Welcome home...continued

There is a major lack of visitor parking at my mobile home park so I parked my little car in front of my house and let Tori park in the car port. The management doesn't like for cars to be parked anywhere other than designated parking places so I gave Andrew the key and told him that if he needed to move the car that was fine but he was not allowed to drive it anywhere outside of the park unless there was a total emergency. (I was thinking about the possibility of Nort having to be rushed to the hospital again.) A foolish move, I know, but I really didn't have a choice. Not counting the emergency trip to Yucca Valley to pick up his friend, (for those of you who are out of state and don't know California geography...Yucca Valley is easily 125 miles, one way, from Huntington Beach.), an emergency trip to Knotts Berry Farm and an emergency trip to an Angels game...my car was virtually untouched.

When I left on my trip I had intended on leaving the rent check with Andrew in an effort to make sure the rent would be paid on time but I decided that I'd rather just pay when I got back. I thought that I was doing the park a favor by paying in cash because that way they wouldn't have to wait for a check to clear but I was quite wrong. The day after putting my money in the slot in the office door I got a call from the management. I got lectured for 5 minutes on the perils of paying my rent in cash. Apparently they only accept checks or money orders and this was covered in the 50 page lease agreement I signed 3 years ago so I should have known. She also had to bring up the fact that I didn't get permission to hang the air conditioner in my front window. (Yeah, I forgot to mention that Andrew took it upon himself to install an air conditioner in my bay window even though when we had discussed this months previous I told him that I didn't want an air conditioner nor did I want to pay the electric bill it would generate. The house gets a little warm sometimes but we live 2,000 yards from the ocean. If he was too hot he just needed to go outside.) (another neighbor showed up out of the blue and offered to remove it for me...so I let him.)

After the manager was satisfied that she had chastised me enough about paying my rent in cash she dove right in to the next item on her agenda....and the conversation went a little bit like this:

Manager: "We just found out that your son has been living with you and he's not on the lease. The way we found out was due to your neighbors reporting loud noises late in to the night and apparently he had an altercation with some of your neighbors. If he's going to stay in your house you need to add him to your lease but the board will have to approve of him first but with a history like his I doubt if the board will allow him to stay here."

Me: (stunned to the point of disbelief) "Uh. He's not my son, he's my nephew. Can you tell me more about the altercation with the neighbors?"

Manager: "Late one night he had a bunch of people outside of your house and they were making too much noise and one of your neighbors asked them to quiet down and your son got in their face and threatened them."

Me:"He's not my son. He's my nephew. How did he threaten them?"

Manager: "I'm leaving for vacation. We are going to have to discuss then when I get back. Bye."

End of phone call.

I wish I could convey the feeling in the pit of my stomach at that moment. Had I spent all of my money to buy my little cottage by the sea only to have it threatened because my idiot nephew just couldn't find enough ways to show me how little he cared about me and my generosity of letting him stay there with me for over a year free of charge? Were they going to have me kicked out because Andrew got in to an altercation with an as of yet no named neighbor? I had an instant vision of having to continue to pay space rent even though I wasn't allowed to live in my home but all the while not able to sell the house because of the damage that I've allowed to be done to the inside,not to mention the mess that was taking place on the outside. This just makes me sick. Everyone I know has been telling me to kick Andrew out for many months previous to this but I couldn't do it because I saw the teeniest spark of hope that he wouldn't screw me when I was doing everything I could in to help him. Could I have been any more wrong?

I called Andrew and asked him if there was anything he needed to tell me and of course he said no. I told him about the conversation with the manager and it didn't take him .02 seconds to insist that the story I heard had gotten way out of hand and there was no altercation and there was no party. And boy howdy...he was mad that he had to go before the board to ask if he could be put on my lease. Why did he had to qualify? He wasn't paying any of the bills? (out of the mouths of babes....)

I prayed and pondered on this for a couple of days and just when I thought that maybe both parties were right...maybe there was a slight altercation and maybe there was a little bit of noise and maybe the neighbors were being a tad hypersensitive..... Then I had a visit from one of my neighbors who was not directly involved in the altercation. He was actually a friend of Andrew's and yet the version of the story he told me appeared to be the one with the most truth. He told me that Andrew had people at the house every night that I was gone and they stayed up all night playing very loud video games. In between video games the guys would go outside and ride their skate boards or sit in their car and smoke and listen to the radio. One night one of Andrew's guests arrived with his car radio blaring and one of my old lady neighbors came out and told him to to turn it down. A verbal exchange took place and then the next day the old lady neighbor had told the rest of the old lady neighbors and they took their story to the manager.

It's been a matter of weeks and I haven't heard anything from the management and Andrew has only been back at the house in order to pack up some of his belongings. I went out to the back yard to see if he had taken all of his stuff out of the shed and discovered that he or one of his friends had spray painted "420" all over any flat junk surface they could find. I find solace in saying that at least it wasn't painted on my house. There is no end to the immaturity this young man possesses, and apparently there is no end to his complete and total disregard for me and my belongings.

Only the shadow knows what's coming next for this weenie.....