for the month.

I am ordinarily one of those perpetually optimistic and relentlessly cheerful individuals, the one you could cheerfully choke when she responds to your own litany of disasters by saying “Well, the bright side of this is…” Even when I run into a string of woes in my own life, I tend to view the most recent calamity as the last, and do not look forward with trepidation. As the end of this month approaches, however, I am beginning to waver. The fact that all of the crises, from major to minor, seem to be resolving helps…but their sheer volume has put a bit of a dent in my normally sunny disposition.

I can’t even remember the exact order of them all, but I believe it started with the refrigerator…my big, beautiful, nearly-new side-by-side…making a terrible groaning noise, straining to turn itself on…groan-click…groan-click…groan-click. Eventually it would come on, only to do it again the next time. This fridge is less than three years old and has already had a major repair…it has two compressors and one has already required replacement…so this was a very disappointing event. We called a generic fridge repair man who said it could be this…or it could be that… We paid him for his indecision and called the brand service centre who sent us a tech…at twice the hourly rate of the generic guy…who fortunately had just the right part in his little truck and, R800+ later (equivalent to two trips to the gourmet grocery store) the fridge was working again.

It could have started with the infection, however…I just don’t remember the order of things too well as there have been too many of them. Hubby is diabetic and is prone to skin infections (“boils” to those who are not squeamish) and sometimes he develops a cellulitis with it, which can be quite dangerous. He’s actually been hospitalized twice for these infections and placed on IV antibiotics, so they are nothing to fool around with. Any, he got one, complete with cellulitis and had to start a course of antibiotics with me monitoring the shrinking or spreading of the cellulitis.

A week or so into the month, he woke up with a pain in his left wrist. By the next day his wrist was swollen up at least twice its normal size, red and hot. No evidence of an insect bite or sting was visible, but movement was excruciating. We knew it wasn’t an infection…he was full of antibiotics…so it was off to the doctor’s office again. Doc thought it was gout, I thought it was tendinitis. Awaiting the results of the blood tests, I treated his wrist like a tendinitis…ice packs and a wrist brace in addition to the anti-inflammatory prescribed by Doc…and when the gout tests came back negative, we heaved a sigh of relief. Gout would have been a much worse…and much more complicated…diagnosis.

His wrist improved and the day before I was planning to suggest that he try going without the brace, he called me in the afternoon saying “I’ve had a bit of an incident.” First thing that came to mind was his car…had another arrogant speed demon T-boned him in another intersection? “What happened?” I asked frantically. “Are you OK?”

“I collapsed at the Pick n Pay,” he said. His voice was muffled and indistinct.

He seemed confused and unable to answer questions. I asked if anyone was with him and he handed the phone over to a person he thought was a security person for the supermarket but who was, in fact, a paramedic. He had had an episode of insulin shock…his blood sugar had dropped so low that he lost consciousness…and collapsed in an aisle in the supermarket.

I got to the hospital before he did, and when he got there, the news was worse…when he fell he landed on his right shoulder, bruising it, and bitten through his tongue. After hours in the ER they finally sent us home, but the next morning they called us back for additional tests…seems they were worried about some irregularities in his blood enzymes and wanted to rule out a heart attack with a repeat of the tests. Fortunately the retest was ok, but he remained fuzzy and confused for several days and has a permanent loss of memory for a good part of that day.

The very next day we were in the market and he suddenly looked pale and sweaty. “I need a Coke,” he said. “Fast.” We managed to get a sugar Coke into him, followed by a muffin and forestalled another collapse, but it was obvious that his blood sugar was not yet stabilized.

Amongst all this, my car needed to go into the body shop for what we thought was a minor repair…they quoted us 8-10 business days, which I thought was excessive, but whatchya gonna do? The insurance guys came out and assessed the damage, approved the repair, and Hubby called to make the appointment…only to find that the insurance guy had neglected to include the bee sting antenna on the back of the roof that was part of the damage. Another week passed while we got the insurance people to authorize that as part of the repair, only to have the official Mercedes Benz body repair shop tell us the aerial was an “after market” part and they did not stock it.

I had to go to the internet and find an article about Mercedes Benz’s 2000 model year and refer them to an article referencing the aerial as being part of the factory-installed hands-free phone kit. Only then did some genius suddenly discover that, indeed, it was an “official” Mercedes part and, by golly, they could replace it! Amazing, eh? So, my “minor” body repair ended up taking three weeks…two weeks of it in the shop…but I must say, they did a great job. Well…almost a great job. The next day we got in the car and Hubby decided to clean the front and rear windows. He hit the squirter thingy and the wipers automatically activated. But the rear wiper, instead of wiping the wet glass, began wiping the tailgate…some genius had installed the wiper assembly upside down!

