LOCAL TRAGEDY

i came along about 15 seconds after this happened.  it was clearly the fault of the police van.  not sure what happened to the officer to cause this, but it is truly unfortunate.  i didn't stop to help because there were already 4 cars stopping to help.  it is such a tragedy.

 

Published: Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Funeral held for teen killed in police collision

By Jason A. Smith

jsmith@henryherald.com

Family and friends gathered Monday at Bethany Baptist Church in McDonough to remember a Henry County teenager killed last week in an accident with a Locust Grove Police vehicle.

Trent Pyles, 16, was described by his stepfather, John deVente, as a "real solid kid" with a "big heart," who enjoyed soccer, playing pool and spending time with friends.

"Every day's been a challenge [since Pyles' death]," deVente, 33, said. "He was an only child, so that makes it that much harder."

Pyles, 16, died Wednesday after his car collided with a crime scene unit van around 11 a.m., at King Mill Road and Ga. Highway 42 in Locust Grove.

According to Locust Grove Police Chief Jesse Patton, the driver's sides of the two vehicles collided, and a third vehicle then rear-ended the police van.

Pyles was flown to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died.

Patton said the cause of the wreck is still unknown.

"I can't comment on it, because I don't know what happened," he said, adding that the Georgia State Patrol is investigating the crash. "We're doing an internal investigation, also."

He said the officer involved in the crash suffered minor scrapes. Pending the results of the investigation, the officer has been placed on administrative leave with pay, in accordance with department policy, Patton said.

He did not speculate as to the length of the investigation, saying only that it would likely take "a while."

Patton sent condolences to Pyles' family on behalf of the police department.

"We've been there for them, and we'll continue to be there for them," he said.

DeVente did not comment on the investigation, saying the family was focusing on their grief, and taking time to remember Pyles for who he was.

In addition to deVente, Pyles is survived by his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and several uncles and cousins

"THANKS" AND "SOMETHING TO LOOK INTO"

first i would like to thank those that commented on my last two entries.  one mentioned that it is a good thing to stand up for what you believe in, no matter if it is a popular opinion or not.  that is something i have always done, and in the process, have made lots of enemies as well as pushed away a lot of friends.  not that i have to have friends that agree with my every view.  just ones that accept me for believing in mine.

one commenter wanted to know if i was going to keep any of the wild bunch.  it is really not up to me, lol.  they have their own minds made up that they like munching on the back porch.  i do know i won't be keeping any inside, as it is not allowed.  but.....i will feed the ones that continue to come during the winter. 

now, on to something that i feel might be worthy of your attention.  i watch late night tv while i do my crafts.  usually i am up till 4 or 5 am.  i used to have a set tv schedule i watched, but when the season changed, so did the programming.  thus, i have either had to find other things to do, or change what i watch.

i was channel surfing the other night and something caught my eye on our local channel 8, which is GPB.  it was a special about a family who raised a child with down's syndrome.  when i was in school, i always wanted to be a therapist or teacher who specialized in working with children with down's.  of course, my life took another path, so i never was able to follow that dream.  but i have known several down's children and a couple of down's adults who brought so much joy and love to those around them.  the name of the program was "the teachings of jon".  this is the link to his story:  http://www.teachingsofjon.com/  it is worth taking a moment to view this, as i sat there and cried and laughed throughout the entire movie.  it is documentary format, but still an interesting viewing.

i had a very exciting note given me day before yesterday.  if you remember, i helped my house mate stuff and throw her newsletters.  i had been asked to work at my real job that day, but declined since i had already committed to helping her.  so i told her that i felt she did owe me something, but not to worry about getting me paid right away, since she was having to refund some of her clients their money.  when i came home the other night, there was an envelope taped to my door.  inside there was a thank you card, as well as a 10 dollar bill.  before reading the card, i assumed that was what she was paying me.  i wasn't unhappy about it, since i knew she was strapped moneywise.  but the note said that it was only a partial payment.  she was planning on giving me another $25, making it $7 an hour for my time.  i was only hoping for $4 or $5 an hour.  so hey, sounds great to me. 

i took the money and added to some i had and went across the street to the methodist church and signed up for the fall bazaar they are having tomorrow.  i was late signing up so i got a smaller table, but with God's help, i can make it work.  as long as i at least break even, i will be happy, but hopefully i will do as well as last year.  i am offering a small selection of jewelry, crocheted goods and handmade cards.  i didn't have time to make anything new, so will have to offer what i had on hand already, which is a pretty good selection.  now, i have to go home and get my stuff together and be there at 7 am tomorrow.............sigh..............

thanks again to my dear readers, whether they comment or not.  i am going to check out a few of you right now, and then off to buy some groceries and home to sort through my crafts.

