Talk about your troubles

[MRD]

Fortunately for the kids, their mother is a wonderful person and their step-dad who has been more of a father to them than the bio one is also a wonderful parent and has been a very good influence on both kids. And once the kids got into their teens, they could see what a schmuck their father was.

ETA: the grown boy is an Eagle Scout and his stepdad was his scout leader.

I asked my friend one time why she married such an idiot. She said she was only 15 when she met him, she had a bad home life and he gave her the love she was not getting at home and by the time she realized what a scumbag he was, they were married and had 2 small children. She divorced him when the daughter was 2 and the son was 5. He didn't pay child support for almost 5 years after they broke up. I remember her telling me that she had broken her ankle and couldn't work and they were living on state aid and had $25 a week for food for the 3 of them. The scumbags father was a big contractor and had a lot of money and she asked him to help out his grandkids and he turned her down flat. Nice family all around huh?

But when the new man came into her life, it all turned around. It's like a fairy tale story. He and my husband also became very good friends and our families did a lot together. They are the ones that gave us the going away party when we moved. The kids want to take his name and the girl said years ago that when she gets married, it will be the stepdad that walks her down the aisle, not her father. So as you can imagine, things have not been good for a long time with their bio dad and the kids know it.

I saw the press conference that the dad of the murdered girl gave and I couldn't watch it. I had to turn it off. It was so sad. I told my husband not to watch it at all. It's online from the local tv station.


Miss Kitty, I'm so sorry to hear that justice was not served in the case with your friends. I don't understand why these things happen. But I try to hold on to the fact that our system isn't perfect, but that it does work most of the time.

In this case, the murder had never been arrested before at all. 36 years old and no priors for anything. Weird. What made him just decide to follow this girl home and abduct, rape and kill her?

Yep, my parents also told me the same thing. They would still love me, but they would not protect me if I did something horrible.
My husband watches The First 48 on Tru tv and the other day they had a case where the family was harboring a man wanted for murder and the neighbors basically told the family that if they didn't turn him in, they'd come and kill the family. You can guess this was in one of the worst neighborhoods in Miami. But at least it got the people to turn in their scumbag son. And the family called the police screaming for protection from the threats they got from their neighbors. The world is a messed up place. And it always has been. Being a student of history, I have read some pretty horrible atrocities that have been committed and when people say the world today is bad, its nothing like it used to be. I honestly do think as a whole we are much safer today and several hundred years ago. And this kind of stuff has happened in the 20th century no matter what people say. It's just that it wasn't reported as quickly and widely as it is today with all the media outlets we have.
My grandmother's sister's first husband was murdered during the depression for the money he had on him which was less than $10.
It's a sad fact of life, but humans murder other humans and have since caveman days. It doesn't make it right though.

[misskitty]

Thanks famita and veruka.
myrosiedog: There's always a story behind what happens and what the public hears about.
----------
I must interject an apology here. I just realized that I referred to Ryan as their only son. When couple has in fact fostered many children. Those children count to. What I meant was that Ryan was their only birth child. Not that the death of one child matters any more or less than any other child. Sorry if anyone was offended.

Just thought I should clarify that before I cause a stir.
-------------
On another note, I just can't believe what is happening in Kenya with the human slaughterng.

[buglover]

The way humans treat humans is so annoying! Animals don't slaughter each other for the hell of it. They do it out of necessity like food or safety. I just don't understand the world today at all.

[MRD]

Well the schmuck of a father gave a newspaper interview maligning his own daughter calling her emotional, sensitive and a liar.
He has tried to paint himself into this wonderful person who did nothing wrong and is asking people to stop treating him like he committed a crime.
Oh, I am so angry, I wrote a letter to the editor of the paper.

Not only do I know this girl, but I was her Girl Scout leader for 5 years. She did the right thing, he did not and is now trying to make her look bad so he himself can look better. What kind of father does this crap????

[ScoutMom]

The kind of a father who should never have been a father in the first place. My heart just goes out to that poor girl.

I have a cell phone story - and I'm cutting the length way, WAY down. This took place beginning Saturday and ending yesterday. My son said his cell phone (which has been acting a little strangely for a while) turned itself off, and he couldn't get it back on again. My husband tried putting his battery in it, but still nothing. So I went to the AT&T store, and the guy there said we had to go through the customer service place. We started calling there Saturday. After over 1 1/2 hours (yup! 1 1/2 hours!!!), we finally got them to send us a reconditioned phone. Now my son's phone is still under warranty. He didn't drop it, put it in water, get it wet in any way, or anything like that.

So after a few days, we get the new (that is, reconditioned) phone. He plugs it in to charge it overnight, and in the morning, the phone isn't charged. And the charger is so hot, it almost burned his hand. So he uses the car phone charger to charge the stupid phone (which worked fine). So back on the phone we go with customer service. Again, after well over an hour, they finally gave us the phone number for Nokia customer service, as they claimed they weren't responsible for the charger. So we call Nokia customer service only to find out they're not open on Sunday. So on Monday, my husband calls Nokia, and after being on the phone AGAIN for over an hour, he said some nasty things and hung up on them. I told him to forget about calling them, I'll just buy a stupid charger. Which we did yesterday, and the phone charged just fine.

Remember - this was the extremely shortened version! I like the phone service from AT&T, but their customer service stinks.

[buglover]

We had to ditch AT&T for the same reason.

[ScoutMom]

We're seriously thinking about ditching them for that reason. Unfortunately, we still have another year to go on our contract. But truthfully, we've had AT&T (well, Cingular first, but then AT&T bought them) for many years and this is the first problem we've had. It was our first experience with AT&T's customer service - and hopefully, our last!

[Sherri]

Last fall, Alltel bought out our local cell service, and we have had nothing but problems ever since. In November, our bill jumped from 120.00 a month to over 600.00! Alltel blamed in on texting and refused to change the bill. It took two months of argueing with them and another 500.00 bill in December, before they admitted they had made a mistake. We had had unlimited texting the whole time and were being charged 35.00 a month to have it, but yet we were being charged for every text.

Than last week, we get a letter thanking us for switching to auto pay, where they can just take the payments directly out of our bank account. We never o.k'd anything like that. We called the bank to let them know it wasn't authorized, only to find out they had already taken 539.00 out of the account a week earlier! Six phone calls later, we still have no answers but we have 300.00 credit so according to them everything is fine. Not!!! Now they want me to fax them a copy of our bank statement and they MIGHT return the money to the account. I don't feel I should have to fax them anything, they acknowledge taking the money out of the account and not having permission to do so. :nono

Needless to say we've had enough and are thinking about switching to Longlines. I don't know a lot about them, but people I know who use them, seem to really like them.

[schmoo2]

My son just went through the same problem with Sprint - as far as having unlimited text and they charged him over $400 for text messages. Took 2 months to straighten out that mess (and my daughter works for sprint).

still better than cincinnati bell and the $1400 bill for one month- dumb kid - yes, CANADA is roaming when you are from Ohio. no way out of that one, just stupidity. (he went camping to save money, but was bored so called his new girlfriend a lot)
but you do hope to have a company that will work with you in some way.

[MRD]

Scoutmom, the reason you have to deal with them on the phone is that if you had to do it in person, I'm willing to bet the phone and the charger would be "plugged in" where the sun doesn't shine. Or at least it would be if that was me having to deal with all that.