It’s No Good

So now we’re well into the fall. My Employment Insurance has been approved with no waiting period – so to speak – as I am on a Temporary Lay-Off which means that I’ve only lost my job for the time being and will be called back once the company can afford me. Pretty straightforward EI claim as they’ve got none of the normal verifying of the reason why an individual is applying. In Ontario, this means that if you are implicated and found even partially responsible for your job loss, EI can deny your application. This also prevents people from quitting their job just ’cause and then apply for EI. Both of these situations automatically disqualifies the individual. At that time, 2005, I was entitled to 60% of my salary but as next to no taxes or deductions were subtracted, it was almost the same amount as my normal salary with all of the required taxes etc were calculated. In my near addled junky mind, all I could think was “Sweet!” Business as usual.

And it was for the first couple of months…sweet, that is, but like anything else, this didn’t last. One of my friends ended up becoming our dealer after we ended up having a falling out with our original one. My friend was, and as far as I know, still prescribed massive amounts of narcotic analgesics.  On the first Wednesday of each month he receives/ed 720 8mg brand name dilaudids prescribed by his family doctor.  I had filled this prescription many times in the past for him, and as he was/is not on any sort of drug plan, it cost him about $320CAD every month.

He received these due to some injuries he had sustained during a work accident. As far as I know, him and two other workers somehow ended up being literally buried alive for a large part of one of their work days. When they rescued them all, he had broken both of his legs, some ribs, his right hand and one of the fingers on his left hand. I know that he also sustained some nerve damage in one of his hands. As far as I remember, he ended up being in hospital close to six months. Anyway, initially he never actually used any of his pain meds as he quickly learned that they were much more valuable to him if he sold them outright. Before greed overshadowed everything, he sold his pills at 10 for $100,  though this didn’t last very long, or 2 for $25 or $15 each. Do the math. He made a shocking amount of money from this endeavor and as he didn’t even use the pills at that time himself, it was all gravy.

Kind of ironic, but as long as there were pills easily and readily available, life continued on, and with it, the feeling one didn’t have so much as a care in the world. Not surprisingly, this illusion could disappear in an instant and with no warning. The first time you woke up only to discover that the well had gone dry wasn’t so bad. You hadn’t yet trained your junky mind and body to go into automatic and painful withdrawal at this mere suggestion. Not yet, but very soon. By the end of this first day without the ready availability of pills, you actually managed to finally hookup. The moment you fixed, you felt returned to normal. Two weeks later when the same situation presents itself, your mind and body are less forgiving and understanding. Start to feel anxious and nervous the longer the day stretches with no sight of relief. Well into the evening, you impatiently wait but you’re really incapable of doing anything much else as the waiting taxes every fibre in your body, and now it had started to become more and more frequent and difficult to find opiates on a daily basis.

After a short time, our bodies started to go into withdrawal when no opiates could be located, and this wasn’t pleasant. This had started to bother me as obviously having to endure ever increasing periods of withdrawal was by no stretch enjoyable and I started thinking more and more frequently that there had to be something more than this. Also, our main connect had started to lose track of the picture, and had begun treating us with disrespect, and had begun to take us for granted. For the most part, Jim and I tried to buy these pills in bulk. There rarely were no more than maybe a half a dozen smaller purchases throughout the month. Now, one would thing that if one of his customers was buying 260 units monthly that perhaps he would be able to cut them a bit of a break, but sadly no. He charged us groups of ten – sometimes on the very rare occasion groups of twelve – which translated into 26 groups of ten units each, charged at $100 per group, which adds up to $2600 each and every month!