ALONE.........ALAS

well, either alerts are down, people are busy, or...............i have finally lost all my readers.  my last entry was one i felt all should read.  but, alas, no one has commented.  i know we cannot control the views, beliefs and words of others, but when someone is in the public eye, they should be a little more careful of how they portray themselves.  i used to like kathy griffin.  she had a robust sense of humor and was loud and rambunctious, like me, lol.  but after that comment, which her own website agrees she said at the emmy's, i will never, i repeat, never watch anything in which she appears again.  i am done with her completely.  and from the way my Bible reads, she has blasphemed the name of God, meaning she will NEVER enter the gates of Heaven.  that saddens me.  i want everyone to go to Heaven.........walk forever with God and Jesus on the streets of gold.  my wish is that everyone who feels they agree with the petition should go to the site and sign the petition.  we must be heard.

it is finally october and i am wanting to start decorating the house for halloween.  but i know if i do it now, the decorations will get stolen or destroyed before the big night.  the night when all the little goblins come around to seek sickeningly sweet treats.  oh, that reminds me, gotta go buy some of those treats..........

i found a wonderful skull replica that plugs in and emits mist and red light comes out of the eye sockets.  there is nothing to add to make it mist other than water, so that works really well.  fill and plug...........instant fright.

i was a bit surprised that my general manager at work had only given me 3 days to work this week.  i would be off wednesday through sunday.  i have bills to pay, so i went to the assistant manager and he gave me another day.  whew!!!

i still have a few kitties i feed periodically.  mama kitty even let me pet her the other night.  gray is beautiful up close.  his/her markings are beige/charcoal/gray.  rocky almost came in last night to check out my kitty.  he was doing the cross-eyed look, bobbing his head back and forth from eye to eye, trying to figure out what my cat was, who was standing just beyond the door jamb.  my cat is so plump and short she probably looked like a fat o'possum. 

i guess i better sign off for now and go and read some of my reader's journals.    

                               

                                         

HI TO ALL

it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood..........la la la.  ok, so it is hot here in georgia.  87 degrees...........and almost october.  whew!  but come january, i will probably be yelling for someone to bring back the 87 degree weather.  i just hate sweating.  if my car a/c worked, i wouldn't be as ill about the weather.  i have to try and get that fixed by next summer.

i still haven't heard a word from my daughter.  i hope she is well and things are looking up for her.  hopefully some day she will see my side of things.  i can always dream and hope, right??

my general manager still hasn't said a word about my 4-year-old raise.  my next step is going to the labor board to see what they might be able to do. 

i still see 3 of the kitties at least 3-4 times a week.  mama kitty is always on the porch when i open the back door, hissing at me, but running around my legs begging for food.  i wish she would let me pick her up and love on her.  she needs some human loving.  blacky,, the older, fluffy black cat, came up the other night and i was giving them hot dogs.  he wouldn't come up on the porch so i threw a hot dog in his direction.  um, and i hit him on the head, lol.  he ran down a few steps, then back up and started eating it. 

i have to buy a used tire today.  the tread is coming off my passenger side front tire.  i have been running on a wing and a prayer. 

my house mate asked me to help her this past wednesday.  i wasn't sure what she wanted help with when she first asked me.  when i found out, i felt sorry for her.  she is the founder and producer of a local city's newsletter.  she has to solicit ads for the newsletter, and then when they pay for their ads, she puts the multi page newsletter together and submits it to a printer, and then she distributes the newsletters to the city via driving around neighborhoods and throwing them out onto the driveways.  she had recently found someone who would run the newsletters through a machine that would address them from an address list and then would mail them at a bulk mail rate.  the woman did one route, then never got back to my housemate.  thus, she held the rest of the newsletters hostage.........for 3 weeks.......and never got back in touch with my housemate to have them mailed out or get them back to her.  so my housemate had to purchase large quantities of zip lock baggies and i helped her stuff them, then distribute them by tossing out the window of her car in neighborhoods.  we worked on it for 5 hours.  she plans to pay me for it, which i will accept, but i did feel sorry for her.  she is going to have to refund ad money to several of the vendors for not getting the newsletter out in time for their events.  it is a true shame that people do people this way.  if the woman didn't want to mail them out, or bother with them anymore, all she had to do was call my housemate and tell her and have her pick them up.  then they could have been mailed out in time to do some good.  humanity never ceases to amaze me in how they treat others.  thank goodness i know God and that things will be so different UP THERE! 

i want to thank those who gave me words of encouragement on my last entry.  your prayers and thoughts are always welcomed.  mine go out to all of you as well.

i did want to mention something.  anyone who watched the emmys already knows about this.  but in case you are like me, and couldn't care less about those stupid award shows, this is what went on.  i know that some of my readers are probably agnostic, atheist, or part time Christians, and this may not in any way affect you.  but being a Christian, it bothered me when my friend, carl, sent me an email about this and a link to a petition to sign.  so i am posting it here for you to decide what you wish to do about it.  if the picture doesn't show up, it is just a pic of those in kathy griffin's group that won the emmy. 

this is taken directly from kathy's official website.  this is what she actually said during her receipt of the emmy.  may God hold her accountable and may she find Salvation and Jesus.

