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I was having a reasonably relaxing afternoon, listening to jazz and re-reading Hunter S. Thompson's Generation Of Swine, when I heard a loud knock on my door. It was the guy my mother and I had hired to take care of a large pine tree that's been leaning precariously close to the side of our house for some time. Dealing with this man has been something of an ordeal: on more than one occasion, he's vanished for more than a week at a time while supposedly getting in contact with someone to help him cut down the tree, and the first person he brought to look at it wasn't at all prepared to work on a tree that large. Plus, he keeps trying to change the terms of the deal and get more money for himself; which is amusing, since we've only paid him for the small amount of work he's actually done, last Friday, when he removed several vines and branches from the trunk to make it easier for the second person he's supposedly getting to help him finally take the beast down.

He'd been cordial and coherent that day, despite his flim-flam efforts; so it was a shock to open the door this afternoon and find a man clearly plastered out of his ******** mind, rambling about how we didn't give him all of the money we were supposed to pay him. Now, this was not large sum of money, and I counted it three times, once with him standing right next to me, before I handed the bills to him. My mother had also been there on Friday, and while her vision is abysmal now because of her macular degeneration, it's still good enough for her to tell the correct number of bills. So we're both standing out on the front steps vehemently asserting that, yes, we did pay him the right amount, and at that point he steps backward, and damn near falls off the steps. He caught hold of the railing at the last minute, but he was still clearly trying to get more money out of us; and at that point, I lost it. I yelled at him that I didn't like being accused of shorting him on his money, and when he mumbled that he wasn't trying to accuse me of anything, I went inside the house and slammed the door.

I'm not sure whether to let this guy continue the work when he returns with his mysterious assistant (who was supposedly in Florida over the weekend, and thus unable to do the work), or whether to call the police on him. I'm not even sure he'll be back; he couldn't give a precise date when they'd do the work. All I know is, I'm sure as hell not giving him any more money-- I'll pay the other guy, and he can parcel out whatever he wants to give to his friend.