When I say that we were regulars, I truly mean that we were indeed that. I am in no way attempting to inflate our use, and in fact, am extremely ashamed and embarrassed even sharing this info, as it paints a pretty distasteful picture of what we allowed our addiction to become before we were finally able to put the breaks on it. Now for just over 24 months dealing with him, we never deviated far from this number. We almost always paid in advance, and always paid cash – no bartering or asking for them up front, etc. If we did have to request a front, it was rarely for more than a few days. Now, I get why he didn’t want to cut us too sweet a deal as he had begun to rely on our money each and every month. Who wouldn’t want to receive this amount, especially considering there was no work needed at all whatsoever in getting it? No hustling, no nickel and dime sales, less traffic coming and going to his house because he didn’t need a dozen or so more customers minimum to replace the two of us.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Barrel of a Gun

The summer that my Mom and I ended up having our falling out certainly turned out to be a quite a bit more than a mere convenience for me as it turned out. While there had never been any question that we both had been heading down this path ever since my Dad passed away, I most definitely made the most of the opportunity when it presented itself to me and did nothing much to prevent its derailment. Even though we’d been at odds in the past over issues more serious than the one that I finally used as my excuse to sever our current relationship, by this point it didn’t matter. Definitely the proverbial straw for me, as there were a number of very legitimate reasons why we could not, nor should not, continue on with our current relationship as it stood.

At the same time, I knew that I was also motivated by the fact that there would now be one less potential distraction interfering with my current usage. By this time, I was having a difficult time balancing my active addiction with my work and social responsibilities, my family obligations, as well as dealing with the general day to day mundane stuff one tends to encounter as we drift through our lives . So with that stress gone for the time being, I was able to refocus more of my energies on what was becoming increasingly more and more important, and I don’t mean work. Ironically, about a month or so after my blowup with my Mom, I ended up receiving a temporary layoff  notice from my employer stating that I would be required, immediately, to take a leave from work of between 12 and up to a maximum of 16 weeks. At that time, I had been working for my employer, a software company, for a number of years. By the time I received this notice, our office had been reduced to a staff of just over twenty from a high of near a hundred and fifty employees less than a year prior. Even though I knew I was still a valued employee, I also recognized the financial duress the company was currently experiencing.

Plus, talk about timing. Bloody pathetic on my part, but reality none the less. One less distraction yet again. The writing was so on my wall and yet…

TO BE CONTINUED…

I WAS WRONG

It would be a full two and a bit years after my Dad’s death before my Mom and I would actually have our falling out. Our relationship just seemed to get progressively worse over time. My Mother had always been a bit harsh although often I barely noticed as I had gotten used to her treatment over the years. Usually, it was only after someone else took the time to comment to me about it that I would give any serious thought to what I should do, at least that had been the pattern in the past. Once my Dad passed, I seemed to have become more sensitive to any of her criticisms, and increasingly found it near impossible to stand.

My Mother always seemed to have something to say about my looks, my hair, my clothes, my job, my hobbies, you name it and she could find fault. I never really knew why either, nor could I understand why she always seemed so dissatisfied with me. Growing up I had been a straight A student and had received numerous scholarship offers to university upon graduation from high school. I was never in trouble and even maintained a part time job all through high school so that I could support myself financially. In fact, I was able to buy my first car in cash just after my seventeenth birthday and paid for my entire trip to the British Isles the summer I turned 21.

For the near six months that I drove my Dad to the hospital five days a week, she reminded me each and every day at least three times not to be late, and not in an absent minded sort of way. She was very insistent and quite mean about it too, even though I did not once show up late to pick them up for the hospital. And so on…

Now I can’t put all of the blame on my Mom’s shoulders for our falling out as I was dealing with some serious issues of my own the summer of 2005. I was easily at the height of my addiction, and I was finding it increasingly difficult trying to conceal it from everyone. No one at home nor work or anywhere knew what I was hiding and this secret was starting to weigh me down. With each passing day, I found it harder and harder to keep all my balls in the air.

By this time, we were spending on average well over $2000/month attempting to support our habit, and by then, this was barely covering its maintenance. Obviously our personal finances were starting to suffer because of the amount we were spending. No amount of additional hours at work seemed to prevent our bills from starting to pile up. My nerves were wearing thin and I was starting to become careless at work. I knew a meltdown was imminent and felt at a loss at being able to prevent it. 

I needed to share my burden with someone and I thought at the time, that my Mother might be the one, but once I had, I quickly realized how desperately wrong I was. Initially, she seemed so very empathetic but this lasted barely 48 hours and then all hell broke loose. It had taken so much to confide everything and she had promised that this would remain between the two of us, but it didn’t. Almost instantly she was on the phone to her sister telling her what an awful daughter she had and who knows what else. She actually told me all this the next time we talked. I was shattered. When I asked her why she did exactly what I had asked and she had promised she wouldn’t do, she really had no defense.