GOLD GOES QUITE WELL WITH RED...EMMY WIN :: NEWSBLAST

Hmmm....gold site. Hell yes. Welcome to the home of the EMMY AWARD WINNING KATHY GRIFFIN. If you have not heard yet, Kathy and the gang have picked up the Emmy for best reality series during the 2007 Primetime Emmy Awards. Kathy didn't take long to slip into red carpet mode after the announcement with what will go down as one of the best quotes in Emmy history, "Can you believe this shit? Hell has frozen over. Suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now."

to sign the petition, click here:   http://www.miracletheater.com

i hope everyone has a great weekend. 

YEARNING

what i am i yearning for??  actually, multitudes of things.  but the title of this entry is my need for home based internet.  i found out that the system has been down for several months, which was a relief, since i thought it might be the adaptor i bought.  i also found out that the system is allegedly back in full swing again.............but i am still not getting anything.  no wifi signal at all from the city wifi.  i get the signal from a neighbor's wifi, as well as the local Baptist church, but not the one i can actually access.  grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  i want to get my website up and running and eventually start up a home based business once again.  i miss having those deposits, though often small, in my paypal account, lol.

i had a distressing day at work this past week.  as i reported a few entries ago, i got my raise for this year, even though it didn't make a dent in my overall pay.  but i still haven't gotten my very first raise from 4 years ago.  my assistant manager called me into the office this week and did my evaluation.  it has to be done yearly, even though the yearly raise is now automatic.  during the evaluation, i wasn't given a copy of the report to read along with.  he touched points that he felt needed work, and then stressed my strong points.  it wasn't until i got a copy and took it home to read that i noticed there were several inaccuracies.  i was accused of things i have no control over.  but since i was an idiot and signed the paper without actually reading it first, i have little recourse.

later, the general manager walked past my station and i asked him if he had any word on my other raise.  he grimaced, then proceeded to get hostile with me, saying that was already a done deal and he wasn't going to discuss it with me anymore.  i told him all i did was ask, and that i was entitled to my raise.  i was then called into the office again, and this time the general manager, who was obviously having a bad day, began to belittle me and went into a tirade about the raise.  when i tried to interject a response, he closed the office door and began another tirade on how i never listen and don't know when to keep my mouth shut.  i waited till he finished his little fit and then i told him i was entitled to my raise, and it didn't matter if i had waited a few weeks to ask him about it again, i had been trying to get the raise since dec. 1, 2003.  he eventually calmed down and we had a fairly decent discussion.  he said he thought it had all been resolved and that i had received the raise, and i told him no, that is why every few months i come back to him with it.  he said i should have gone over his head and contacted the hr dept.  ok, now most general managers would tell you that you are not supposed to go over them, that they are the ones who handle everything.  either way, i am going to the labor board on my next week day off.  hopefully they can get some action on this.  loosely figuring it up, the company owes me around $700-$800 in back pay, but i won't ever see that.  i just want to see that original raise in my paycheck.  ggrrrrrrrrr.

no word from the daughter.  i haven't tried to call her, trying to give her some time to cool off.  her birthday will be coming up in december, so i guess i will at least hear from her then.

the kitties are around still, but as before, their appearance is sporadic.  i am still feeding on a 3 day a week basis.

i don't remember if i mentioned it before, but i found out that my house mate is possibly an alcoholic.  she admitted to drinking, and from her actions sometimes, i am sure she does it to excess.  that worries me since she is also a smoker.  she had a meeting with our "lovely" landlord the other day about her rent.  i spoke to her today on my way out, and she said it went well.  he is going to let her pay late.  she also asked me to check on the cost of artist's acrylics at my workplace.  she wants to start painting again.  i have never seen any evidence of her work, and when i asked her to see some, she said she was a graphic artist.  sigh..........so confusing.

i went to the salvation army store this week and worked a little and hung out with my new friends there.  it might have been a mistake, though, lol.  i found some things i needed to buy.  i bought a room air purifier with ionizer and filters for $5.  i also found a nice shirt to wear to work, and Polly sold it to me cheaper than the price.  that woman, lol.  i also bought a sturdy glass dome for $1 to put one of my collectibles in.  we sell those at my workplace for over $5 and they are the really thin glass.  i also got some yarn they had saved back for me.........for free.   they invited me to eat lunch with them, so i had some good old home made beef stew and home made pineapple cake.

