After reading a friend's blog today...

...I decided to try to do some blogging again. Thanks Fiwa (now let's see if I can remember how to post a hyperlink)

I'm not sure how this will go...with my memory, I'll probably forget to do this very regularly, but when I have a moment, I'll try to get here.

Honesty? You just never know!

After reading Fiwa's blog, I wanted to relate two stories that have hit me where I live in the past few weeks. I'll get to my stuff in a minute but you need to know what triggered this blast of blogging again.

Fiwa was robbed...in a pretty sneaky way. Someone robbed her mailbox, got a hold of checks she had written to pay bills, erased the ink writing on them and filled them back in with their own name and a new amount of money. I guess acetone (nail polish remover) takes ink off...Fiwa advised using a Sharpie to make out your checks...it won't come off with acetone. The thieving woman got away with cashing two checks.

Things like this make me sick. Heartsick! I can't get stories like this off my mind.

Now for my stories.

My bosses secretary was caught embezzling a pretty hefty amount of money that she stole over the past few years. She is someone I've known in a work capacity and even an occasional social event, for quite a few years...probably at least 15 years. She was divorced and recently married a much younger man than she. We teased her about being a cougar!

One day, a few weeks back, we showed up for work and she wasn't there. We found out that she wasn't coming back. I'm not sure what the legal system is going to do to her...but she'll probably have to serve some time in prison for embezzlement. Over the years, we had all been warned about the pop fund being short or the snack money not coming out right and we were told that if it kept up we wouldn't be having pop or snacks available to us at work. The boss assumed someone was taking pop and not paying for it. Not even close!

We also have a charity called "Christmas for Kids" to help needy kids and their families in our district at Christmas time. We raise thousands of dollars with fund-raisers, 50-50 drawings, and penny donations (big jars sitting around to throw your extra change into). We also get lots of donations from local businesses. She was tapping that too since she had access to all the money that would come in.

One of our co-workers had breast cancer and we took up regular collections to help her out since her insurance wasn't paying much. They're pretty sure that she took from that money too.

Yeah, she took from our charities.

It was enough to make us all sick.

The second story just happened a few days ago. A friend of my sisters friend, a 65 year old woman, was busted for being the leader of a big drug ring...not marijuana but the hard stuff! She's the sweetest woman and funny and fun. I had just gotten to know her in the past few months, meeting her at parties I'd been to. I liked her!!!! But now she's facing 13 counts of selling drugs to MEG agents and one of those times was in a high school parking lot! Each count means a mandatory 6 years in prison. That's 78 years. She had her daughter and son-in-laws in on her "business" and the police even speculated on her having her grandchildren in on it too.

I am either really naive or have my head in the sand! My sisters too! We had NO IDEA!!! Of course, I guess people like that have a way of hiding their bad selves behind a facade of goodness.

It's things like this that keep me awake at night. I worry that I've gotten to this age and can still have the wool pulled over my eyes this badly and not see the real person behind the facade.

Scares the hell outta me!!!

Welcome back, eh?