I remember mumbling something to her during that call that I couldn’t do this anymore with her, that I needed to get well and the longer she was around to poison everything, the longer it would end up taking me to get healthy again. I quietly hung up the phone and from that moment on had no communication with her for eighteen months. I didn’t look back and in many ways, these eighteen months ended up being some of the happiest and relaxing ones of recent memory. Even though this fracture looked as if it was irreconcilable, in the end, it turned out to be the complete opposite, but another year and a half was to pass before I was able to find out.

TO BE CONTINUED…

A Pain That I’m Used To Is Almost Done

Just over two years ago I posted A Pain That I’m Used To concerning an uncomfortable situation that had developed with my employer a couple of months after our attack and Jim’s stabbing. After all of this time though, we are still dealing with its aftermath although I am hopeful that this will all come to an end fairly shortly. Now, unfortunately, having to go to Small Claims Court to reach some sort of settlement has to occur. This part of the whole ordeal is something I’d like nothing more to avoid, but no such luck. A number of months ago we finally retained a lawyer to help us out, she’s been briefed with all details of our situation, all necessary papers have been filed with the court and all necessary statements of defense from our employer have also been filed. Nothing else left to do but show up for court bright and early Friday morning. GULP.

For the short version, we are basically suing our employer for approximately $7500 because they disposed into a large dumpster in front of our apartment building, about twenty or so of our personal possessions and furniture without notifying us in advance. When we attempted to confront them about this matter, we continually received their cold shoulder. They refused to offer us any sort of explanation or apology for their actions against us. We didn’t pursue it at the time for a number of reasons. It was so soon after the attack that fear was the overriding emotion driving pretty much every aspect of our lives. We didn’t realize that we could actually do something about it. We couldn’t afford legal representation for this matter two years ago. And so on…Two years on, our situation has changed on all fronts so once we discovered that we could, indeed, pursue them to attempt to recover our costs for this debacle, we decided we’d be fools for not moving forward. Although we did have to give our lawyer a $2000 retainer, if we are successful then all costs will have to be paid for by our employer.

For the long version, the following is the text of the original entry from August 2008:

Some things stay the same; some things never seem to change. As the months pass by since Jim’s attack and its savagery seems to fade from some people’s minds, the more difficult it seems to become for us regarding our work situation. Immediately after it happened, everyone from the office staff here in London right up through to the VP of Operations in Toronto couldn’t get to us fast enough with promises for our physical, emotional and financial security. Now that three months have passed since this incident almost all of their promises seemed to have fallen by the wayside. The only thing that I am not really worried about – yet – is our physical safety. We still have a beautiful roof over our head which we do not have to pay for as well as having all of our utilities looked after. Right now that is all that we seem to have. This fact is disturbing to say the least.

All of our forms were to have been filed and completed, etc. for a Workman’s Compensation claim for what happened to Jim and any forms that we were responsible for have been submitted. When I last spoke to the head of Human Resources of the company about a week ago, she mentioned that the company would no longer be paying us but that WSIB would be taking over from now on. Now when I spoke to WSIB earlier today, they advised us that our claim had been rejected because our employer had not submitted a series of forms. Fit to be tied at the moment mostly because I wasn’t able to actually speak to someone at WSIB but had to leave messages on two separate answering machines there. GRRRR. Of course when I called through to Toronto, I could only reach voice mail in the HR department. Oh how very, very typical.

I wouldn’t be quite so insane about all of this if something awful hadn’t happened here in London with my Regional Manager almost three weeks ago. Shortly after Jim’s attack, we moved into our current apartment because no one in my family was feeling terribly secure living on the ground floor of the apt building. Now since Jim was still recovering from near life threatening injuries, he obviously was unable to move any of our furniture or stuff up here. Naturally, one of my daughters managed to break her arm barely a week after Jim’s attack so she was also unable to offer much help or assistance. That left just me and Sara who barely weighs a 100 pounds on a good day! Naturally, it was tough carrying some of the heavier stuff for us so a few items were left behind in our old unit. I advised the office of this and apparently it wasn’t much of an issue until the time came when they needed our old unit.

