All by Myself…

I’m alone, I think as I drive home from an evening meeting.  I am looking at the softness of the night sky, where the three-quarter moon looks as if someone just squished a large yellow ball into an infinite black sponge. 

I’m 42, and for  the first time, I am in my city alone, no relatives to speak of anywhere within reach. (Well, except my in-laws, I guess I should count them.  But, you know, BLOOD relations I guess I mean.) Mom is still on vacation (She takes the last leg of her trip tomorrow, to see TODDLER!) Uncle B and Aunt D are at home down state, cleaning up after the Wrath of Ike. Of course, Brother, SisM, and Toddler are in OKC.  And  my precious Mr. Man was called to work overnight out of town.

Now, here I am, after wrangling  around with the format of my blog again (Did NOT like the other one;check out the new stuff in the sidebar) writing a blog entry, for pity’s sake.   At 2:15 a.m. Central.  When I need to be at work at 9:00 a.m.   Unfortunately, I often behave this unwisely.  But I’d been better at it lately.  I’m going to hate myself when the alarm blares. Again. (Oh, wait, a friend just e-mailed me.  Seems she got up to take a Tums, and checked her e-mail on the way back to bed. *Heh.* Excuse me while I answer her real quick.)

Okay.  I’m back.

It’s been a rather quiet week. 

Oh, until this afternoon.  A business man called me, and actually CUSSED ME OUT.  See, I’ve been working with this guy for quite awhile, unfortunately, he didn’t work back with ME.  So, I rated him on  Angie’s List.  I  gave him good marks on the quality of his company’s work, but I was frank about the lack of quality of his follow up work, and the honest fact about the inability to keep his word that he’d demonstrated to not only me, but others I’ve compared notes with.  So he calls me up (Oh, so he DOES have my number?) and proceeds to use some of the foulest language and terms directed at me in a very long time, tossing in words like “slander” and “lawsuit” and crap like that. Apparently, someone had read my rating and comments and he lost out on a $15,000 job.

Surprisingly, and I think only because God was bolstering me, I didn’t react in a hot-headed manner like I might usually have done.  Some of my “older” friends might say that it might be a sign of newly developed maturity, but I want reassure everyone that that accusation is NOT true.  🙂

I explained to him, in an eerily calm voice, the exact nature of my dissatisfaction, and he has a truckload of excuses and defenses…then I said I didn’t appreciate his calling to cuss me out.  Then he said he never cussed me out!  Seriously?! then he said that he was just angry, blah blah blah.  I said I knew how he felt.  He tried to guilt me into backing down by reminding me about how they financed us when our credit was less than perfect, and I countered by reminding him that not only did we make every payment to him on time, we paid him off early. I also pointed out that not only had I talked to many people about my issues with him who said they’d heard of or had the same problems and complaints, his own employees had confessed things of this nature to me, including his own nephew. He said I had no idea how busy they were and how difficult it was to tend to the small stuff.  I reminded him that the small stuff was what could trip him up when it came to running a business.

There was a lot of verbal push and shove, including me asking if he really wanted to hurt me by bringing a lawsuit about an opinion I’d placed on a public website geared toward that purpose, especially since it was the TRUTH, (maybe that is why I wa calm, because I knew I had Truth on my side) but in the end, he backed down, and even apologized–repeatedly. And I can’t believe I navigated this disagreement without losing my cool.   It’s so unlike me.  And he even called me back and said he’d checked into the things I’d mentioned, and sure enough, they’d dropped the ball. And he apologized again, and said he’d make it right.

I’m not holding my breath.  Except in the hope he doesn’tactually bring forth a lawsuit.  I don’t think he’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a judgement against me, but all the same…no one likes a threat like that leveled at them.

*sigh* What a world, what a world.

Maybe it’s a good thing Mr. Man was out of town.  He was not pleased when I repeated the words the man had spewed into my ear. At least when I lose my cool, I’m not filthy about it.  I may be a bitch, (sometimes, we just MUST be) but I’m not filthy. 🙂

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