"420"...An Explanation

In my post entitled "Welcome Home Continued" I made reference to "420" being spray painted on everything in my back yard. For those of you who don't know drug slang...."420" is street slang for marijuana. If you look it up on Wikipedia there are many definitions as to the origin of this phrase but regardless of where it came from it is now simply slang for anything to do with marijuana. Additionally, April 20, (4/20), is now a marijuana holiday where everyone is supposed to smoke lot's of dope and get as high as possible.

Why Andrew or his friends thought it was a good idea to doodle it all over my back year with silver spray paint is still completely beyond my comprehension. If I find out that this was advertising and anyone was selling marijuana out of my home....there will be no end to my rath.

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.....

Welcome home....

The couple of days before Tori and I left on our trip I did as much as I could to clean the house. It was really just the basics...do the dishes, clean the counters, sweep and mop the kitchen and bathroom floors, clean the bathroom sink, tub and toilet...vacuum the carpet, wash the cat prints off of the furniture and lastly I cleaned out 5 cat boxes. The morning before we left as we were waiting for the town car to pick us up Tori fine tuned the cleaning process a little more by trying to clean up Andrews mess in his part of the house.

Knowing that Andrew might not be as diligent at keeping the cat boxes clean or keeping the cat's water bowl full I secretly went to one of my young neighbors, (who used to be madly in love with Andrew), and asked her if she would please, please, please periodically check to make sure that the kitties had water. They have an automatic dry food feeder so I knew they wouldn't starve to death. The bigger kitties know how to drink from the toilet if they need to but the kittens aren't as well versed in the skills of indoor survival. She assured me that she would check in at least once a day and thus I left on my trip feeling secure in the fact that my fur children would be safe and sound in my absence.

When we got home Andrew was outside smoking a cigarette and he greeted me by telling me that all of the adult kitties were on the lamb and had been gone since before we even got on the airplane. I felt the blood drain out of my face and fought the urge to throttle him. I asked him how that happened and why hadn't he gone out and find them and bring them home....

His answer.....(urgh...must resist urge to throttle young nephew)..... "After you guys left John and I went down to the pool and when we were down there Ashleigh tore the screen in the bay window and they all jumped out." I said, "HOW DID ASHLEIGH TEAR THE SCREEN IN THE BAY WINDOW WHEN THE VERY LAST THING I DID BEFORE I GOT IN TO THE TOWN CAR WAS CLOSE THE BAY WINDOW AND TELL YOU TO KEEP IT CLOSED BECAUSE ASHLEIGH HAD BEEN WORKING VERY HARD ON TEARING THE SCREEN AND I DIDN'T WANT HER TO SUCCEED AND THEN BE ABLE TO GIVE EVERYONE THEIR MUCH SOUGHT AFTER FREEDOM?????" His response.."It was hot in here." All I could think of was the possibility of little Nort jumping out of that window and breaking her back or at the very least re-injuring her previous injury. I was very happy to get inside the house and see Nort and her little white sister safe and sound and inside the house. Fortunately they were too scared to jump and they seemed to enjoy their tenure and the only feline residents of the house for 12 days. Believe it or not they did have water in their bowl so apparently my neighbor held up her end of the deal. However none of the cat boxes had been cleaned since I left.

Also inside the house was a dirty, filthy Lorenzo. Andrew said that he came home earlier that morning. Of course he was very upset that he came home and his woman was no where to be seen. His response to this tragedy was to squall his head off non stop until she finally came home. I went outside and went looking for Ashleigh, Elijah and Willow. I had a couple of fleeting sightings of Elijah but he wouldn't go near the house and I couldn't get close enough to him to catch him.

Andrew had his back pack packed and jumped in the truck and went home with his mom. I figured it was because he wanted to escape my wrath over his irresponsibility regarding the cats. I stayed outside looking for the kitties until almost 10 o'clock that night. By then I was so tired I actually couldn't see straight.

