Freaky Red Skied Friday, The Return Of The Cat Lady, & Winning The Lotto!

That's right, red skies. Though where I live in California isn't too close to the numerous raging wildfires burning through out the bay area, but it is close enough to have had the very freaky red smoky haze covering the sky all week long. Every morning watching the sunrise is almost like watching scenes from that classic eighties flick, Night Of The Comet. The weather has gone from cool to hot again, and has continued to carry a eerie breeze every single day. Here in California, we call this strange eerie weather, Earthquake weather.

The bad air quality, which has led officials to recommend not being outside any more than we have to, is the cause of the horrid cough, sore throat, and stuffy nose I've been fighting all week as well. I guess it could be a cold, but I don't know. By the way, that picture is actually from Night Of The Comet, it's not Livermore....

So where should I start with my week? The good, the bad, or the pointless? How about the bad? So one of my daycare parents gave me notice today. SUCKS. She gave me just two days shy of a two week notice, which is what my contract calls for, but I'm not going to push it. She is broke and can't afford daycare anymore, so her mom is going to watch her. I feel for her, I really do, but man, why now? We were just finally starting to recover from the whole bankruptcy thing, and with the little extra money I was going to be making writing things were going to start to get a little better finally, but NO. I have already put out an add, but so far not one call. So many people are out of work, that there's just not a whole lot of people looking for daycare. I may be getting a little girl I used to watch part time back, but we'll have to see for sure on Monday. Why is it, just when things start looking good, they go right back to bad? I feel like Charlie Brown. AARRRGGG!

And in crazy lady news, the cat lady has returned! In case you missed it, here's what went down last week. While trying to find out why we hadn't received our state refund, I found out from the franchise tax board that our refund had been denied because the paperwork was incomplete! That's right, stupid cat lady made up a phone number and left out all the information on the tax form that requested all our pre-school child tax care credit information. She MADE UP a phone number. The FTB person walked me through filling out the form and I faxed it back, but they said it would take about 8 weeks for them to review it and allow the refund. So we decided to wait until then to pay the crazy cat lady. It only seemed fair, after everything she put us through when we couldn't get a hold of her before the bankruptcy, and now finding out she didn't even complete the paperwork! We had every intention of paying her, she was just going to have to wait until we got that refund.

So I called her yesterday and left a very nice message for her explaining this. Honestly, I was very nice about it, and told her she could call me back if she had any questions. Funny thing, when it comes to her not getting paid, she is suddenly able to return a phone call pretty quickly... anyhow, she had a snarky tone right off the bat, and anyone who knows me knows that I dish snarky, I DO NOT take snarky. I remained cool, and she explained that she had called the FTB, and that they had told her that not only were we not getting our refund because of the bankruptcy (untrue, we know first hand that the judge/trustee allowed us to keep our refunds) but that there was nothing she could do to collect her payment that we owed her (another lie, like just because we're in bankruptcy we can go around not paying people for their services).

Obviously she talked to a generic operator, because she can't get our tax information without our permission. So I explained to her about the incomplete paperwork, and she asked what information I had to back that up? So, having the form in front of me, I rattled off the form number and all the empty lines, and the phone number she made up. She kept saying that she doesn't make up phone numbers. I told her, well maybe it's a real number, but it's not one I've ever seen. I kept telling her that we were going to pay her, but she kept interrupting me and saying that we were just going to have to pay her if it was in our hearts to do so (snarky tone still raging). I, still being polite, again tried to explain to her about the incomplete paperwork. She began to YELL over me saying bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, until she finally hung up.

I immediately called her back and told her to suck it, that I hope her cats choked on a hair ball, and that she would not be getting paid until sometime after hell froze over.

Ok, so I didn't really call her back, but I did decide that my heart feels very strongly that she should indeed suck it, and won't be getting paid. So suck it, crazy cat lady.

Now, onto to the good news, we won the lottery!!!! Not the CA state lottery, but the Kindergarten lottery! Two weeks ago we received the letter that stated they had too many kids registered for our home school, and that they were doing a lottery for the open spots. We are in! This may seem silly to some, but our school is a three minute walk from our front door, dragging all the kids across town to some other school, on top of getting Cheyanne to pre-school would have been horrific. So yay for us!