The weekend after I was notified that they were going to need our old unit, I moved everything except for one couch out of it. This left behind couch was a monster to move so I had to leave it. When I talked to my boss she said that was no problem that she would get some of the maintenance guys to help. I waited for a number of days and no one came to help. One day Sara’s boyfriend was over and we managed to get it upstairs and into the hall of the fourth floor. Could not get it into our unit no matter what I tried. Finally the head of maintenance showed up to help me but no matter what he couldn’t get it in either. This couch just also happened to be near brand new. We had had it only a month. Looked like we were going to have to trash it which was a darn shame. Because I had been waiting to get this couch inside before I moved a few more of our other articles in, I stashed some of our stuff in an empty unit which just happened to be located directly beside our current one. This is also standard practice if you happen to be a Building Manager of an apt building – you tend to take advantage of empty units and store stuff in them on a regular basis. This is done by near everyone and is not remotely unusual.

I had mentioned to the office about this furniture being there in the empty unit also but for some reason my Regional Manager decided to take it upon herself to have the contents of this unit emptied into the dumpster out front of our building. There was a lot of stuff of value there also. Why she didn’t mention that she was going to do this so we had a chance to move it into our unit or get rid of it ourselves, is a mystery to us. Even after talking to her about it, she had nothing to say regarding her reasoning. I am so sick of everyone telling me that whenever I need help while Jim is recovering to just let them know and then when the actual time arrives, nothing at all. It is beyond insulting. What is really terrible about the whole thing is that when we went to check the dumpster not all of our stuff made it there. Any of our electronic equipment seemed to be missing. When we asked about this, we initially got a whole bunch of different answers until someone obviously started to feel a little bit guilty cause somehow some of this stuff was located – sitting in the paralegals office getting ready for her to take home!

Excuse me? How awful is this? You’re stealing from someone not only that you work with, but also from someone who has already had a series of horrific stuff happen to them, someone who’s interests that you in your position should be guarding. Insane. I wasn’t going to get the police involved but on our last visit to the specialists we mentioned what had happened and one of the doctor’s took it upon herself to call the police. I guess that she is a fairly good friend of the detective handling the attack. The police feel we have a fairly strong case for theft, etc. So far I have given a statement but I haven’t had them approach anyone in the office yet regarding this although after today, I plan on giving the go ahead. I’ve also given everyone enough time to return all of our electronics and even though I’ve received assurance that we’ll get them back, we still have not.

Following is a list of the items that we ended up losing – that I can remember so far because I know that there is more but probably won’t know something is missing until I go to get it.

• antique sewing table w/antique Singer sewing machine
  
• walnut dresser w/five dresser drawers
  
• all components to construct our bed frame i.e. slats/foot board
  
• Sklar Pepplar arm chair
  
• creme coloured leather love seat
  
• creme coloured leather arm chair
  
• 20″ tv set
  
• 17″ flat screen computer monitor
  
• 17″ computer monitor
  
• dvd player
  
• large collection of various types of cables for use with computers
  
• digital camera w/case
  
• laptop computer w/leather case
  
• collection of electric helicopters plus their accessories
  
• all of our winter coats – four individuals for a total of eight coats
  
• six fabric laundry sacks of clothing primarily Jim’s winter clothes
  
• all of Sara’s bed linens including comforter, three double sized blankets, set of curtains, sheets, pillows
  
• two extra-large Rubbermaid storage containers w/hinged lids w/contents removed
  
• misc. hand held tools
  
• two basic desk chairs
  

The Grass Is Never Greener

I love my brother to death and am so excited that he’s able to come home for a quick visit thanks very much to the generosity of our Mom. He arrives home tomorrow evening and will be spending a week in Ontario before he has to return to work down east in Nova Scotia. This time though his family will be following him a week later as they all finally are able to make this permanent move. He found a nice four bedroom semi-detached house to rent which he says is pretty reasonable etc. This is a tremendous relief to him as he has spent the past year stressed out to the max drowning in an every increasing debt load with no apparent relief in sight. I guess after spending the past ten months or so trying in vain to convince his wife that they were in an incredible mess financially, she has finally accepted this most unpleasant fact. Of course, only since her father sat  her down to talk to her a week ago does she believe any of this. WTF? After listening to some of the things that my brother has recently told me, plus some of the things that she has been saying, I now strongly feel that their living well beyond their means is something much more serious than an inability to stick to a budget. She seems to have an addiction of sorts, an illness it would seem.

