Just Shoot Me

 One day runs straight into the next and I can't remember anything except that I am overwhelmed and always ready to sleep. Given the opportunity I would no doubt be able to sleep a straight 24 hours, shower, eat and go right back to bed.

My computer and my WIFI seem to be in a conspiracy to rob me of my simple pleasures in life! Some days I can comment on the few blogs I find time to actually read and then there are days that my comments must be going  up in the cloud, never to be seen again. "Unable to publish" pops up far too many times.

But, as always, people seem to collaborate and want to stand on my last nerve. Last night, after I closed the door to the store and ate my dinner that must have been okay, although I have no memory of the actual food. I only ate it because I was swallowing my daily medications. The phone rang several times, causing me to get up and come back into the office to book reservations. Part of my job and I don't mind it so much.

What I do mind are the ones who call to "check on" their reservations at 8:30 in the evening and then proceed to complain about the placement of said reservations. I have no vacancies this weekend and have made every effort to accommodate the requests made at the time the reservations have been placed. If you ask me for 3 sites together, I will either tell you that I can do that or that I will try to rearrange things to do so, or that I simply cannot accommodate you.

Every campground in this area is full. Wait too long to book a reservation and you will be turned away. I am currently taking reservations for next year. A full campground might be desirable, but it seems to simply cause more problems. I can usually sense a problem when I meet my potential tenants for the first time. Most of the time I simply tell them that I have no openings. Long term tenants can be like squatters once they get their foot in the door.

This morning as I sat answering emails with my coffee in peace, the phone shattered my tranquility. It has been nice to say I am sorry, that I have no vacancies for the weekend. This call was of a different nature. When a long term tenant says "we need to talk" dread runs up my spine. She told me to drink my coffee and take my time, but I dressed immediately and walked over to her site.

"Did you hear the gunshot at 1:00 am?" This is not a question I want to hear with so many people in close quarters. HeWho likes to have the loudest fan he can purchase running on high for the white noise it provides. Why? I don't know. You would think that simply removing his hearing aids would be enough, but he has had a fan on for the last nearly 48 years. Sleeping in a vortex prevents one from hearing the world outside our bedroom. So, I did not hear the gunshot and was not happy to hear about it after the fact.

Her neighbor has become quite paranoid of late and insists that someone is out to get him. Claims that rocks have been placed in his water line, his car has been tampered with and that he hears "them" walking around his trailer in the night. He has been here for years and mostly unseen. No problems from him until recently when he lost his job. He has not paid rent since February. When you get that far behind, it is impossible to catch up.

He was next to impossible to find to ask what he planned to do about the rent. When we finally did manage to catch him at home to discuss his situation he had landed another job and was planning to pay every week until he caught up.

Since I had never had a problem with him, it was decided to give him the opportunity to work off his debt. He was a great help with the pool painting. He impressed me and my hardest working camper. That is not easy to do. Both of us have high standards as far as working goes. I would never ask anyone to do something I wouldn't do. I have painted the pool and it is not as fun as one might think!

This is when the paranoia began with the daily tales of nightly shenanigans going on. Incidentally, the same shenanigans started happening at his neighbor's site. His neighbor is much like me and not one to put up with hysteria. Her truck was keyed, her door lock tampered with. Things you could actually see and prove. She bought cameras and installed them in hopes of catching the perpetrator.

Last night when she heard the gunshot she went out to ask him what exactly he thought he might be doing. He claimed that someone had thrown a bag of "garbage" at him camper, awakening him, so he opened his door, gun in hand and "saw a shadow" and shot at it! He later enhanced his tale to include someone crawling under his car and cutting wires.

The bag of garbage turned out to be a Walmart bag with a few paper plates in it. I doubt the impact would have been significant enough to even alert a dog. I was standing there when he said the wires under his car were cut and "hanging" I didn't see anything hanging and his car was sitting so low to the ground that I doubt a skinny cat would have been able to get under it, much less maneuver around to cut anything. He was able to drive the car to go to work later in the day.

A deputy came out and took his complaint that a prowler was up to no good. We had no choice but to evict him. You cannot discharge a weapon in my campground. Will I need to make a sign? Shouldn't there be some things that common sense would dictate?

His stellar work performance dwindled after the pool was painted. About a week ago he stepped on a nail while taking apart a crappy old shed. That ended is career as a work camper. I sent him to the health department for a tetanus shot and paid for it. His "work" didn't even clear one month of rent. I have stepped on nails before and simply kept on with the task at hand waiting until I was done with my task, then tending my wound. 

You might recall an incident I posted in the past about the lawnmower picking up a screw that had been dropped and not picked up and shooting it into my leg. I kept mowing until I looked down to see it firmly imbedded in my calf just to the left of my shin. I tried to remove it myself with some needle nose pliers and failed. I texted HeWho had dropped the screw and told him to get home and stop gossiping with his cronies, that I had been shot. I know how to get his attention. When he drove in I was sitting on the porch with the pliers and my leg propped up. I told him to yank it out fast while I looked away. I poured some peroxide on it and then put a neosporin and a bandaid on it ..... and finished mowing the yard. Yes, it hurt and was sore for a few days, but it did not incapacitate me!

I confess that thoughts of limping and maybe making use of a cane did cross my mind. I could have been waited on and pampered for maybe three days before the novelty wore off. I admit that I got out of cooking that night and sat with my leg elevated while HeWho felt guilty brought me food and drink.

I finished the job at hand and didn't limp around for a week, culminating in a phantom mischief maker that I shot at blindly in the night. Upon checking the surveillance cameras, no body, ghostly or otherwise was seen. The motion detector lights did not come on. And as soon as we pull his travel trailer to our dry storage lot I will be able to incur some revenue on that site. His plan was to leave it on the site until he earned enough money to pay someone to move it for him! I would say "just shoot me", but given the circumstance he might just do that!