My friends Kay and Brett came over today for a few hours and brought their new little guy Thomas along. He's a very good little boy; he sat in his high chair at the restaurant and ate his food and munched on his Cheerios. It was quite fun; I showed them the house and the neighborhood. We went down to the pier and then drove into Carlsbad and then back home.



About an hour after they left I heard my doorbell ring; it was three of the neighborhood girls. One of them piped up, "We want to make some money. Do you have something for us to do?"



I thought about it and decided to let them weed the rose bed and the other flower beds and rake the leaves in the front. I told them I'd pay them $5 to do the work. Since they were wearing their roller skates I told them to go home and put their shoes on and come back. When they returned I had laid out the tools and the trash can and they went to work.



Jenny, Rhonda and Wes' kid asked me, "Are you paying each of us $5?"



"No, you will share it, but to make it easier I will pay you $6, so each of you gets $2."



They were pretty excited about that. I went inside to get my jacket and when I came back Katy had joined the crew but was just standing around. "Katy, are you working or watching?" "I'm working." So now I had 4 kids at $2 a piece. Hmmm... this is getting expensive.



So I found another rake and told her to rake the leaves from under the bushes.



Rhonda came over and told me I was overpaying.



"Do you know what my hourly rate is?" I responded. She just laughed. I told her I was already $22 poorer because I bought two things for the Christa MacAuliff School music department fundraiser (2 $11 frozen pizzas) from Lea Ann.



She complimented me on my roses and I told her it was all due to my Mom, I had nothing to do with it. Then I asked her, "OK who are these kids? I know Katy and Jenny but who are the other two?"



When the kids were done they came in to wash their hands and get paid. I had four piles of money and I explained to them that each pile was the same value, but in different kinds of money. I had two piles of 2 $1 notes and two piles of 1 dollar coin and 4 quarters. The older kids took the notes and the younger kids took the coins. "Oh, wow, Sacajawea!"



So, 30 minutes later I had all my weeds pulled and the leaves raked. And now the kids know I'm a soft touch.

The saga is finished. The cleaners doesn't have my shirt (which I knew - Vons I'm sure lost it, not them.). So, I got some $ from them.



The reframed prints came back from the framers and look great.



I bought a nice Chinese room screen yesterday and put it in my room. I managed to put a slight ding in it getting it in the house. *Sigh* I suppose I should accept the fact that I am not meant to have nice things. My cleaning ladies put a big ding in my bed's foot board about a month after I bought the thing. I also bought a cheap monk print. It was only $90 and I am not sure it's worth even that, but it was in the back room of the store, not even being displayed. It had one of those bright orange circle-shaped stickers on it with the price of $89. So, I bought it just to have something else to put on the wall.



I found a site on line that sells erotic Japanese prints but they are in Venice, Italy, so I want to do more research before I put out a couple hundred dollars for two of them.

Losing a shirt at the corporate dry cleaners is all a part of life's rich pageant.



So, I was just on the phone with the consumer relations rep for the dry cleaners. Turns out the letter was sent in error - the cleaners had not in fact found my shirt and returned it to the store, which explains why it wasn't there, I suppose. So now they are going to look for it, since they were looking for the wrong thing first because they didn't have a proper description and then they stopped looking because the Vons told them I'd found the shirt.



She offered me up $100 credit for dry cleaning at the store, but I told her that wasn't as valuable to me as either a) getting the shirt back or b) getting a check for $80 (which is the value of the shirt or at least close to it.). What I didn't tell her is why it's not as valuable; I have no plans to ever use that Vons for anything ever again, but I want to resolve this situation before I guillotine them. It's convenient to go to as a stop after work, but it's a pain, too, since El Camino Real and Hwy 78 is such a messed up interchange.



In other news, the two authentic vintage Japanese block prints I took into the poster shop to be matted and framed came back yesterday. They messed that up, too. I wanted both framed prints to have identical outer dimensions, but the framer cut the frame and mats for the smaller (the three elegant ladies) one incorrectly and so it ended up being shorter than the other one (the samurai). So, those have to go back to be redone (for free, of course).



Sigh... I don't feel bad about it since I was very clear about my desires; I let the gal write it up the way she wanted to and it was misinterpreted at the shop. I have to say, though, that they look great!

Well, I guess I claimed victory too soon. I went to the dry cleaners tonight and showed them the letter. They didn't have my shirt and the bitch behind the counter actually said to me, "Didn't you go home and find this in your closet?"



"No, but that's what you had hoped would happen. Why would they send this letter to me if they didn't find my shirt in their facility?"



I guess I broke my own rule in this instance: never assume intelligence, let me be surprised.



I get to go back tomorrow and find out what happened.

I have been declared the victor in my (dormant) battle with the dry cleaners. Last month I was polite but insistent that they had lost a shirt (a nice silk one, too). They insisted their tracking process indicated they'd only collected 3 shirts and 1 pants from me even though I knew they'd collected 4 shirts. They retrieved the original work order that said, "3 shirts, 1 pants" so they thought that was it. I was annoyed but I couldn't prove anything.



When I came home tonight, the dry cleaners had sent me a letter apologizing to me since they had found my shirt and cleaned it and sent it back to Vons. They also gave me a $5 credit towards my next cleaning.



I had a nice laugh at that one.