Besides the $200 000 mortgage that they have, she has managed to accumulate close to $150 000 in personal debt alone. How is this even possible? They’ve got three lines of credit alone that total almost $103 000, plus about a dozen or so credit cards all maxed right out to their limit. They may own more for all I know as these were the numbers that my bro quickly rattled off to me the other night while we were on the phone. I kind of have the feeling that this is but just the tip of the iceberg. This almost seems worse than a drug addiction. She obviously is incapable of practicing any sort of self control either. He says that all she ever worries about is what her friends or neighbours would think if they didn’t have this or that or whatever…

I knew that she was the type of individual that always seemed envious of what others had. She rarely seemed satisfied with her lot in life nor was she shy in letting others around her know  how she felt. I also knew how very important it was to keep up with those proverbial JONES, apparently at any cost. I knew that she was concerned with appearances but I had no clue the depth of this behaviour. I know my bro has spent the past 15 years providing for his family like few other men would be able to, and yet, she continues to find criticism in what he does.

She was the one that made him take this job out of province. She applied for this job on his behalf, sent out his resume to the company that he now works for as well as arranging his interviews, etc. Like the obedient husband he is, off he went to a strange province with no benefit of any sort of family or real support, and for the past four months  has worked and lived like a dog with nary a word of complaint. Literally every penny he makes is sent back home, and how is he rewarded? Every night, he has to listen to her sob and cry and carry on about how hard it has been since he left, how she has to do all of the housework and gets no break at all from the kids. I guess she berates him and goodness knows what else – this according to my Mom who has been told all of this directly from the horse’s mouth herself! Apparently, she says a whole lot worse stuff but I’ve not got the stomach right now for all of that garbage.

Nor do I think any of this mess has really registered with her properly as just the other day she was telling my Mom that there was no way that she would live in a rental less than $3000/month, nor would she live in anything but an immaculately maintained home – this from someone who hasn’t a clue how to even do housework! She said that she wouldn’t take anywhere that already had carpet as she didn’t want anyone else’s dirt near her. Only hard wood or laminate would do. No townhouse or apt either. Goodness gracious. Wonder how she’s going to react when she sees the $1200 beauty her husband has rented for her? And, who is she kidding? The only reason she is accepting anything right now is she has run out of time. She is literally getting out of Dodge the day before the bank seizes her home, vehicle and then shuts down all of the utilities - this will happen when you fail to pay any of these bills for months at a time!

Karma. It’s a bitch. Not saying that she deserves it this bad but she did make this mess pretty much all on her own. Again, its my bro and nieces and nephew that don’t deserve any of this and yet, they’re the ones that end up suffering over and over. It is really so very, very sad.  

Don’t Drag Me Down

Talked to my brother for the first time in over three months. It was so sweet to finally get to talk to him. He’s finally got a phone so he’s now able to keep in touch with his family in Ontario while he slaves away all by his lonesome in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He had to move out there at the end of March for work as he had been unable to successfully find anything suitable here. Last August, after having worked at the same company for over 21 years, he found himself without employment when his employer went bankrupt. No owed vacation pay, no severance pay and now, apparently, none of the monies he’d been contributing for his retirement for the past two decades! For this last one, his former employer is now under investigation for having used his employees benefits illegally for other stuff that he shouldn’t have. Imagine that!!!

My brother has been finding it pretty rough all by himself, and I certainly don’t blame him. He had to leave a wife and four kids behind. They’ll be here until his house manages to sell as they can’t afford to join him until and unless it does, and unfortunately, right now it doesn’t look good at all for them. First off, they paid way too much for it when they bought it five years ago, and even though he has made more than $100 000/year for close to a decade now – plus his wife also works – they don’t have so much as a bean saved up between the two of them. Never mind the fact that neither one of them bothered to put some money away for a rainy day, they’ve also managed to max out four or five credit cards, have a line of credit with the bank which is outstanding, as well as a car payment that all had been a challenge to meet financially while gainfully employed. So now, things are looking bleak indeed for them.