Ashleigh sauntered home early the next morning but there was no sign of Elijah or Willow. I put all of the kitties in the bathroom and left my front door wide open with a can of cat food and a bowl of water at the threshold just in case it might entice either one of them to come home. This was all to no avail.

Several days later I heard Elijah squeak. I very carefully opened the door and did everything I could to try to coax him inside. He kept acting like he was afraid of coming in to the house and like he was afraid of me. Finally I did what I saw Drew Barrymore do when she was trying to get E.T. to come out of the shed....I put a few treats in front of the house and then I made a trail of treats that went up the stairs and in to the house. IT WORKED! Elijah was absolutely, disgustingly, dirty. He was covered in grease and oil, cobwebs, stickers, mud and fleas. Millions of fleas. I picked him up and held him and he was so skinny that it just about made me cry. I can't imagine what it was like for him out there for 16 days in the heat of the summer with no direct access to food or water.

I spent the next week combing the mobile home park for Willow and I'm devastated to say that I have never found him. Haven't even seen a glimpse of him. He was a very beautiful solid grey kitty and I have convinced myself that someone took him in and he's living the life of Reilly sitting on a pillow eating greenies out of a crystal dish.

If you are anything like me you would think that failing so miserably at one aspect of house sitting might cause you to try to kick it up a notch in other areas of the job however with Andrew this is just never the case.

In addition to being non-plussed about the kitties being on a walk about he was equally unconcerned with the condition of the house. It was evident that he had smoked inside the house. (No wonder the kitties left) I can't decide which was a bigger betrayal...letting the cats roam free or smoking in my house. I am adamantly opposed to either activity and anyone who knows me knows this. I have no idea what else went on inside my house during my absence but my kitchen and bathroom looked as though they had been used by an army of bachelors. How that much filth can accumulate in 12 days is beyond me. Every dish I owned was dirty and there was cereal and Top Ramen congealing nicely in the sink. The stove was covered in splattered grease and red candle wax. I asked why there was candle wax on my stove and I was told that the candle got knocked over and subsequently the pilot light caused the candle to melt and drip. When they, (apparently Andrew's friend John stayed there the entire time I was gone), discovered the drip Andrew told John to clean it up. For reasons only known to God...John attempted to clean up the wax with my carpet cleaning brush. The end result was wax smeared all over the top of the stove and red candle wax embedded in my carpet brush.

When I washed the dishes I discovered that all of my tumblers were missing. When I gathered laundry I discovered that all of my towels were missing. When I attempted to have a beer I discovered that all of my beer was missing. When I changed my mind and decided to have a diet coke and vanilla vodka....I discovered that someone was too stupid to know that vodka kept in the freezer will not freeze but when you drink the entire full bottle of vodka and replace the contents with water and put it back in the freezer...the water will freeze.

It was becoming more and more apparent that a party, (parties?) had taken place when I was gone. Unfortunately it would take a few more days and a call from the park manager before I would find out the extent of the fallout of me being foolish enough to trust Andrew with my house for 12 days.....

Bob Vila has no competition at my house

The other day I came home from work and immediately noticed the smell of paint thinner. Whoo hoo! That could only mean one thing; Andrew had finally risen to the occasion and applied paint to one of my walls. I saw that the bathroom trash can was in the hallway so I figured that had to be the room with the fresh paint. I gleefully skipped down the hallway and this is what I saw:
A caulking gun, a tube of caulking, a couple of extension cords, two drills, a scraper, blue masking tape, a paint stir-er that goes on a drill and a yellow can of something.

Lorenzo doing his best Carrol Merril job at showing you the items close up.



There were no paint brushes or paint cans. No containers of paint thinner, either. I thought a miracle had occurred and Andrew had actually cleaned up after himself, but as I searched the room I couldn't help but notice that there was no fresh paint. Any where.

Surely with all of these tools laying around something of the home improvement genre had to have taken place.

It took me a minute or two but I finally found the accomplishment that had required the making of such a mess:

For those of you unfamiliar with all that is hardware...these are the brackets to which you attach the toilet paper holder.

