Thanks for the ride, lady.
David was released from jail about a week ago. Not sure how he got out early, but it says he has served his sentence. He is registered as a sex offender, it says he's risk 1, which is low risk. He doesn't have to register for life, but Virginia has level 1's register for 10-15 years. A couple days after being released, he tried to add me as a friend on Facebook. hahaha, no. Because of his status, I know he won't be able to live with Joyce. I'm sure he's trying to reconnect so he can see if he can come stay with me. Nah, dude, everyone who believed him and took his side has the responsibility of helping him out since they think he's so innocent. Plus, I'm not willing to take on any type of risk. He could get mad and decide to do something to us, or try to ruin Jerrys military career, or get us kicked out of our neighborhood (we own our home & lot, but the HOA can kick us out of the neighborhood). I know some people will say "oh don't tell them". The HOA president happens to be one of my best friends down here, I've already filled her in on all this stuff. There's no way she's going to turn a blind eye...because if something does go wrong it'll end up on her and it'll ruin her life, too. I do not, and will never, use my friendship with her to gain anything or get away with anything that involves our HOA. She's actually tried to get me to join the board, as well as other board members, I told them all hellllllllllll no. I see how much stress my friend is in from dealing with everything and I don't want any part of it. I do help her out where I can though, like when she held a Christmas party in the clubhouse for all of the residents... I helped buy supplies, I helped make over 100 goodie bags, I helped with set up and clean up, and I "worked" behind the table making coffee and hot cocoa for people. But I just see it as helping a friend.
We ended up adopting another dog. She's a long-haired chihuahua, white & beige. I got her when she was 14 months old, and we got her in October. She came from a home where they have an autistic toddler who wasn't very nice to her. And they were pregnant with another child. They also weren't her 1st home, she was bounced around. And no one ever took her to the vet. I drove almost to Myrtle Beach to go get her. We named her Jinger. She's 4lbs. She's so sweet and loving, very clingy. We have her up to date on all of her shots, we got her spayed, chipped, and we had a baby tooth removed that was causing her problems. I call her my little squeaker toy because when she is jumping around wanting help up on the bed, she makes these little sounds that sound exactly like a dog squeak toy. It's so cute.
I'm trying to stop dogsitting , but I still want to work from home. With dogsitting, I work 24/7. It hasn't been bad up until the last year or so, I have some regulars that have been taking advantage of me. Like when they say they're picking up at 5pm, but they message me at 530pm saying they decided to go out with friends and won't be here until 9pm to pick them up but then don't show up until 9:45pm. And this is on a night when Jerry and I planned on going out on a dinner date, we were dressed and ready to go...then couldn't go. I've had to cancel a lot of plans because of people being late. Then there are the people who show up several hours early with no notice while I'm in the shower. That's happened at least 20-25 times just in the last couple of years. I've had 1 person show up an hour early for drop off when I told her I wouldn't be home until about 10am because I was driving from 2hrs away. But she showed up at 9....and just sat in her car in front of my house and waited for me. One person is late, 100% of the time, she doesn't tip and doesn't pay extra. I started charging her more and it definitely made her mad. I told her if you're paying for 1 night, from 8am to 8am, but you don't show up until noon, you have to pay for a 2nd night as well as a $2/hr late fee per dog just for being late. Now if she said she wanted to do 8am -6am, but doesn't show up until 8am, then she just has to pay $2/hr per dog late fee for the 2 extra hours. The late fee is for being late from your pick up time....because I have a life and I plan things around when you say you're going to show up. If you say you're picking up at 8am, I can make a dr appt for 11, but you decide to sleep in, so I'm texting every 30 minutes and you don't pop up until 12....that's ridiculous. I went 2 days without sleep once because people said they were picking up at 1am and I had someone dropping off at 7am, so I stayed up thinking I could work with 6hrs of sleep. 