09/19/2011

 I’m going to do this entry by category, otherwise I know I’ll get lost and either forget something or blab too long about something else.

So:

Court
I wrote back in May about everything that was happening with our old bosses, and the fact that we would be going to court…I had no idea at the time how dragged out it would be. The drama continued through August- harassing phone calls, constant letters "served" to us by his process server (who is really their neighbor and just a professional BITCH, I think this is the first time she’s served anything in years), completely unreasonable demands, court dates being changed, amended, or dropped altogether. They’ve opened a new shop in the next town over, about 15 minutes away, so now we’re watching as they attempt to steal our business through some very tricky advertising methods (they’re going to have another lawsuit on their hands, this time against them, if they don’t back off. I stay calm and quiet for a long time, and I don’t put my energy into getting mad at people…but I also don’t take shit. Poke me enough times and I’m going to start stirring and coming after you).

So, we finally had our court date on September 15th. Crazy Insane Husband didn’t even show up, just his wife, with her crazy mother (the whole family is so unstable) and her brother, who is not only a convicted felon but also stole from US…he was there to be their witness. It just goes to show how well they think things through…

So, she’s suing us primarily for loss of income, as well as a few ridiculous "fines" her husband came up with, like $500 for using their business license, which we never did. We had a change to see each other’s evidence…her evidence was bank records from AFTER she left the shop, to prove that we never made any deposits. O course we didn’t. She abandoned her business. I was an independent contractor with a legal right to have any checks written out to me personally, and at that point, everyone was working for me, and I needed to be able to pay them, so for the first few days until we had a new business bank account, money went into my personal account. I don’t know why she ever thought for a second that we would put a cent into their bank account for them to steal away. She had left the business, they were going through procedures to get out of the lease, and she had no intent of coming back. Well, now they’ve changed their story and are insisting that she told us she was going to take a vacation. That’s the point where I got annoyed, looked them both in the eye and went, "That’s a complete lie!", and told them word for word what they had actually said.

I really, really hate liars. 

Her other evidence was the daily logs we keep to show who did what on a dog, to show how much each person earned (we all work by commission per dog), to prove how much she had been earning and how much she should have earned during the days she left on "vacation". She would barely show them to us and when she did I could tell that they had been redone…which, it’s fine to redo your logs later on to neaten them up and make it more legible…but to not bring the originals to court? Hell no, lady.

So, we waited for about 2 and a half hours to get called to the stand. There was an attorney standing in for the judge that day. She was just as capable of making a judgement, and really, she wasn’t even the one who would be…she was just taking notes and collecting evidence for the actual judge to look over, and he would send us a judgement by mail. So we get to the stand, and the first thing my former boss said is, "We would like to mediate". Now, a few other people in the cases prior to ours had asked for mediation. It was made very clear that there was not a mediator there that day, but if we’d like to, we could all go to a room together just to talk. There was no way I was going to go into a room with them to argue more without coming to any conclusions, so I said I would not mediate…to which she replied that she would like to wait for a judge.

Annnnd it all gets dragged out some more. We go back to court on October 13th. It’s so frustrating. 

Business
Slow, for two reasons: Grooming shops tend to slow down a bit mid-to-late Summer, and we live in a university town where every business slows down in the summer. It’s picking back up, we’re working on advertising. We’re working on everything, really, and getting it figured out. Honestly, the hardest part is the fact that we’re now the bosses and that means we have to be bossy. We have all been one big family for so long, and we’re not the oldest, so it’s hard to suddenly have to put on the Boss Hat and tell people what to do, but for the sake of our business, we have to manage things and make sure everything runs smoothly…

Anyway. It will all work out. I love what I do, though, and I do love being in a position where I can constantly figure out how to improve and be more successful.

Life in General
I moved in with Jonathan. Things were changing at my house anyway, my furnished room was about to become completely unfurnished due to the landlord’s upcoming divorce, and my house was a 30 minute bike ride away…an hour commute each day was just not working out with me trying to run the business and also have a life. And a spot was opening up in Jonathan’s house, so we went for it. 

It’s been so much better than last time we lived together. We’ve figured out a lot of things and worked through a lot of things since then.

I’ve been keeping busy and I like it.

My bestest friend/sister/co-owner of my business Jessica is PREGNANT. Which means things are definitely changing around here big time but I’m excited. 🙂 I’ve been accompanying her to midwife’s visits and the like, and it’s been fun. Right now she’s going to our community clinic, which only has midwives and the director of the program is very pro-natural birth, she had a home birth. It was funny, actually, because Jess was worrying aloud about having a home birth in a little one-bedroom apartment and the director goes, "Honey, I did it in a 500 square feet studio. Believe me, you won’t even notice".

She might switch to a home-birth midwife, or she might stick with the clinic and have the baby at a local birthing center, which doesn’t sound too bad.

There’s some drama in my family right now because of the religion I grew up in. It basically sucks.

I’m going to post another entry today with photos. I was just going to stick them in here, but I just realized I have to resize them and everything.