Am I wrong to wonder how in God's name Andrew managed to create such a mess and yet accomplish so little?

Round Two

Andrew has been working at the house. I have been sounding like a broken record telling him to be diligent about making sure the doors and windows are always closed, the windows with screens are ok to be open, obviously. When I came home from work yesterday all of the windows and screens were off of the frames and the doors were wide open. I was relieved to see that the kitties were locked safely in my bedroom. As the evening progressed I asked Andrew to put the windows back in because it was getting cold and I wanted to let the kitties out. He put them back in, I let the kitties out and all was well. I went and got us dinner and we sat down and ate it. Andrew got up and went outside and I thought he was out having a smoke. I watched tv for a little while and then put myself to bed at 10:00, thinking Andrew would return and resume work since he had left several flood lights on in the house and in the back yard and in the wide opened shed.

When I got up this morning all of the lights were still on, Andrew was no where to be seen and Ashleigh and Lorenzo were gone. Andrew had left one of the windows cracked no more than 2 inches and those weasels managed to get out. I went out, dressed in my pajamas, hair sticking up on end, to look for them. Ashleigh, who was my happy wanderer last time, was right beside my house under my car. I pulled her out from under the car and threw her in to the house. She was not happy at having been pulled out from under the car and she was even less happy to be going back inside the house.

For the next hour and a half I searched the park for Lorenzo. A neighbor , who I've never even seen before, from one street over had seen and heard him but when she started to walk toward him her cat intercepted and scared Lorenzo away. She helped me look and we had a couple of other residents tell us that they had seen him. One lady said she saw him on a neighboring porch just sitting there like he belonged there, but when she went to go see why he was yowling ...he ran away. This lady lives in the far back of the park so apparently my little boy has discovered his wanderlust.

I decided to back home and put some shoes on and when I got to my street ...I saw...way down at the other end...a very large...Lorenzo. I went running toward him and he came running toward me but he kept stopping every couple of feet to arch his back and hop. He was obviously scared out of his wits. Hit tail was larger than a bottle brush. I picked him up and he climbed up to my shoulder and tried to perch there by digging his claws in to my head. His feet were covered in mud and then so was I. When I got close to the house he started growling and yowling and tried to jump off of my shoulder. I put a kung fu grip on him and managed to keep him under control long enough to get him in to the house.

Both of them are covered in mud, stickers and fleas but I didn't have time to stop and groom them. I grazed over a pair of pants with the iron, brushed my teeth and jumped in the car and headed off to work. I was only a couple of minutes late which was a relief because I thought I was going to be out all day searching for lost kitty cats.

So, all's well that ends well but I still think I'm going to throttle Andrew the next time I see him.

Eureka! I've found it!

(Cue touching back ground music)
I saw it for the first time over 20 years ago and it was so precious that it made me cry. You've seen one, you seen them all, right? NOT. EVEN. This one was special. It was the first one for my entire family. The first time we saw it we were hooked and we wanted more. We asked for more, we demanded more, we pleaded for more. I saw it on many occasions way back in the 80's and I just took for granted that I would be able to see it when ever I wanted, unfortunately the more I asked to see it, the less of it I got to see. (cue music from spaghetti westen movies...that one little jingle you hear when there's going to be a gun fight but you can't see anyone and there is a tumble weed rolling around in the back ground..) It would make an occasional appearance if allowed to emerge on it's own terms. If you acknowledged it ....it would scamper off and disappear for months at a time. You had to just be around at exactly the right time and then you had to be very cool around it or it would vanish in an instant. If you would bring out a camera then it was certain to retreat but somehow I got lucky this time. I caught it off guard and lo and behold here it is in living color for all of the world to see. Ladies and Gentlemen of my blog, I am proud as I can possibly be to present to you an actual, un-retouched, photograh of something so rare that there are people around who have never seen it....ANDREW PENDELL'S SMILE! (cue fireworks and the piccolo solo from Stars and Stripes Forever...)