Life in da ghettooooo...

Law and Order: Salt Lake City (dun dun DUUUNNN)

DA: Your honor, I know that Salt Lake City is often veiwed as the squeeky clean center of the universe, but I have personal knowledge that this is not the case.

Exhibit A: The "home invasion/robbery" of the neighbor kiddie-corner to us (whom we highly suspect to be a drug dealer. People broke into his house demanding money, and when he didn't pony up, they shot him in the leg. The paramedics had to build a special ramp to get my 600 lb. neighbor out of his house. (This month)

Exhibit B: The undercover op at the duplex across the street that almost made me pee my pants when I saw a lot of undercover cops shouting and running around with guns. (2002)

Exhibit C: The two meth labs within stone's throw from my house. (few years ago)

Exhibit D: The pedophile within stone's throw from my house. (now! ick.)

Exhibit E: The murder of a little girl across the street from my daughter's elementary school the week she (my daughter) started kindergarten. (1998)

Exhibit F: The drive-by shooting and the swat team raid on the duplex across the street and 3 doors down. (2003, 2004)

Exhibit G: The day planner that was stolen out of my husband's car and found, 10 years LATER in the ceiling of a house across the street that was being remodeled by new neighbors. (returned last year)

Exhibit H: The weed wacker that was stolen out of our garage. (same year planner was stolen, by the same drug dealing kids that wanted to page their dealer from OUR phone!)

And last, but not least, the WASHER AND DRYER that were STOLEN OUT OF OUR BACKYARD LAST NIGHT.

Granted, they were broken and we were going to recycle them, but that was MY fifty bucks, dangit, and I want it back.

I rest my case.

On integrity and forgiveness and all that schtuff....

So...the latest scandal in the ever-shrinking scrap universe concerns a woman who stole over 100 THOUSAND DOLLARS in cash and merchandise from a scrapbook store she worked at.

She owes over a QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS in restitution to the store owner.

And is paying it back at one (yeah, one) hundred dollars a month.

Which means, that the scrapbook store owner would have to be cryogenically frozen and awoken in oh, 100+ years or so to see it. (Assuming this *lady's* estate continued with the token payments.)

Now, I'm all for making a new start and setting things to rights...but is there a line you shouldn't cross once you've made such a momentous mistake?

The reason I ask is that this woman started a blog.

And on this blog she lobbyied for attention. Big time. Showed her scraproom (brimming with supplies.) Started getting guest designer gigs. Sucking up to "names" in the industry.

Posted pictures of a Martha Stewart Punch that claimed cost so much on Ebay that she was embarrassed to quote the price. Pictures of a mountain of product she purchased at Target AFTER "dropping 50 dollars" at another location.

And her victim gets 100 dollars a month to repay her for practically bankrupting her. The store owner had to get a second mortgage on her home because of this fiasco.

To me, it seems the woman hasn't experienced remorse. That if her financial circumstances have changed since she was ordered to pay 100 a month, she should be paying more. And of her OWN volition. Not because the court ordered her to, but to make things right.

If that had happened, it wouldn't bother me that she's got a small scrapstore of her own in her house and that she seems to be spending 100's of dollars a month on new supplies. I wouldn't care if she appeared as a guest designer for a company.

But, working in a scrapbook store and seeing first-hand what it takes to stay in business, my heart goes out to this owner who sacrificed to keep hers alive while the woman who almost took it away flaunts her prosperity.

Not that it matters what I think, I suppose.

Someday, somehow, if the "perp" doesn't change her ways and her attitude, I fear she will reap what she has sown ten-fold.

I think it's happening already.