I have had a car since I was roughly seventeen years old. I have had to renew my tags for nearly a decade. Today was a day where I had to renew my tags for my car yet again. What should have only cost me about 46 dollars ended up costing me almost 70 dollars. When I asked the lady who was helping me why it was so much, she responded as such: "Sir, you live in Bremerton and we are required to charge you 20 dollars as a street fee since you have to park on the street." I looked at her and I responded like this: "Ma'am, I live in Jackson Park, which is owned by the military until October. I park in a parking lot. I understand that I live in Bremerton, but living in a housing community that provides parking lots, I should be exempt from "street fees" that don't apply to me." Needless to say I ended up paying the twenty dollars because even though I park in a parking lot, the fact that my address is in Bremerton is reason enough for them to charge me. I guess I just paid for someone else's street fees since I will not be parking on a street at anytime while I live here. Who knew that something so stupid could be used as an extortion principal to get some money. Why don't they just ask and then waive a fee when it doesn't apply to people. Everybody that lives in Jackson Park has to pay "street fees" for not parking on a street. We should be exempt, not because we are military, but because PARKING ON A STREET IS SOMETHING WE DON'T DO!! I guess it doesn't matter because they will charge you out the wazoo for it anyways.
Now, this rest of this is all about Housing Issues. Not just from the people that own the Housing Community, but also about the people currently living in my house. We shall tackle the people living in my house first before we worry about what it is that the Jackson Park people do.
As most of you may know, I have an extraordinary amount of people living in my house. Most of you will say that I am stupid for having my house feel like it is a hotel rather than the house that it was meant to be. Most will even say that I brought this on myself. For those that know me know that I will do everything in my power to help people out because it is the right thing to do. Faith in my humanity should be restored because I am a nice person that doesn't like to see the less fortunate go without if I can help it. Those that are aware of the situation know that I have my in-laws staying with me because they have run into a few problems that they needed help with. Back in March of this year, my mother in-law came to live with us while we were still in Georgia. She has some issues that I won't make public, but just know that she wasn't happy with her living situation and it led to her having to move in with me. She has been living with us for the last 6 months now. Well, close to six months now. IN that time we have provided food and shelter to her free of charge or as close to free of charge as we could. Once we returned to Washington and she returned to work, we have started asking her to help with the groceries and since she was already taking care of the children, that continued to happen. She knew that once she moved in with us she would become a sort of live in nanny. She did her job without too much complaining and she even went to work on a daily basis. After we got back here, her plan was to move out on her own and get her own place again so that she could get her life back in order. After a few arguments and a couple well placed Craig's list ads onto her Facebook timeline, she finally got the hint that we wanted her to move on with her life and get her own place again. Now, I have been talking to her on a daily basis since we got back here and have been asking quite frequently what her plans were for finding her own place and moving out and yada, yada, yada. The words that she used were that "she was too broke to look for something so she stopped looking until she had saved up money." Anybody that knows me knows that I will only help you out as long as you are also helping yourself. Once you stop helping yourself I also stop helping you. Needless to say, she got into a huge temper tantrum because we were taking advantage of her and we were being mean and we never talked to her about anything and we should have discussed this with her in private and she felt like we didn't love her and that we were just being mean horrible people. This conversation lasted all of about five minutes after I tried to tell her that we did everything we could to be as subtle as possible and not make the subject as pronounced as she was making it. Yeah, we probably shouldn't have gone public with the Craig's List ads on her Facebook, but after months of discussing her plan with her, I was getting tired of doing this the nice way. My beautiful one has been living with a massive amount of stress and bottling it and taking it out on me because she is really to nice to say anything to anybody. I am the mean one so I get to handle all of the confrontations. Simple enough for me. I would rather everyone hate me because I'm the "bad guy" in all of the situations. It wouldn't be such a big deal except that my mother in-law has this huge amount of pride that she carries around with her. After my sister in-law Meagan calmed her down, because she refused to talk to us, she made it home and spent her final night with us on I believe Thursday. She is now currently living with friends that have taken her in and she has apparently found a place that she can afford. Funny thing about all of this is that we have been helping her and supporting her through all of her issues and it took her a bit of lost pride to realize that we were right all along. She will probably never admit this, but the "tough love" that we showed her has helped her grow just a slight bit. We still have two out of three of my wife's sisters living with us however, they are helping around the house and actively looking to better themselves, so the issues that we have with them living here are a little smaller since they have chosen to help themselves and us.