1:30am, I text where she is. every 30 minutes I text. I get a message at like 3:50 saying they're an hour away. 4:50am, no dice. They show up at like 5:38am. I asked why they were late, they said they wanted to take a nap before hitting the road, so instead of leaving at like 830pm to be here by 1am, they left at 1am. They had several hours to text me saying they'd be late, and didn't. I have had other clients TELL me how much they're going to pay. I have a business page with my rates, they're not negotiable. Do you go to the grocery store and tell them what you're going to pay for an item? Would you accept it if your boss said "Hey, I can't afford to pay you your wage today, so I'm going to throw on twice the work but only pay you half for the day"? So then don't do it to me. One of my regulars has 2 dogs, and their dogs recently had 2 puppies. He knows my rates. He wanted me to watch his dogs for like 5 days during New Years, I charge extra for holidays and I charge even more for puppies since they're a ton of work. So he'd be paying $10 extra per day per dog for the adults, and $20 extra per day per puppy. BUT I told him that since he's a loyal customer, I'll just charge him my regular rate. He said "No, you're going to have to come down on that price cuz I got 4 dogs." I told him no, my rates are my rates and I'm already taking $300 off during a holiday in which I had family coming down. I didn't hear back from him. I'm already the cheapest in the area because I can charge less than what I charge on Rover. I used to be #2 dogsitter on Rover in my and my neighboring counties due to my reviews, but because I've branched out and gotten a lot of my own clients (word of mouth & handing out cards works), I'm now like #4 on Rover because I don't really use it. And I'm still one of the cheapest, but I live too far out for most people now. I have him booked soon, but I hope he doesn't show up. I've had 1 person work nights & wanted me to keep her puppy awake all night so she'd sleep during the day while she sleeps. She legit got mad at me when I told her no. Sorry, but that's animal abuse. If a dog wants to sleep, you let it sleep. Plus, I'm not staying up all night, then also have to be up all day to watch other dogs. She's also the one that would pay for daycare, but she'd have me keep her dog for 4-6 extra hours for FREE so she could go shopping or to go make extra $ donating plasma...and she wouldn't tip. Honestly, the clients who constantly take take take have the worst dogs to deal with anyway. I have some great clients whose dogs are amazing and loving, those are the clients that show up on time, they communicate, they don't try to negotiate my rates, they tip and/or they bring me gifts. I do have a backbone with the clients that "take", I communicate with them nicely about issues & I'll change my rules....but they always try to find loopholes around those rules...which makes me create more rules. So now I'd rather just drop them all as clients, work another job from home, and occasionally watch dogs for my good clients. holy crap this is long lol well, rant over for that.
I'm 12 days away from surgery. I'm getting a 360 Tummy tuck which is a tummy tuck with lipo, thigh lift, and butt lift. He's going to repair a hernia while he's in there. I'm also getting an arm lift. And if there's time, I'm getting a neck lift. $26k for all that. If he doesn't get to the neck lift, then I'll get like $3-$4k back. I'm scared and excited at the same time. Jerry is taking 6 weeks off work to take care of me.
Christmas was great. We got Jocelyn a whole new gaming setup with dual monitors and a bigger desk. She got TONS of FNAF stuff. Jerry got me the surround sound system I wanted for the upstairs living room. I'm slowly turning it into our horror/scary-themed media room. I got him the life-size Leprechaun since that's his favorite scary movie franchise.
Aside from dogsitting stress, life is great. I'm happy, my little family is happy.
oohh Jocelyn is homeschooled through a private school now that we pay for. She was schooling from home by a virtual program through our county. It worked great for a few years because A/B students didn't have to attend the Zoom classes, they could work at their own pace. Well, for 8th grade, they stopped allowing that. She was still maintaining her A/B, but she was struggling with it emotionally because she was pretty much forced to go slower. All but 1 teacher just let her finish her work quickly, and then let her do what she wanted. Well, 1 teacher, that taught 2 of her classes, tried to get Jocelyn in trouble for reading books during class instead of doing her work. It turns out, Jocelyn was done with her work, so she read a book while the rest of the class did theirs. The teacher said no, she's supposed to be working on schoolwork. So I told Jocelyn to just start the next days school work. Well then the next day she'd have no work to do because they can only go ahead so far. Then the teacher said she gave Jocelyn 0's for the work she completed early AND marked her absent since there was no work for her to do even though she was in the zoom the whole time. I asked the teacher, if she completes her work fast & gets a good grade, what is she supposed to do? She isn't allowed to read a book or start the next days work, so what is she supposed to do? Her teacher didn't reply to that, she then flipped the script to just saying Jocelyn wasn't paying attention or responding to her in the chat. Jocelyn doesn't watch the chat. Jocelyn missed the A/B honor roll by 2 points that was in this teacher's class, no doubt she would have made it if the teacher didn't give her 0's because she failed to tell us that she couldn't complete her work early. So now she's in a truly self-paced school with no zoom classes. She's taught by videos & readings, but if she has issues she can always contact her teachers. She started 9th grade on August 1st, and started 10th grade in November. She's set to complete 10th grade by the end of Feb since I let her have vacation time.
Well, That's all for now I guess.