Hubby’s shoulder continued to pain him until he literally could not raise his arm. For days after his collapse he suffered muscle aches all over his body, but as they subsided his shoulder, perversely, got worse. Back to the doc, who diagnosed tendinitis and renewed the scrip for the anti-inflammatory drugs.

I endured two weeks of cabin fever, awaiting the return of my car and just as I was mobile again, I did something to my left hand…who knows what? At first it felt like a burst blood vessel in the palm…it had that stinging soreness…but those usually resolve in a day or two for me. It has been a week and I still cannot grip anything with my left hand if it is going to contact the palm…like a steering wheel. Then, Hubby rocked up with another abscess, this one in a painful and awkward place to treat (under the arm), and on Sunday I stood up from a chair, took one step, and I nearly fell over from the pain in my right ankle.

Back to the Doc…I was starting to think about just taking up residence in his waiting room!...where Hubby got a renewed antibiotic prescription…and I got sent to the hospital for x-rays, ultrasound, and blood tests. The good news is that nothing is broken and I don’t have Deep Vein Thrombosis…the bad news is that I’ve got the symptomatic equivalent of a sprained ankle, but I didn’t injure it in any way. So now I am in bed, foot elevated and an ice pack on it, I am housebound again, and now the inside of my left arm hurts…

That’s a story in itself…I went to the blood lab for the tests and the technician checked both of my arms for “good veins.” She selected Old Faithful, a fat vein in the crook of my left arm that has been the favourite of phlebotomists for my entire life. I knew I was in trouble when she couldn’t get blood on the first pass, and kept wiggling the needle, pushing and pulling it in and out, unable to puncture a vein that sits close to the surface and is as big as the Alaska Pipeline. She finally withdraws the needle and informs me that the veins in my right arm aren’t satisfactory and she is going to have to use a vein in the back of my hands. I don’t think she was prepared for my refusal.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not my hands. How about this fat vein in my wrist?” She demurred, insisting that she had to use my hands. I adamantly refused.

She got insistent. I got annoyed. “It doesn’t hurt that much,” she kept saying, unwilling to hear anything I might have to say about my experience with venipuncture in my hands. I could have told her those veins roll terribly, that the back of my hands bruise terribly after having blood drawn…assuming a vein can be tapped…and I use my hands all day, typing, cooking and/or sewing. She just kept insisting “it won’t hurt that much” when she had managed to provoke a dozen “ow! Ouch! Owowow!” comments of out me while she failed to puncture my biggest vein with fine needle. She was a butcher and I wasn’t letting her near my hands!

She stepped out of the room and I began formulating my explanation to the doctor as to why the ordered blood tests hadn’t been done (because I was planning to leave if she kept insisting on maiming my hand!), but another woman walked in and diverted my attention. She took my right arm and examined my veins and pointed out a vein the first technician had rejected as being inadequate. Then, in a trice, she had the needle into that vein and I literally felt nothing! She drew two vials of blood and withdrew the needle, all without giving me the slightest twinge.

But last night, Dear Hubby took the edge off my distress at being house bound again with a fat foot and a sore hand by taking me to see my anniversary present. Her name is Muffin and she is three weeks old, so she will have to stay with her mum for a bit longer, but she is just priceless. I hope Puddin’ likes her, as she is destined to be Puddin’s playmate. So, even though the month of crises isn’t over yet, things are looking up. Time to get out the knitting needles and finish Muffin’s pink baby blanket…

Landlording is not for the faint of heart!

My husband has never been a landlord before. When I was in my teens, my mother and stepfather were landlords and I learned a lot…too much!...from their experiences.

One of the tenants we ejected last month has come back to haunt us. They moved out on August 11 and, despite my written request for a forwarding address, we have no idea where they went. Neither one of them provided an address so, when we finished our inspection of the property, there was no place for us to send the report. So, I wrote the report, noted there was no forwarding address, and stored it in my computer.

Today we received a letter from a lawyer. The letter is dated August 17…24 days ago and less than a week after they moved out. The letter gives us 14 days to refund the unused portion of their August rent…but the letter was not even posted until 19 days after it was written! It was sent via registered mail, so the date and time it was posted is on the sticker on the back of the envelope…that should sit well with a Magistrate, eh? Guarantee default by failing to post the demand until after the deadline has passed…cute.

