In the holes, Proof provided
I had a fun Tuesday evening. On my way home from work I picked up Monique. We had plans to go play miniature golf, something she had NEVER done in her life. I picked her up on my way home since the place we were going to play was relatively close to my house. When we got to my place I took care of Elsa and walked the backyard a bit with Monique. I showed her Kathy’s grave in the chicken yard. Monique really liked Kathy and was sad when I told her she had passed. I also showed her my garden area which has some healthy looking red and romaine lettuce in it right now.
On the way to play we decided to grab dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant that I had never eaten at before. I didn’t know that Monique liked chinese food either. We both got the same thing, shrimp and broccoli and enjoyed it. This place was not designed for eat in dining. There was literally one table with chairs in the customer area. We saw a constant line of people walking in to pick up orders they took with them. We both liked the food.
The mini-golf course we went to had recently opened so I didn’t really know what to expect. The place was nearly empty with only one group of four on the course besides us. Like I said, Monique had never played mini-golf before but I only gave her minimal instruction and let her have at it. Her accuracy was surprising, her major issue was hitting the ball too hard at times but more often than not her shots were right on line. As far as mini-golf courses go, the difficulty of this course was not extreme, which is good for someone new. I had a lower score on the first 9 holes but on the second nine holes Monique actually did better than I did which was amazing, including a hole in one on the 18th hole which was a trick shot arrangement. She really seemed to be having fun.
So as I was filling out the scorecard on some picnic benches after the game I noticed they had a corn hole set up. I asked Monique if she ever tried that before, she had not. So we started tossing the bean bags back and forth. They had a total of 5 bean bags so we alternated turns. Once again, despite never doing it before Monique had some surprising success. On one of her turns she got all five bags in the hole, something I could not replicate despite us playing for probably around a half hour. We were the only people left on the property and wound up being there damn close to their 10PM closing time.
When I took Monique home I helped carry some stuff in. Leilani, Monique’s adorable little niece came out. I have been trying to slowly win her over for months, at first she was scared of me and would run away. However over time she has become less apprehensive but last night was the first time it felt like she truly trusted me. She wanted me to play with her. We looked at books, played with her cars, practiced counting to 10 and a bunch of other fun/silly things. It was very cute. I felt truly grateful that she now trusted me. I got home late and went to bed even later but woke up this morning not regretting the lack of sleep, it was a fun Tuesday evening.
Yesterday I finally got the April 2016 bank statement that clearly shows that Yellowstone Park received and cashed my $500 check. I sent the proof of payment to the lovely woman that I interacted with last week. I included a note of sarcasm dripping thanks with the attachment which you can see below. I can only hope she takes a moment to reflect on how she handled our interaction and possibly be a little less rigid and more willing to listen going forward.
Hello Miss Unhelpful. Please refer to my attached bank statement from 4/16 that indicates the $500 check was cashed by Yellowstone on March 30th 2016 as I indicated. As I requested, can you please provide some sort of documentation that you acknowledge this fine was indeed paid and the case is now closed so I can keep it in the event it is ever needed again. Thank you so much for your help in remediating this matter.