Holidays that fall on Wednesday are useless. You end up working anyway because you either have to take vacation days with every other person or show up reluctantly on Thursday and Friday. I wonder how much actual work will be performed the next two days. If I had to bet not much.
Life at my current office is hell. The guy that owns the building won't fix the AC or the roof. Finally the insulation and the plaster fell along with pieces of the roof during a bad storm and all he did was get a baby pool to catch the water. He is the biggest slob and very cheap. My mother rents one suite (it is a four suite building) and my dad and I rent another suite with the guy. I can's stand his hires either as he has been through 6 secretaries in five years. What a guy!!
I spent today moving files. My dad is an attorney and loves paper. He is no where close to having a paperless office. He has also been amassing these files for over fifty years. He still has file number one. This whole saga started years ago when I first agreed to move home. The deal I struck was I would spend Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at home the the rest of the week I would hightail it back to Dallas. I had gotten a fabulous severance package from my last job and had a part time secretarial job. Income would be tight but I figured that I could make it for awhile till I found a new full time job. I never anticipated what would happen.
The first thing I discovered is that my dad's last two secretaries had stolen a considerable amount of money and had run up all of his credit cards. One secretary had even applied for credit cards in my dad's name. In addition to this debt, the mortgage on his office building was breaking him. He was well into six figures in debt including his real estate holdings. My mother' s situation was no better. Her bookkeeper had stolen over $300,000.00 in the past eight years. We discovered this when the bookkeeper went out of town and my mother received a sheriff's sale notice for her building and a notice from the IRS that the payroll taxes had not been paid in five quarters. Apparently the CPA that was suppose to audit the books each month had never looked at the checks. He just reconciled the account by matching the amounts. He also never reconciled the cash receipt book with the bank statement. It was a grim situation.
I freaked out. Most of my adult life had been spent working for a large corporation with a steady paycheck every two weeks and benefits. No more. With my mother at 70 and my father at 74 their ability to generate new income was slim. As the bill collectors honed in, I ate myself to well over 200 pounds for my 5'4' frame and when I wasn't eating I was crying. The district attorney did not want to take the case because he didn't feel that we could succeed in collecting any money. I was shocked. I found out that you can steal from your employer and chances are that you will never face prosecution because it is not high profile. It took five years to finally convict that bitch.
Meanwhile how do I pay all this massive debt? Well, a miracle happened. The rain came and flooded my mother's office building. Since it was the third time in ten years FEMA bought the building for higher than the appraised value. Then one of the major law firm broke up and needed an office thus I unloaded the other office building. Screw the capital gains tax right now I needed to stomp out some of those fires. We now needed a place to move and the guy which had rented from us bought this crappy building and we moved.
I hate to say this but this building was and still is the biggest piece of shit. It is so poorly constructed that in some places you can see the roof shingles. It is two stories and the second floor is a pit. The filing room upstairs is where the pool is and it is not air conditioned!! In my mother's suite on the second floor the light fixture fell out of the ceiling and there were live wired hanging down. We endured. I vowed that we could not move until the massive debt was reduced significantly. It just got worse. The roof caved in and the guy's wife put a space heater upstairs to dry out the water. The files were wet and then the mold started. Every time air blows out of the heater or AC black mold sprays everywhere. Nasty.
The problem with moving is that in a small town there are not many options when it comes to office space. We looked for about two years. Finally a suitable building went on the market and we snapped it up. The owners were divorcing so even the price was right. It needed alittle work so we have to wait until it is ready. Today I hauled 40 boxes down from the inferno and I am just wiped out With no AC and the high humidity I was drenched in sweat and really stank. The stairs are so narrow my feet are bigger than each step. I have 39 more legal size filing cabinet drawers to go. So happy 4th.
At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. In the almost seven years I have reduced our debt by two thirds, lowered the tax exposure, increased their income as well as mine and lost 75 pounds which I have never gained back. I feel great and can not wait to move into our new office. We will actually be paying less for the mortgage and utilities than we are paying the guy. Although my back is killing me I am going to try to finish moving the files tommorrow.
There are no fireworks due to rain but no problem I can see them on TV.
For my fashion pick of the day a Stephen Sprouse mini shirt from Target. I love it. I won on Ebay several years ago. It is a shame that this great talent in the fashion world is no longer with us.
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