It's Saturday Night and I Have the House to Myself!

The first thing I did was turn the blaring football game OFF! Next, I turned the finetune player up fullblast. The Yardbirds "Train Kept A Rollin" came on first, then George Thorogood "Bad To The Bone". WOO HOO I'm liking this!
The boy went to spend the night with a friend of his and from there will go to mass and then to youth group. This means I have the house to myself until three or four tomorrow afternoon. Whatever shall I do??? The hot water is already running...complete with bubbles and all the smell good stuff I can find :) Might even shave my legs :) Once I soak for an hour or so then I think I'll put on clean sweats and make my plan for tomorrow.
Because the economy is so bad and groceries and gas are so high I think I must revert back to doing the sale paper Wal-Mart thing. Usually it doesn't pay me to do that because we live a good way from Wal-Mart and I hate the crowds and the fact that it is merchandised to make me purchase things that I normally wouldn't. If I stick to my list and don't look up I think I'll be alright. It's like a test of wills when you go to that place. Besides my theory is if you just pick a store, any store and learn it really well (like when they have sales on what you use) you can do as well there as at Wal-Mart. Plus if you shop there all the time then at this time of year they send you little thank you incentives. Mostly, I shop at Kroger. It's the right size...I don't have to walk the equivalent of two football fields to get what I need, then another to get to my car pushing the loaded buggy. Last year, Kroger sent me several coupons for money off my entire grocery order. It seems like it was $16. It seems like the total for the entire holiday season was around $60. Now, to me, that's pretty good. This year it's not so much. I guess the economy has hit everywhere. But it is still substantial with the other coupons they send and the regular double coupons.
Some of my friends freaked when I told them I was moving to this part of town. I moved here because at the time I was on foot. In fact, I found this duplex complete with laundry room, two bedrooms, a yard for the boy and the cats and a covered carport when we were two days from the sheriff coming to throw our stuff out of where we were living. I thought God had directed me to this place. This apartment is a block from a bus line that is as frequent as any in town. There are two grocery stores, a drugstore, a convenience store, a Fred's, a Roses, a cleaners, a laundromat and many fast food places right within walking distance. I thought I had moved to heaven when we first moved in.
It was a real fluke finding this place. It was November and still hot. I had taken the bus over to check on a complex type apartment and the jerk that was the manager condescendingly told me that they would check my credit. A foreclosure, I assumed, would not allow me to get that slum apartment, so I just started walking back up to the bus stop when I noticed what seemed to be a neighborhood much like where were living and even had "circle" in it's address...it was too much of a coincidence so I decided to go see if there were any vacant houses that might be for rent. I walked around the entire circle and only saw one that looked like it was in the process of being renovated and not finished. So I kept walking. The circle has two cut through streets and I had already been through one of them and was starting to get really tired, not to mention really sweaty. The little voice said "go on and check out the other cut through street". I had to force myself to do it. I got to the end of the street and there it was. It looked like it might be a duplex and I've always liked duplexes...only one close neighbor :) It was a really pretty blue and it looked well-kept and best of all the carport looked empty. I remember thinking...now if someone lived there surely something would be in the carport, pack rat that I am. I went up to the front apartment and knocked on the door. A surprised black man came to the door...even more surprised when he saw me, a big 'ole red-faced sweaty white woman :) I asked him a bunch of questions and he stopped me and said if I could wait about 30 minutes or so that the landlord was on his way over and I could ask him all that.
Hughey, the landlord was sent to me directly from God and I know that to be fact :) He let me rent the apartment without a credit check, he let me have my cats "I'm not going to tell it and if you don't mention it, the owner will never know", wink, wink. Hughey did so much for me and I will be forever grateful to him for it. He let me slide on the rent until I got my first financial aid check from school. He gave me rides when I needed to go to DHS. He would even consider property in lieu of rent sometimes, if he could use it :) I could not have asked for a better apartment manager. Then he had a falling out with the owner over the owner not paying him for work he had done to the owner's other houses. The owner got another manager, Sandy... another Godsend. He was just the sweetest man, in fact his entire family was that way. They all took care of me with whatever this old house needed.
Now, I tell you all that to tell you this...about two years ago the owner decided to get out of the rental housing business and he sold all his properties. WOE IS ME :) It has been s**t ever since. But the last management company was pretty good. At least they understood that I was a single female with cats and a kid and they were careful who they rented the front apartment to. Now the new owner has changed management companies because he wanted to consolidate all his properties into a management company that could handle all his properties. To make a long story short, we might get evicted right here at Christmas. I could tell when I went to talk to the woman that she wasn't going to lift her hand to help me and she didn't. Even though the former management company told me that the owner was pretty easy to get along with and would probably cut me some slack since I had to put $1300 worth of new steel doors on this house so we would be safe in here. That's another story for another day though. When she called me back to tell me that he said to go on and start the eviction proceedings I could tell by her voice that she was taking some delight in telling me that. I doubt she even told him about the doors. I know it is time to move away from here but we can't do that until I get out of school and get a job. Hopefully this will happen soon :)
Anyway, I said all of that to tell you why you now see the Smorty widget on here. It was never my intent to make money from this blog. I just wanted to make a contribution to the field of social work and help my fellow students. From time to time I will be reviewing non-socialwork related sites to try to bring in some money from this site. I ask for your tolerance and your prayers :) We'll be alright...I know God did not bring us this far to let us fall now. :)
It is always very draining for me to write about my personal stuff so I think I will go enjoy my bubbles now :) Have a great weekend and as always Happy Searching!