We have no idea what this tenant told the lawyer, but based on the demand, the truth wasn’t part of it. First of all, there were two guys on the lease and this dude doesn’t just want his half of the money, he wants all of it. A real pal, eh? Pay half the rent but when you decide a refund is in order, demand the whole bundle for your own pocket. I’m guessing he neglected to mention his co-Lessee and flatmate to the attorney…

He also, obviously, neglected to mention that he never paid his security deposit, which was supposed to pay in monthly instalments…didn’t make even one payment! The amount he owes us for that security deposit is more than he claims we owe him in a rent refund…

Then there is the question of damages to the flat…if we keep the whole excess rent as a part of the arrears on the security deposit (which is what we did), the dude and his buddy still owe us 700 bucks in damages over and above the money his lawyer is trying to pry out of us. So, he wants R3000 from us (only half of which he paid) but he and his former flatmate owe us more than R3700 in damages. Do you think his lawyer would have sent us that letter if he knew?

Ya gotta wonder about people…did he think the cracked toilet would go unnoticed? How do you crack a toilet in four places so that it leaks all over the bathroom floor? Did he think I got a volunteer to work nine hours in that flat, carrying out rotting garbage, clearing the stench out, scrubbing nicotine off the walls, grease stains out of the wall-to-wall and the black slimy mould off the bathroom ceilings? Why was the recessed lighting fixture hanging out of the ceiling? How did the seat of the barstool get snapped in half? And why is one of the pine strips of the ceiling hanging half off? Does he think I have a magic wand that, with one wave, will fix all of that for free? The flat was in fine condition when he moved in…it was a sty when he moved out only four months later!

My husband is a kind hearted man. He wants to help people where he can, he wants to believe the best in them whenever possible. I’ve know all along that when given an inch, most people will take a mile…I remember some of the lulus my mother had for tenants and some of the incredibly lame excuses they could conjure for not having their rent or how something got broken or soiled or damaged or went missing. Forty years later and 12,000 miles away, it is no different.

Being a nice guy, my husband allowed these guys to take the flat without a security/cleaning deposit. We wrote into their lease that they would pay the deposit off in monthly instalments over the next six months. They didn’t pay a cent. And every month there was a sob story about how tight money was…even when it was obvious that they were spending a sh*tload of money on booze since, from the accounts of the neighbours, they were apparently seldom sober.

So, they paid their rent on the first of August and on the eleventh they moved out at our request. We applied the unused portion of the rent, about R3000, to the arrears security deposit…which was still about R700 short. Even if they had been up to date on their deposit payments, they would have gotten back less than R50, due to the filth and damage they left behind.

So, you have to wonder what prompted the letter. Did the guy really think he wouldn’t have to pay for the damages and dirt? What makes him think that even if we were inclined to refund the money, we would give all of it to him and none of it to his flatmate and co-Lessor?

So much of this makes no sense…he didn’t bother to give us an address to send a possible refund, but six days after moving out he sees a lawyer to demand a refund? What kind of sense does that make? Why did the letter take 24 days to get here? The lawyer’s office is less than two kilometres from our place, the post office is between here and there…19 days it sat in his office, unmailed, and it finally gets posted 5 days after the deadline had passed?

We wrote the lawyer back and told him that as soon as his client paid us his half of the damages…which amounted to about R1850…we would pay his client his half of the amount in question…about R1550. Or the man could just pay the additional R330 and we would keep the funds we already had.

And then we said that if he client decided to pursue his claim further, we would turn him over to our attorneys for collection, in which case he would be liable not only for damages, but for legal costs as well.

So, now we wait. Landlording is not a business for the faint of heart.

Are you looking for a job?

When I was in college, I managed a local branch of a nationwide résumé service during my summer breaks. Later on, I operated a desktop publishing business in which résumés were among my biggest sellers. And I spent four years in the trenches as a technical headhunter in Silicon Valley followed by a year managing the recruiting department of a small Silicon Valley high tech firm.

Those experiences taught me a great deal about job hunting, even in a bad economy. I have interviewed hundreds of people in my life and read ten times as many résumés. Over time I began to see patterns, to recognize when people were doing the right thing and when they were not. I saw what kinds of résumés my managers liked and listened to their complaints about the ones they didn't like and, by debriefing my managers and getting feedback from them about candidates, I learned about successful and unsuccessful interviewing.

