A rant.

May 30, 2013 - Sometimes I just need to write out my feelings in a good stress-relieving rant! I hate, and I really mean HATE our complex. When we first moved here I was happy to have the extra space, an extra bedroom, a patio to barbecue, and my personal favorite a washer and dryer! My initial optimism for a brief period overshadowed all the other problems: very thin walls, cheap finishings, a promised dog park covered in broken glass, a gym that has one working piece of equipment, and less than stellar management who care about none of this. My frustrations towards living here increasingly grew over the past almost year, until about two weeks ago when I hit my breaking point. I am done. I want out. I want out yesterday! 

Breaking point #1 – Our scooter, our beloved scooter “Freedom” was stolen. Stolen straight off our back patio on Mother’s Day! I am a paranoid person when it comes to safety; I’m always triple checking locked doors and closed curtains when we go to bed at night. Glenn thinks I’m crazy. Glenn assures me that poor people don’t steal from other poor people. They know that if they want nice things they need to go outside of their own neighborhood. Lies!! This theory was disproved when someone stole our scooter! I feel violated. I loathe this person. I hope karma finds them. The next morning I inform the management. Their response, “This can happen anywhere.” No apologies. No nothing. I file a police report. I spend hours calling every repair shop, auto shop, and pawn shop I can find to keep an eye out for this criminal. I received a letter in the mail a few days ago from the police, ‘we are unable to develop a suspect or any significant leads’. I’m not surprised, I know Freedom is long gone, but I dream of seeing Freedom on the road and running this criminal down. I mean really it goes 35 MPH, struggles with uphill, and the thief has no car. It wasn’t fancy, but it was mine. 

Breaking point #2 – We live next door to a psychotic woman, a woman who ran out of medication, a woman doing some hard corps drugs that are messing with her mind, a woman who should be in a room with padded walls, all of the above?! I wouldn’t normally care about her business until three times in one week she comes over and harasses me. I’m talking yelling, swearing, kicking our door, banging on our kitchen window with a stick, craziness! The first time this happened I was outside sanding and had music playing inside on the computer. She comes over completely irrational and out of control and didn’t want to hear that I’ll turn it off, she just wanted to scream and swear. The second time I have music playing on the computer while I’m cleaning the kitchen, I can’t even hear it over the water running. The walls are pounding, she is kicking at our door, and blaming me that her son woke up from his nap. I try to reason with her, explain that I hear her as well and that’s what happens when you share very thin walls. I know when you yell at your child, talk on the phone, watch TV, listen to your gangsta rap, wash your dishes, turn on the washing machine, take a shower, and flush your dang toilet too. So deal.  Ok so I didn’t run down the list, just merely stated that I hear her too and choose to suck it up, more trashy language and I shut the door in her face. You can’t reason with a crazy woman! That day I filed a complaint with management and they promised to speak with her and said she would no longer be allowed to come to my door. I also learned that they have had previous chats with her about acceptable noise already when she complained about a different neighbor. Management came, heard nothing. The next day, the third and final time, luckily Glenn was home to firsthand witness the crazy. We were watching a show on the computer, about 9:30 there is kicking at the door. It seriously sounds like someone is trying to break into our house, we have physical footprints on our door. Final straw, we call the cops. While we’re sitting and waiting for the cops to come she comes back and starts banging on the kitchen window with a stick, we’re just sitting and talking mind you. We call the cops again. Finally they arrive 45 minutes later and have a chat with our crazy lady. I tell the cop that this has damaged my sense of safety and security during the day when my husband isn’t home. Also each time this happens I become all shaky and my heart rate skyrockets and I was really concerned about stressing my baby. The cop tells me, if it happens again to call the cops, we have guns, and it will result in trespassing and a warrant. I felt better with some weaponry on my side. I found it interesting when I informed management the situation escalated that they had two conversations earlier that day and yet she chose to ignore the warnings. I was thinking about how in ten months of living next to these people our habits have not changed. If anything we cancelled our cable and our projector died so we watch far less of anything. Some sort of crazy switch must have flipped on in this woman. Part of me would love to see her spend a night in prison, but no incidents since we called the cops and that’s good too. 

Breaking point #3 – I’m upstairs when barking dogs alert me to something that I couldn’t hear. I come downstairs to find a massive flood that I can’t see the extent of from where I’m stuck on the stairs. I run upstairs and grab some towels to swish around on and dry up the mess. I notice the toilet is completely to the brim and spontaneously overflowed. I call management, they will send someone over. I learn that the sewage to the building had gone out and caused the spill. Yep, it was nasty, smelly, chunky sewage  water that flooded the bathroom, hallway to the front door, and just barely into the living room. For the next two hours we have repairmen knocking on the front door, back door, walking in and out, doing toilet checks over and over, and each time making the dogs bark like crazy. Our house was smelly, I had a headache, and my Dad got me all nervous about ingesting airborne spores. I was not a very happy girl when Glenn walked in the door. He immediately recognizes the signs of a girl in desperate need of some frozen yogurt and fresh air. He knows me well! A cleaning lady did come two days later to clean the floors, but only after I informed them that at over eight months pregnant I am not scrubbing our floors to clean up a mess that wasn’t my fault.  

What a crazy two weeks it has been! We told management that we will be gone by the end of July. We still have no official plans for where we will be living. All I know is we’re relieved to be saying good riddance to this place. Now we just pray every single day that we will catch a break and some good news will come our way.