one of my managers at work has been bringing me yarn she found in her attic.  she doesn't have the patience to knit or crochet anymore.  she thought she had gotten it all, but she found 2 more huge bags full.  and there is enough to make a nice afghan out of this batch.  a customer told me she would bring me all her leftover yarn as well.  i hope she does.  and then my fes, val, brought me a huge bag of her leftovers.  i am having a blast with the yarn, but need to be working on my jewelry.

florence, the customer/friend who i have done a couple of craft festivals with and who loaned me some money awhile back, came by the store to tell me she signed up for a festival on october 20 and asked if i wanted to go in with her and her friend barbara.  barbara is a little on the obnoxious side, but i think i could tolerate her for a day.  they have already paid for the booth and said i could chip in or not, it didn't matter.  i might take a small selection of items from each category i work in.  an afghan, a couple of neck scarves, hats, necklaces, bracelets, hand made cards.  i hope to do the church festival that month as well.  so i have to have enough stuff to cover both festivals.  i have to get to work, lol.

i have about 10 minutes left on my time here at this computer, so better go read a few of your journals.  i need to get caught up. 

have a great weekend..........................

A SHORT HELLO AND UPDATE

first, thank you to my readers for hanging in there with me.  hours at work have gotten better, so i am seldom here anymore.  i miss all of you and appreciate your internet friendships. 

second, nothing has changed with the daughter situation.  but then i haven't paid her any money, so i don't expect it to.  thanks to my readers for their encouragement.  i know it shall pass, but the heart hurts while you wait.

third, the wild bunch is still hanging around, but seldom are they all there at the same time.  mama kitty is back, and even hisses and runs into the house from time to time.  rocky is beautiful and gray is showing full tan and gray colors.  i realized that whitey is cross-eyed just like rocky.  their little heads dart back and forth as they watch you, going from eye to eye, lol.  they get fed about 3 times a week now instead of daily.  i am sure they are finding other pushovers in the neighborhood to feed them on the other 4 days.  they all look fairly healthy for strays.

fourth, i spent some time volunteering at the salvation army yesterday, and it was rather rewarding.  the one woman who was so mean and nasty to me before was soft as butter and sooooooooooo nice to me.  i guess she was on her meds.........hee hee.

and finally, work is picking up some and i am keeping things paid and on an even keel.  i am doing my crafts for the fall festivals, hoping that i will do as well as last year. 

nothing much more to report.  i missed coming here on 9/11 and giving a tribute, but the memory of it all was in my heart as well as my compassion for  those who were devastated by the loss of loved ones on that day.

i work for the next 5 days so will not be here for at least that long.  so everyone have a great weekend and a great week next week.

 

HEARTACHE, and other stuff

i guess i thought all my ills were over when i was able to pay all my bills this month and have a tad left over for gas and emergencies.  but instead, i have a worse ill.  my daughter.  she has broken my heart once again by coming over to my house and demanding things i cannot do, accusing me of things in the past that i can't do anything about now.  and when i tell her how much i love her, she calls me a drama queen.  she is taking psychology in college and it is her major as well, so i guess our entire relationship is her guinea pig............

i pray she will stop blaming me for everything in the past and realize how much i gave up for her to be in the position she is in.  i don't want any glory.......just her respect.  sigh.

i have been gathering things for halloween, since i truly love the holiday.  i am a Christian, but still love the ghoulish air of the holiday.  i went by the salvation army store to see my friends and ended up coming home with a round moon sign with a light up bat with red eyes on it, and the word boo.  i also brought home a man......well sorta.......it is a costume of the grim reaper, without his scythe.  my house mate and i plan on decorating the front porch for halloween trick or treaters, and we will stuff the grim reaper and make him a schythe, and he will make a great addition to our halloween setting.  i am going to be a gypsy and have all my stuff reader.  i will be buying some dry ice for the smoke in the caldron.  now i need a caldron, lol.

the dollar tree had some really great tombstones (styrofoam) and some spider web material.  i have actually only spent $6 on all this stuff.  and my housemate has some dismembered hands and hanging bats.  i can't wait till october.......................oh and it is also michael's birthday month...........that little devil.

i haven't been feeding the kitties lately.  i give them water and then about every third day i feed them.  that way there are no ants all over the place.  several nights ago i went to feed them and mama kitty hissed the whole time but came into the house and looked around, then went back out and ate.  silly kitty.

i probably won't be back online again till my next off day, so i hope and pray everyone has a good week.  thanks again to all my readers, whether you comment or not.  hopefully i will be able to write something actually interesting.  i wrote a new poem after my encounter with my daughter, but i didn't put it on my flashdrive, so i don't have it with me today.  maybe i will add it here later.