I'm Probably Going To Hell

A few final words about my fire.
My sister was jealous my home burned up. It started with the donations. Like I said earlier my parents basement was full of the donations thoughtful people from Illinois and Iowa had given us. One man even constructed a wooden house for my youngest son to play on. It's so well built I have no doubt his grandchildren will be playing on it.
On a few occasions I caught Rose going though newer donations to see if there was anything she wanted.
"What are you doing?" I knew the answer but asked anyway.
"You can't use all this. I want to see if there's anything I want", was her reply. I have no doubt she made off with quite a bit of things. (More then one friend of mine suggested I shoot her and tell police she was a looter.)
One of the hardest things I had to do after the fire was to walk though the rubble of my house and catalog everything I owned, and to give it a replacement value. (Remember boys and girls get replacement cost on your homeowners Insurance. It's a beautiful thing.) For a week and a half I walked though my house (Avoiding holes) and made my list of what was lost. ( It's amazing that you can't tell one burned piece of electronics from another. "Sure that was an X-Box.") Once I was done I sent the list to my Insurance agent.
Two days later I had a check in my hand for more then I care to say.
(Oh before I go let me give you another bit of advice about house fires. The Insurance agent afterwards will offer to send in a company to "clean " what clothes and items they can. Say no. What they do is charge you for every piece they try to clean.
Lets say you have a badly smoke damaged shirt. The cleaners the Insurance company sends you to, charges you 10 dollars to clean that shirt. If they don't get it clean they may try to clean it again 3 or 4 times. All that money is taken from your check. One person I knew was charged 30 thousand dollars. All they got back was a bag full of clothes. So instead of having a nice 60 thousand dollar check to replace their items they got a check for half that. When my Insurance agent suggested that to me I told him no.
Actually I believe I said hell no.)
Back to Rose and Jealousy.
After going though what we went though it was a nice change for Angie and I to go shopping for new things. Mostly it was window shopping at first. Angie and I did not want to buy too many things and just have to move them later. I would stop by and show my Mom things we were going to buy. Rose of course if she was there would throw a fit. At one point she actually said, "I wish I had a fire and could get all new things."
Let me write that again. "I wish I had a fire and could get all new things."
It's just as bitchy the second time.
When Angie and I took a chunk of our replacement money and paid the house off she flew off the handle completely.
"Why do all the nice things happen to people like you?"
I looked at Rose, blinked a couple times and said with all sincerity, "Rose I hope one day you are blessed as I am."
When we moved back in to our home after it was repaired, we invited family and friends over to show them what it looked like. Our house was now far better then before the fire. Rose didn't come until late and stayed in the kitchen glaring the entire time. She refused to even look at my television. (Widescreen. HDTV.)
I must say that I'm surprised that a blaze didn't break out in her home that night.
She was jealous I had a fire. I still can't get over that.
One other thing before I go. As nice as everything was when we moved back in, I was still very much ill at ease. For a long time, well into that summer I had the feeling that someone was going to come and take it all away. Finally I began to rest a little easier, and realized my new home wasn't going anywhere.

Words from my past.

During the time Rose was making her comments about how lucky I was I felt anything but lucky. In point of fact I was very upset. Twice in less then 10 years I've lost everything to fires. I began to feel very angry with God. I wrote Mark two letters that showed a bit of my anger. One of them was a story of me bumping into God at a bar after burning my house down. Under his barstool was a empty gas can. God and I got into a loud verbal agrument in my letter.
Sadly that letter seems to have lost for you to enjoy. The second letter however has survived. Mark has retrieved it and emailed it back to me. Now before you read it, I must warn you that if you are very religious and faithful, you might find this....Upsetting. Please keep in mind what I had just gone though.


God’s Bad Aim



Earlier today, I was sitting in my house, when suddenly there was a huge noise outside. I ran outside and saw the house next to me had collapsed. The owner of the house crawled out of the wreckage finding that only he among his family had survived. While he sat crying among the ruins a car pulled up and some guy got out (also crying) and said “Oh man, I hate to tell you this but your factor just exploded and only I survived.” My next door neighbor comforted his worker and said “That’s Ok, at least I have the meat packing plant.” Soon afterwards another car pulled up. A fellow of Hispanic origin stepped out (also crying) and began to speak to my unfortunate neighbor. I couldn’t understand what he said, but Angie translated roughly that the INS showed up and deported everyone, and only he got away to tell the tale. My neighbor cried a bit more but said “At least I have decent insurance.” His cell phone rang almost as soon as he said that. (Did I mention that he was still sitting among the ruins of his house, and that by this point I was sitting in a lawn chair eating popcorn?) He answered, and it was his insurance agent. It was here that my most unfortunate neighbor found out that his insurance company was a subsidiary of Enron.
It was at this point he finally lost it. He was put in a straight-jacket and sent to the looney bin. He kept saying over and over again (crying all the time) “It’ll be Ok. It’ll be Ok.” As the ambulance took him away I noticed God and Satan leaning against a car. God looked at Satan and said, “See he didn’t curse me once.” Satan replied, “Man from what you told me he would have folded right away. Oh well. You win.” He reached into hi pocket and gave God a dollar. God held it up to the sky and looked closely at it. “It’s real!” Satan said.
“Just checking. You know I thought Hernandez would have folded right away too and cursed me. Oh well, that’ll teach him.”
It was at this point I threw my bag of popcorn at God’s head. (Couldn’t miss. HUGE target). I shouted, “Hey dippy, you got the wrong house!” I must say God looked very surprised. And Angry.
“All right let’s see how long it takes for you to curse me!” He began to gesture.
“Go to Hell,” I said before he could finish.
The devil laughed. “Ha! I win!”
“No wait, I get to vex him!” God looked very disappointed, “but very well.” God reached into his robes and pulled out a dollar. “Here you go.” Satan took the dollar with a smug look. They began to walk off, with God glaring at me.
“Should we fix what we did to his neighbor?” Satan asked.
“Screw him,” God replied. "I'm late for lunch with the Pope."
"Yeah ", said the Devil. "I have a lunch with Hernandez's sister. You know she scares me?"
God wasn't listening. He clearly wasn’t in a good mood. I decided to ruin it a bit more.
“Hey, Dark One,” I shouted, “God’s trying to rip you off. All he did was give you the dollar you gave him. He still owes you his dollar!”
God held up his hands, “No, buddy, you got it wrong. It was an honest mistake. Here, I’ll give it to you.” God began to reach into his robes when he got a surprised look in his face. “LOOK!” He pointed behind Satan, “It’s the rapture!”
The devil turned around, his eyes wide. God took off running down the street. Satan looked down at the ground and said to me in a low voice, “He took off, didn’t he?”
“Yep.”
“What a jerk. I’m out of here.” And with that he was gone.
Sigh.
That was my day. Anything up with you?
Tom

I know this is the sort of thing I'm going to be asked about if I even get close to the Pearly Gates.