I have recently written a series of articles called "Surviving a Soft Economy" for The Angels Weekly. This series teaches you how to create the résumé that will best showcase your skills and abilities and give you the best shot at getting those all-important interviews...there is even a free, downloadable sample résumé that you can customize for yourself! The articles also give you insider tips on creating a great cover letter, effective interviewing techniques, and how to answer tough questions like "What are your weaknesses?" in ways that advantage you. The series started yesterday and you can take advantage of my years of experience in this industry just by clicking here!

Good luck and happy job hunting!

Mr. Weaver Bird at work

Hubby has named him "Bob the BuilderBird." Below you can see his nest (the lower one...I haven't seen his branch-mate yet).



Here he is, in all his glory, working on his house. What a gorgeous fellow!

An Early Spring!

Well, the calendar notwithstanding (it is a full month yet until spring officially arrives), spring has sprung.

The recent rains have awakened the bougainvillea outside my bedroom window from its winter slumber and it has sent out a new spike fully 10 feet long, looking for all the world like a giant, thorn studded insect antenna jutting forth from the wall to which the vine clings. And there, midway down its length, hangs a bulbous green growth, a further harbinger of spring…a weaver bird’s nest.

A beautiful black-trimmed gold weaver bird male is diligently collecting grasses and delicately constructing this avian palace for his lady love. When he is finished, he will bring her here for inspection. More likely than not she will rip it to shreds, screaming her indignation at its imperfections, then she will huff off to another tree and await the rebuild.

I’m thinking this particular bird may be a bachelor male, since he has chosen to build his nest so close to human occupation. We have a line of old stone pines at the back of the property in which there is a twittering colony of thirty or more weaver bird families and why this young male decided to forego building his home where his mate would have girlfriends to gossip with from their front door is beyond me. No matter what he does to make this nest perfect, I fear he may be in for an unhappy time of it, unless he is lucky enough to have a sweetheart who prefers isolation to the hustle bustle of the established colony.

I have just taken another look at Mr. Weaver’s nest and discovered a nest further up the bougainvillea stalk…so, he has inveigled another young gentleman to build a nearby nest! This increases his chances of success as these birds prefer living in groups rather in isolation. But the construction of his nest must meet Mrs. Weaver Bird’s exacting specifications and these young males seldom get it right the first time.

Eventually, when (and if) Mr. Weaver Bird gets it right, his lady love will take up residence in her new quarters and proceed to incubate next generation. If she accepts the nest outside my window, I will soon be treated to the chitter-chatter of little bird babies calling for their next course.

I don’t care that the calendar says we have another month of winter to endure, Mother Earth and her furred and feathered denizens say it is spring. The wild calla lilies are blooming, carpeting the vleis with their creamy white cones, wildflowers dot the roadsides, moles are pushing up mounds after months of dormancy, and the lawn looks like a meadow. And the birds are nesting, right within eyesight of my bedroom window.

I love living here!


Photos by Stig Nygaard and smudger888, flickr

Landlords are rich: fact or fiction?

My husband and I own rental property. Each time one of our flats comes up for rent, we show the unit to a horde of people and never cease to be amazed at their expectations and criticisms.

We aren’t slum lords…we have three units on a spacious property with a shared pool. There is parking behind a security gate. We pay the electricity, water, and trash for all three units. When we bought the property we spent 10% of our original 800K+ purchase price upgrading and renovating the property, including new carpeting and paint.

We have a mortgage on the property and, because in this country there is no such thing as a fixed rate mortgage, each time the prime rate goes up, so does our payment. The electricity rates were just increased by 34% and our mortgage payment went up five times in the last 12 months. We raise rents only when a lease is being renewed and our lease allows us to raise it up to 10%. Despite the increases in our mortgage repayments and the increase in the cost of electricity, when our last tenant signed his lease renewal, we raised his rent only 2.5%: our economy is shrinking, he’s a good tenant, and we don’t want to lose him.

Why would we do that? Well, an empty flat generates no income and we depend on the income from the rents to pay the mortgage. The two larger flats must be generating income in order to keep us from digging into our own pockets to make the payments. Good tenants are harder to find than bad tenants…and bad tenants cost us a lot of money in repairs, lost rent while a flat is being repaired, and even legal fees. We are motivated to keep a good tenant who pays his rent on time and keeps his flat and garden in good order, so we made his rent increase minimal so he doesn’t feel like he can’t afford to stay on.