I'm not sure how many people have lived in a housing community. I know that most military personnel that choose to live in base housing instead of out on town live in a housing community. We happen to live in Jackson Park. They are getting taken over and bought out by Forest City Residential, which is also the same company that owns the houses on the Bangor base. There is no real issue with using the facilities that are provided to me because I do enjoy the fact that right now, I don't have to worry about the maintenance, nor do I have to worry about an extra bill to remember to pay. At some point in my career I do plan on buying my own house and enjoying the rest of my life not having to pay rent, but instead a mortgage. Until that time I will happily rent knowing that everything is taken care of via the military. Now that that has been said we move on to the issues that I am currently having. Since everyone is required to have fire alarms in their house so that you can be alerted to a fire, I give you this piece of advice. DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT get the photo sensor fire alarms for your home. We USED to have them here in our home, but after multiple false fire alarms and screaming children because of it, we finally had maintenance replace all of our fire alarms with generic simple non photo sensor fire alarms. For those who are wondering why I see this as an issue, just listen. These photo sensor fire alarms are very touchy and even the slightest little piece of dust will set them off. When a little fragment of dust gets caught on the fire alarm and starts moving around and behaving like a "fire", it will set the alarms off and they will continue to go off until the dust unlatches itself from the alarm. We had finally had enough of it and after 10 false alarms, I finally got maintenance to change out my fire alarms. We were sitting on the couch watching TV with nothing on the stove and the oven was off. There would be no reason for the fire alarm to go off. Other than that issue with the fire alarms and our house just being too small to hold even just the wife, me and the kids, I have no real issues with my house. We even called the Forest City people to see if we could get into a bigger house since we qualified for one and we were told that we were supposed to be getting one when we got here. Hopefully, with the fact that we have a special needs child and we are concerned for the safety of his temper tantrums and his ability to have his own quiet room, we are hoping that they will work with us and we will get a bigger house.
I hope that you all enjoy the latest read from The Arena. We will see you again next time.
Wickid
Where do I begin? I wasn't going to say anything because I despise drama in all forms. But here goes...
ReplyDeleteFirst, you can't balk at the lady taking your twenty bucks when you go to pay for your tag. It's a tax. The people in Bremerton voted on this tax to pass, or the State Senator introduced the tax. I'm not about to do research on who implemented the tax. The point is...this is why voting is crucial. If you don't like something - vote on it in the next election. Find whoever passed the bill in the state senate and vote them out. We ALL pay taxes of some sort. I am a gay man that has to pay for school taxes (I live by four of them)...I don't have any children. I have to pay for the roads and the bridges across all of Pasco County. I don't use 1/16 of the roads in all of Pasco County. It's just $20. It'll help your community...that you live in...that you partake in. Whether, you park on the street or not. Pitch in. We all do it. Why do you think you're so special??
The house thing...you live, you learn. That's why it's always a good idea to set deadlines. "You must be out on, or before, October 1." That's it. Line has been drawn. You can't go feeling bad for everyone. You just can't. And I'm sure she wasn't living there like she was in party central. You guys had a built-in nanny. Do you know how much childcare would've costed you? Accentuate the positive, and let the negative educate you.
There's a reason why smokers shouldn't have photoelectric smoke alarms in their homes. Photoelectric smoke detectors contain a light source and a light-sensitive electric cell. Smoke particles in the detector deflect the light onto the photoelectric cell, thus generating a current and triggering the alarm. Optical smoke detectors more quickly detect slow burning, smoky fires. The nicotine that floats in the air will stick to the light cell telling the alarm to sound.
And, finally, why do you people expose your dirty laundry all over social websites?? I just do not get it. You never see Tim and me stabbing each other in public for anyone with a username and a password to view. That's what face-to-face conversations are for. It's difficult to set a tone online. Even in your blog here, we can't tell if you're sympathetic or truly are exhibiting sarcasm.
That's my say. Have a great day. =)