Somewhere Beautiful: December 2010

Many of you have followed the past 2 blogs where you know the history of our B0D issues. If you haven't, then you won't grasp the feeling behind this post, but I am only writing to dump my brain and put some words behind what I'm feeling. It's really a post for me and a place to exhale. I apologize in advance.

I am walking around in my life with a heavy weight, more in my heart, but in my head as well.

After giving my old neighborhood my all, I am exhausted. Hurt & exhausted and we have come to a cross roads, yet again. After the closing of our FL company, we built something new and held 2 contracts in our old neighborhood. They needed my DH's expertise and we needed a paycheck. We worked hard and J spent endless hours serving all the homeowners and not billing them for all that he could have, because we felt it was better to establish a long term relationship. We moved to GA and maintained those 2 contracts from here. J has been back and forth and spent endless hours on the phone pleasing everyone.

I promised one of those contracts to my good friend who had been let go from her company due to the economy and she NEEDED the job and would have worked very hard for us, but she couldn't start till August, so in the mean time, another *very good* friend told me that she & her husband would love the job until the other gal could start. She was a sitting B0D member, my dear friend and someone that had went all the way with me in the bullshit trenches of the bad B0D days. I handed over the keys to her, the night before pulling out of paradise & that was that....until she called me up one day and threatened to not vote for our large contract if she couldn't keep the smaller one that they were maintaining. She blackmailed us for her vote for the large contract. My only response was, "Wow, this is uncomfortable."

Fast forward another month and she continued to call about the importance of her maintaining the contract because her husband decided to cheat and he would need the extra income to pay her child support. I sat on the phone with her and cried with her. My heart was just as broken because it was a family that I loved. I gave her a safe place to escape and think and endless hours of a shoulder to cry on and I never judged what he did or what she might do. I was her friend, not her therapist and I would support her with any decision she made. We left the contract with them because we felt cornered.

Fast forward to Oct.

The B0d decided to rebid the contracts in order to save the community money, which was contractually ours for 3 years. J submitted our bids before the deadline and that was that.

2 weeks after the deadline, there was another bid submitted by our good friends for our contract. The contract was awarded to them and we received notice that the community would no longer need us as of Jan 1. My *good friend* had propriety information and copied our bid. We were shocked. In fact, the president and pr0perty manager were shocked as well. But the illegal business doesn't stop there....they awarded the contract to them and they don't even have a legit business established. No worker's comp, no insurance, no LLC, no liability coverage, nothing. The state of FL doesn't even recognize them as business owners. Go figure.

Now listen, I am all for seeing an open door and bidding on something. What hurt us was the fact they didn't tell us. They went behind our back, waited for our contract to be submitted and because she is a sitting B0D member, she had full access to our contract and then chose to copy it and submitted it as their own and the B0D awarded it to them. Only after they awarded it to them, they called us to tell us, because they suddenly felt the need to be transparent with us. I guess they forgot that we used to live there and still had friends that would call us. We knew 5 minutes after they faxed the bid into the pr0perty manager. The fun little kicker is it wasn't even awarded to the lowest bidder. How's that for saving the community money???

The DH basically asked for all his subcontractor insurance, knowing full well he didn't have it, and told him the job was no longer his. Granted, he would be taking over the contract on Jan 1, but we decided to give it to someone else for the last 3 months because we felt so screwed over by a couple we called *friends.* Needless to say, he hasn't provided the paperwork necessary to work for us and there has been no further payment made to them and he refused to quit doing the job for the last 3 months because....we were served papers. Our once *dear friends* are suing us of all things, even for December's payment, which hadn't even began when he filed suit. Are they crazy? or am I? Again, I am more hurt by their actions and saddened that they have decided to take this path when all they had to do was produce the paperwork to become a 'legal' employee. It seems frivolous and he really has no grounds for a lawsuit because we have no contract with him, but needless to say, I am not sleeping at night. I am hurt.

As far as the larger contract goes, we were served papers to be off the property within 30 days. Again, my *dear friend* sits on the B0D. This is all so illegal that I don't know how they sleep at night. J&I have taken all of them off our Faceb00k page and blocked them. I am glad to be out of that community because if they don't have something to bitch about, somebody to harass and people to sue, then they find someone. That's just how they roll. The president can not believe how far down hill it's gone and the pr0perty manager told me that she trusts nobody anymore and that they are all crazy and she can't predict what they will do.

It's so sad because these were people that we trusted. I knocked on doors with these people to insure that the original B0D never got back in office. They called me to get votes. They called me to sit for hours watching security cameras, they called me to unlock doors for people in the clubhouse, it was J&I who knew every person and every access code in that place. I don't know if I'm more shocked, bewildered or hurt.

We will begin 2o11 85k short.

J hasn't decided rather to fight the legalities of his contracts or move on and take a chance in GA that doors will open and God will continue to provide in ways that we can't see yet. Yes he still has a job here and we are very thankful for the way he has moved up in this company in such a short period. We take none of this for granted and we see how these doors have been opened on the exact same days that our news worsened in Fl. They day of the 1st B0D meeting of deciding on our contract, J was offered a permanent position as an account manager dealing with their biggest contract. Answered prayer.

Just yesterday, I signed for more papers from Fl with bad news and J was informed the company is being bought out by a larger company and

will only improve the benefits for us.

Without a doubt, we have legal grounds for a lawsuit to at least be bought out of our contracts, but have yet to decide the path we will take. As much as I want the money owed to us for all the headaches of those assholes, I also want to walk away and not look back. I'm tired of the constant drama and now the pain of losing people in our lives that we once called friends. Our life is here now and I'm very happy for that, but I'm still upset over the position they have put us in. We have lots of mutual friends and that will only make things uncomfortable for all involved.

It's just a heavy matter on my heart and I apologize for the miserable post, I just needed to dump my brain somewhere.