I really feel badly for my brother and the little ones cause they’re all more or less victims in this situation. They have all been at the mercy of my sister-in-laws neverending nor never satisfied quest of keeping up with the Jones. She is incapable of being thankful for what she has right in front of her and has spent the last fifteen years constantly criticizing one thing or another. Its so tempting to remind her how absolutely and utterly terrible she treated me back in 1999 when I found myself in a bit of financial trouble. The names she called would make your toes curl, and at times, I’d love to throw all of this back in her face, but to what end? I know I wouldn’t end up feeling any better, in fact, I’m guessing I’d feel worse. Won’t accomplish anything either. Just knowing I could do this is powerful enough for me – plus, she has finally shown her true colours to my mother after years of subterfuge that I even have someone to talk to about her ridiculous behaviour and treatment of others!!!

If you’re interested at all you can get some background if you start HERE, then read THIS next and finally take a look at this ONE. This should give you a better understanidng of what I am ranting about at the moment, plus saves me a boatload of typing especially cuz I suck at typing!

I Can Almost See Our Ship On the Horizon…

In another couple of weeks, it will be two years since Jim ans I were attacked, and Jim stabbed. In many regards, this event seems like it happened a lifetime ago, while at other times, it feels like only yesterday. To say that its been a challenging two years most certainly is an understatement. Yet, at the end of the day, no matter what we’ve had to go through, both of us are still standing and standing fairly darn strongly! Whew…anyway.

Financially, these past two years have certainly been some of our hardest, and there have been so many times when I have absolutely felt utterly gutted by it all. So, what does one do? What can one really do but soldier on? Apparently, this was the right thing to do, and when they say that good things come to those that wait, they may very well be spot on. Found out today that WSIB made an error in the disbursement of some of Jim’s benefits and that they have corrected this error by putting a cheque for $6 500 in the mail to us as of yesterday. YES!!! We also found out on Wednesday that the company that looks after group benefits for the company we work for also made an error and will be correcting this very shortly – this was a $6 900 error by the by!!! So by the end of next week, our bank account will have over $13 000 more than it did this week. Thank you very, very much.

Don’t get me wrong. No amount of money will ever be able to erase the events of two years ago, nor even begin to compensate us for what we’ve had to endure. This is so not the way to go about receiving money, but at the same time, I’ve not got so much pride that I’ll refuse it either. HELLO??!! All this means is that we’ll be able to finally start replenishing our savings account that we were forced to drain while waiting for our WSIB to kick in – thank heavens we ended up having a bit of a cushion to deflate back then as we would have been so royally screwed.

So, starting our weekend off on a bit of a high note floating through the rest of my Friday.

A Pain That I’m Used To

Some things stay the same, some things never see to change. As the months pass by since Jim’s attack and its savagery seems to fade from some people’s minds, the more difficult it seems to become for us regarding our work situation. Immediately after it happened, everyone from the office staff here in London right up through to the VP of Operations in Toronto couldn’t get to us fast enough with promises for our physical, emotional and financial security. Now that three months have passed since this incident almost all of their promises seemed to have fallen by the wayside. The only thing that I am not really worried about – yet – is our physical safety. We still have a beautiful roof over our head which we do not have to pay for as well as having all of our utilities looked after. Right now that is all that we seem to have. This fact is disturbing to say the least.

All of our forms were to have been filed and completed, etc for a Workman’s Compensation claim for what happened to Jim and any forms that we were responsible for have been submitted. When I last spoke to the head of Human Resources of the company about a week ago, she mentioned that the company would no longer be paying us but that WSIB would be taking over from no on. Now when I spoke to WSIB earlier today, they advised us that our claim had been rejected because our employer had not submitted a series of forms. Fit to be tied at the moment mostly because I wasn’t able to actually speak to someone at WSIB but had to leave messages on two separate answering machines there. GRRRR. Of course when I called through to Toronto, I could only reach voice mail in the HR department. Oh how very, very typical.

