Mixed Bag

I have a mixed bag of emotions going on today. I'm sad, angry, guilty, frustrated and happy all at the same time. If you're interested in knowing why, I'll tell you. Let's take this one emotion at a time, shall we?

Sad. I'm incredibly sad today. I heard from my father in law that the coroner has finally decided on a cause of death for my brother in law. He died in October, so we have been waiting all this time to find out what happened to him. The answer? Smoke inhalation. He died in a house fire, so you would think that this wouldn't come as much of a surprise, but it does. Initially we were led to believe that he had no smoke in his lungs and may have died before the fire started.

Angry. I'm angry about the way the media, the police and the coroner handled this case. At the time my brother in law died, the media referred to him as a squatter. They portrayed him as an insignificant homeless drifter who wandered into a house and decided to live there illegally until he sealed his own fate by drinking, smoking cigarettes and lighting candles. There is very little, if any truth to that. He rented his home, so he wasn't a squatter and he was anything but insignificant to his family. Had he been drinking and smoking before the fire started? I don't know, maybe he was, but I doubt he drank so much that he accidentally lit his house on fire and couldn't get out. Could arson or foul play have been involved? We'll never know because the police don't see cause for an investigation. I wonder if the landlord cashed his insurance check yet.

Guilty. We hadn't seen Gordy in a long time. He moved around a lot so he was hard to keep track of. He had been living in that house for nearly a year and we didn't even know it. Even though he was legally blind, he was self sufficient and never asked for anything from anyone. He was a nice guy who would give you the shirt off his back. His electricity had been shut off and he was getting by with candles until he could get it turned back on. I feel so guilty that we didn't know that. We would have had it turned back on or taken him in at our house. The "what ifs" haunt me. Could we have prevented his death? I'll never know.

Frustrated. As if all of the above weren't frustrating enough, we're still getting nowhere in our search for a car for our son. I emailed someone who placed an ad on craiglist yesterday. Here is the response I got. This has been directly copied from the email they sent me:

Hello,I did not listed the car on ebay only this transaction is made through
ebay.I'm in Orlando, FL(we just moved here because of my new job),the thing is i
had 2 guys promise me to buy it and pick-it up :one didn't show up and the other
called saying he lost the money, so i can't afford to take days off my work for
that, that iswhy i gave to a shipping company that will ship it to the next
owner, it is sealed in a container, so i'm trying to sell it online,so if you
want to buy it i will ship to you and deal trough eBay (since i had it on their
site for a while).You would have to send me your full shipping address and if
you do that you can consider it yours. You will buy under these therms
: - you pay to eBay and they will transfer the funds to me only after you
get the car - shipping cost will be supported by me - you are given a
5 days inspection period to decide if want to keep it or ship it back at my
expenseYou pay eBay the payment, they will ship the car, you get within max 3
days, inside the car you get the bill of sale,the title,owner`s manual,2 keys
and the rest of the paperwork.depending on your decision ebay will transfer the
funds to me or give it back to you and ship the car back to me at my expense.1st
step is to send your full shipping address to ebay to send you an invoice and
assist you.P.S. I am waiting for your response and if you agree,don`t forget to
send me your info!

I'll be sure to give her my social security number while I'm at it. When my kids tell me something unbelievable I often say "See this bump on my head? I got it when I fell off the turnip truck yesterday." That applies here. Do people really fall for this? What a waste of time.

And finally, happy! I'm ecstatic that I got my first blog award! Thank you to both Donna of My Tasty Treasures and Lissaloo of One Step At A Time for bestowing this honor upon me! If you haven't visited either of their blogs in a while, you must do so!

In accepting this award, I am passing it on to 10 other bloggers. Here they are:

A dash of life

An admittedly lazy thirty-something's P90Xperience

Looking Beyond Food

Making our own memories

One Step at a Time

Pam-fried Family Life

Tattoos and Teething Rings

The 5th Sister

Tried and True Cooking With Heidi

Yesterday's Tomorrow


The rules for this award can be found here.

Thanks for stopping and by and letting me share my bag of crazy with you! I hope to post a Friday Night drink recipe tonight. I have a feeling I'm going to need it!