Do people honestly believe that, because we own a rental property, we are rolling in money? And even if we were, why should our affluence mean a renter can destroy the flat or demand the outrageous? Surely the guy who owns the local luxury car dealership has a few coins to rub together…does that mean he should lower the prices on his cars for you or me? So why do people seem to think that because the landlord drives a Mercedes, he has plenty of money and it’s ok to trash the place because, after all, he can afford to fix it?

We had to evict a tenant last week for harassing and intimidating the tenant of another flat. He had been in the unit for four months and when we took possession on Tuesday, I reeled from the shock of the condition of the place. What part of “no smoking in the flat” did he not understand? The flat reeked of stale cigarette smoke…and rotting garbage. Yup, the kitchen floor was littered with trash and a black bag emitted the unmistakeable stench of decay. We had the handyman in to do an assessment and the quote we received covered a full month’s rental…seems they somehow managed to put four cracks in the toilet and replacing that will eat up half the deposit alone. In fact, the damages came to 25% more than the deposit will cover…and he was only in there four months!

A previous tenant was upset with us because we would not dance to her tune…how dare we not build her a garage for her BMW (at a cost equal to a full year’s rent)? How dare we expect her to pay her rent on time? How dare we expect her to refrain from smoking, to water the garden, and abide by other terms of her lease? She quit paying her rent, using the money instead to pay for her new rental and lied to us saying her clients hadn’t paid her. When she moved out, she left the flat in shambles, having caused damage more than double the amount of her deposit. Five months of litigation later, she finally paid up (when the Sheriff came a-knocking with papers to seize that BMW and sell it at auction to satisfy her debt), but in that five month period we had to liquidate some investments to come up with the cash to do the repairs and pay the lawyers. Yes, we recovered the legal fees and were reimbursed for the repairs, but our investments…and their returns…were forever diminished.

I am far from an elitist…I’ve been damned poor in my life, which is what motivates me to be as kind to my tenants as business considerations will allow. Good tenants get treated with special care…we want to keep them and it is worth it to us be flexible in dealing with them in order to keep them. But there are people whose expectations are just ridiculous:

One prospective tenant gave us a hard luck story hoping to get us to reduce the rent for her. “Would you consider reducing the rent?” she asked, naming a figure fully 25% below the asking price. “Sure,” my husband said. “Just as soon as the bank reduces my mortgage by that much.” Unspoken by either my husband or me was the concern that, if things in her life were as tough as all that, is she a good risk with regard to us receiving our rent each month?

Another asked that, if she rented both the two bedroom unit and the little studio cottage on the grounds, would we give her a discount on the rents? Her proposed discount would give her the cottage for nearly free…and remember, we pay the full utilities on all the units! She seemed quite unhappy that we wouldn’t go for her plan.

There were the people who said they would consider renting the big flat but only if we would put security fencing around the pool. Sorry, the flat has a fence all the way around it and if you cannot mind your child and keep him inside an already fenced yard, what makes you think a security fence…and my cost, no less…will keep him out of the pool?

Mostly, however, we get people who want something for nothing. They think the rent is too high without bothering to calculate in the amount of money they would have to pay for electricity. They think that they don’t need to take care of the unit or the garden because we have the money to pay for fixing it after they leave. Even if we do have that kind of money, why does it make it OK to damage the property? And what about those screams of indignation when they hear their deposit is being nicked for pay for it?

If you are one of those people who thinks your landlord is a bottomless pit of money, give some thought to the idea that, if you are late with your rent, he might be late paying the mortgage payment on the property that you live in…and enough of those could see his mortgage foreclosed! Is your landlord slow to fix something? Well, he could be the lazy sod you think he is…and then again, maybe he has to wait for payday to be able to buy the materials to fix the thing that you broke.

But he drives a Mercedes, you wail…his wife wears fine jewellery…they live in an expensive neighbourhood! So what? What does that have to do with your obligation to pay your rent on time, abide by your rental agreement, and maintain your unit? Landlording is a business, it is not a social connection or a charity. If you don’t uphold your end of the bargain, you can make it difficult…even impossible…for your landlord to hold up his.

To expect a person to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a property and then allow you to live there for next to nothing is simply not reasonable. Your landlord most likely has a mortgage on the property you live in and he needs your rent in order to pay it. If you think your landlord is a rich, greedy old SOB who can afford to wait for your rent until you feel like paying it, or who can afford to fix the things you so carelessly damage, you’re probably wrong. He has a budget and cashflow considerations, just like you do, and depends on your rent money to make sure the mortgage on your home is paid each month.