I wouldn’t be quite so insane about all of this if something awful hadn’t happened here in London with my Regional Manager almost three weeks ago. Shortly after Jim’s attack, we moved into our current apartment because no one in my family was feeling terribly secure living on the ground floor of the apt building. Now since Jim was still recovering from near life threatening injuries, he obviously was unable to move any of our furniture or stuff up here. Naturally, one of my daughters managed to break her arm barely a week after Jim’s attack so she was also unable to offer much help or assistance. That left just me and Sara who barely wears a 100 pounds on a good day! Naturally, it was tough carrying some of the heavier stuff for us so a few items were left behind in our old unit. I advised the office of this and apparently it wasn’t much of an issue until the time came when they needed our old unit.

The weekend after I was notified that they were going to need our old unit, I moved everything except for one couch out of it. This left behind couch was a monster to move so I had to leave it. When I talked to my boss she said that was no problem that she would get some of the maintenance guys to help. I waited for a number of days and no one came to help. One day Sara’s boyfriend was over and we managed to get it upstairs and into the hall of the fourth floor. could not get it into our unit no matter what I tried. Finally the head of maintenance showed up to help me but no matter what he couldn’t get it in either. This couch just also happened to be near brand new. We had had it only a month. Looked like we were going to have to trash it which was a darn shame. Because I had been waiting to get this couch inside before I moved a few more of our other articles in, I stashed some of our stuff in an empty unit which just happened to be located directly beside our current one. This is also standard practice if you happen to be a Building Manager of an apt building – you tend to take advantage of empty units and store stuff in them on a regular basis. This is done by near everyone and is not remotely unusual.

I had mentioned to the office about this furniture being there in the empty unit also but for some reason my Regional Manager decided to take it upon herself and have the contents of this unit emptied into the dumpster out front of our building. There was a lot of stuff of value there also. Why she didn’t mention that she was going to do this so we had a chance to move it into our unit or get rid of it ourselves, is a mystery to us. Even after talking to her about it, she had nothing to say regarding her reasoning. I am so sick of everyone telling me that whenever I need help while Jim is recovering to just let them know and then when the actual time arrives, nothing at all. It is beyond insulting. What is really terrible about the whole thing is that when we went to check the dumpster not all of our stuff made it there. Any of our electronic equipment seemed to be missing. When we asked about this, we initially got a whole bunch of different answers until someone obviously started to feel a little bit guilty cause somehow some of this stuff was located – sitting in the paralegals office getting ready for her to take home!

Excuse me? How awful is this? You’re stealing from someone not only that you work with, but also from someone who has already had a series of horrific stuff happen to them, someone who’s interests that you in your position should be guarding. Insane. I wasn’t going to get the police involved but on our last visit to the specialists we mentioned what had happened and one of the doctor’s took it upon herself to call the police. I guess that she is a fairly good friend of the detective handling the attack. The police feel we have a fairly strong case for theft, etc. So far I have given a statement but I haven’t had them approach anyone in the office yet regarding this although after today, I plan on giving the go ahead. I’ve also given everyone enough time to return all of our electronics and even though I’ve received assurance that we’ll get them back, we still have not.
Following is a list of the items that we ended up losing – that I can remember so far cause I know that there is more but probably won’t know something is missing until I go to get it.

1. antique sewing table w/antique Singer sewing machine
2. walnut dresser w/five dresser drawers
3. all components to construct our bed frame i.e. slats/foot board
4. Sklar Pepplar arm chair
5. creme coloured leather love seat
6. creme coloured leather arm chair
7. 20″ tv set
8. 17″ flat screen computer monitor
9. 17″ computer monitor
10. dvd player
11. large collection of various types of cables for use with computers
12. digital camera w/case
13. laptop computer w/leather case
14. collection of electric helicopters plus their accessories
15. all of our winter coats – four individuals for a total of eight coats
16. six fabric laundry sacks of clothing primarily Jim’s winter clothes
17. all of Sara’s bed linens including comforter, three double sized blankets, set of curtains, sheets, pillows
18. two extra large Rubbermaid storage containers w/hinged lids w/contents removed
19. misc hand held tools
20. two basic desk chairs