I had an amazing weekend !   My film crew came down to Northern Virginia to my mom’s house for the weekend to spend the 4th with us and for my mom’s surprise birthday brunch.

On the 4th, we all went to my sister’s house for a bbq.  Her husband owns a bbq catering company and his bbq is to die for ! We left my sister’s house and came back towards my mom’s house to go to the fireworks show.

My sisters, brother-in-laws and I put our heads together months ago to decide what we were doing for our mom for her birthday.  We decided that in lieu of doing something with the family, we would again surprise her and send her on vacation for a week to a five star resort.  We decided on Dominican Republic’s Punta Cana.   Last year, we surprised her by tricking her into the car and we dropped her off at the airport heading to Riviera Maya, Mexico to a resort there.

To throw her off and to celebrate her, we planned a surprise breakfast brunch with our friends, family, and her work family. It took me two days to get all the food done.   Twenty people enjoyed swiss and crab quiche, bacon and cheese quiche, cinnamon breakfast cake, cajun breakfast potatoes, homemade pork sausage, homemade turkey sausage, turkey bacon, pork bacon, scrambled eggs, buttermilk biscuits made with fresh milled flour, red velvet rum waffles, vanilla bourbon pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, fruit platter, cheese platter, pasta salad, cajun shrimp with cheddar jack grits, fried chicken, champagne momosas, variety of juices and birthday cake.

My sister and I worked tirelessly and my nieces and nephews put up all the decorations.  My mom got suspicious when she saw the amount of food we were preparing but she didn’t say anything.  At noon, our friends started showing up and we had the brunch.  My grandmother said the grace and we all ate.  When my mom opened her gifts, I had my niece hand her the passport wallet and she exclaims, ” I was wondering where my passport was… I thought it got boxed up !”    We told her we had had it for months LOL.   She opens it to find her passport and the travel documents for her trip and she leaves on Wednesday morning at 5 am.  She has an oceanview suite and the resort is all inclusive and we got the spa package as well.  Her suitcase was packed and then she says she was wondering where her swimsuit cover was !   I am surprised she did not miss a bunch of black panties and her favorite pj set!!  Needless to say, my mom was blown away and she is leaving the day before her birthday again this year for her vacation that is well deserved !

In ME news, I am still on estrogen for the next week and I have a sonogram and blood work scheduled for Monday, the day after MY birthday as the final part of the mock cycle.

This morning, I had to go over to the imaging center for the ole mammogram.  They did the 3D one !  It doesn’t hurt like the regular one does and they do not squish your breasts to death like the old one.

I am finally starting to come out of the funk I have been in for the past few weeks.   As many may recall, I did a Gofundme campaign for an acquaintance who lost her son and grandmother the same day.  I did not want to do it, as something just did not sit right in my spirit about it.  Long story short, I did the campaign and left it open until the end of May when I was finally done with my last IVF cycle and then feeling better after the blood clot and other pain I had to deal with after my procedure. I got really suspicious when the friend called me out of the blue and said her parents were going to take care of the funeral and wanted to know if I could just send the check to her. I told her NO.  I specifically stated on the GoFundMe that the monies were for the funeral expenses and that the check was being cut to the funeral home.

I was dealing with a lot between my failed cycle, the upcoming anniversary of the loss of my baby, my mom’s illness, my grandmother’s alzheimers and I was just overwhelmed and needed a mental health break from everyone.  I kindly asked my friends and colleagues to just give me some space and I would reach out when I was up to it.   I am a moody person at times anyway, being a Cancer !  This acquaintance took it personal.  She went on a tirade barraging me with calls, texts, emails etc under the guise of checking on me.  REALLY?   This person is NOT a close friend and I only talked to her periodically because I am a busy person and I do not even talk to my best friends that often unless something is up.  We text more than anything because we are all super busy.  Anyone else, I just talk to them when I talk to them… So, I start getting complaints from my employees who know her and also other colleagues who donated money to the fund asking me where she is getting all this money from because she bought an $800 cellphone, made posts on her FB about buying her dogs carseats and strollers (keep in mind I am the ONLY friend of theirs who has a stroller for my dog and a carseat) and that she was posting about making all this organic stuff (and only two of us actually buy all the organic stuff like that) and posting food items that were from recipes from my fanpage and claiming them to be her own.

I told them that she had not gotten it from the GoFundMe because I had not put in a request to fund the campaign yet. I knew she had gotten money from a fundraiser her son’s school did, but I really didn’t know.  She does not work and is on disability and that does not pay that much.  It was really out of character because she never made such posts before and never bought anything except from thrift stores and yard sales !

The first week of June I put in the request to fund the GoFundMe and have payment sent to the funeral home and called the friend to ask for her address to send the print out of the donors.  She asked me when the payment was going to be sent because the funeral home was hounding her.  Those statements did not sit right with me but I was busy and had other things to deal with and did not give it much energy.  Later that week, the requests from her amped up and she was calling and then sending me inboxes on FB.  I had blocked her phone number because she was calling me all hours of the day when I asked for a few weeks to myself back in May.  With my home and office phone, it is digital so even with blocked numbers, I can log in and see all call attempts and calls.  I checked in with the third party processor who was sending the check to the funeral home, as I knew it was going out after the 15th of June.  I followed up with the owner of the funeral home and learned that the bill had been paid prior to the service and that all of the statements made by my acquaintance were not true.  The funeral home was not hounding her !  She in fact was hounding THEM.  I was told that the person responsible for making the arrangements, (her father) was the only person they could divulge information to and that any monies that came in would go to him.  I told the owner of the funeral home that I would follow up with him over the weekend to see if the check came in and if it had not reached there by Saturday, I would rescind the campaign.   I called and followed up and the check had not come.  I then contacted my GoFundMe rep and explained that I was mislead about the purpose for the campaign and the funeral home had not gotten the money yet.  I explained that the person we set the campaign up for was attempting to defraud everyone and use the said funds for moving to another apartment, training her dog as a therapy dog, frivolous purchases and the like and I was NOT going to be associated with a perpetrating fraud. I asked that they do a recovery from the third party processor and refund every donor who donated money for the campaign.   They thanked me for being diligent and obliged.

I got an email from my rep on Friday informing me that the acquaintance contacted them via email to file a complaint about the validity of the campaign and that SHE had not gotten the money ! LOL.   Of course, they knew that already because I contacted then two weeks prior to tell them to cancel out the campaign and refund everyone.

I am BEYOND pissed off and from now on, will go with my GUT and NEVER do anything of the like again to help someone because they used a sad and tragic situation to try to take advantage of innocent people.  I do know one thing, God does not like ugly and He is not too fond of cute !  What you sow, you also reap and Karma is not a nice person….

It is really sad what people do in this life and it is sickening as well.   I am disappointed that this person turned out to be who they are and also that they are playing victim now.  Sad situation all around, but I am proud of myself for trusting that inner voice that said something is not right… hold off before doing anything and just address this when you are more focused.   It worked out to my advantage because I would have gotten myself hemmed up in foolishness trying to help a greedy, needy, manipulative wench.   God has a way of revealing snakes in your garden….