Whatcha gonna do??

A few days ago I went to the Post Office. It’s located in a mall and as I exited my car, I had to turn to find the source of loud voices, as did the man exiting the car parked right beside me. Walking towards us was a young couple, arguing in full voice. As my neighbour and I watched, the young man reached out and grabbed the woman, wrapping his arms tightly around her and stopping her from walking. She struggled violently and broke his grasp, then resumed walking towards the mall entrance, but he caught up with her and grabbed her again, restraining her. She again broke free and resumed her forward progress and while he caught up with her, he apparently saw they had witnesses and this time kept his hands to himself.

As the pair walked past us, the man from the next car looked to me and said “What was that all about?” I shrugged and replied “I don’t know, but if he touches her again like that, I’m calling a cop.” My neighbour nodded and we maintained our watchful positions until they entered the mall where the security staff could watch over her.

***
We have a tenant who is harassing another tenant and we are preparing to evict him. She has a restraining order that he has violated at least twice, and he has been arrested and briefly jailed. There is nothing compelling us to evict him, but his behaviour does violate his lease and we feel that she should not have to lose her home in a place she loves with neighbours who are her close friends because he can’t behave in a civil manner. We served him with notices of breach of his lease and an advance notice of our intent to cancel his lease (in keeping with terms of the lease) and he claims he will be seeing an attorney to fight it.

***
On an internet forum I frequent, one of the members has recently begun soliciting funds for a charity. At first blush, this might seem innocuous…even laudable…but on closer inspection the “charity” appears to be a scam. Inspection and careful perusal of the associated website revealed a lot of fluffy chatter about the founder’s “cause,” but no explanation as to what that cause might be. No charter, no plan, no pictures of needy victims…just garish photos of a blowsy blonde wearing an excess of clotted make up and trying to look sexy, plus a lot of poorly written hype using too many exclamation points.

When asked to explain her “charity,” its purpose and beneficiaries, Blondie dissembled frenziedly, using a lot of ALL CAPS and even more exclamation points. A great deal of drama ensued, polarizing the participants into “tell the truth” and “quit picking on Blondie” factions. Finally, in a flurry of breathless all caps and punctuation marks, Blondie obliquely acknowledged that the charity was, in fact, herself.

Suggestions that Blondie cease soliciting funds until her charity was legally sanctioned fell on deaf ears. When one of the more erudite members of the community called the fund-raising campaign a scam and threatened to contact Blondie’s state attorney general and lodge a complaint, the “quit picking on Blondie” faction revved its objections to a fever pitch.

I was astounded! Here was an internet scam growing before our eyes, the founder of which admitted that the pseudo-charity was for the purpose of lining her own pockets, and people were strenuously advocating that the whistleblower mind her own business!

***
Are we our brother’s (or sister’s) keeper? Has the world changed so much since I learned to tell right from wrong that people feel perfectly justified in publicly restraining an unwilling partner, seeking redress for an eviction caused by documented harassment of another, or proudly revealing…and publicly soliciting support for…an admitted fraud?

And why are such acts finding support? This, perhaps, is what baffles me the most.

The man restraining his girlfriend was viewed dimly by my fellow parking lot denizen, but a person doesn’t behave in such a manner in public without feeling justified in doing so. What has gone on in his life…what kind of support has he received…that allows him to think it is perfectly acceptable to restrain an unwilling and struggling woman, in public or in private?

The tenant has been arrested and his victim has a restraining order against him. He has violated the restraining order on at least two occasions and has admitted it. We reminded him of his obligation to not intimidate, harass, or otherwise disturb the peace of other tenants, per the conditions of his lease. So what kind of support has he received for this kind of behaviour that he thinks a court will grant his bid to remain in the flat and continue to harass the victim who lives next door?

And the internet scam…why on earth would a bunch of apparently intelligent people support the person perpetrating the scam instead of the person who reported it to the authorities? Instead of castigating the perp, why are they perceiving her as being “picked on” when she was asked to stop? This makes me feel like I have fallen down the rabbit hole…it makes me question my perception of right and wrong…it makes me wonder if I am out of synch with a world in which right and wrong have swapped places while I wasn’t looking.

I still stand ready to do the right thing…but can anyone tell me what the right thing is anymore?


Photo by navets, Flickr