Boxes, boxes everywhere!

I’m in the final countdown to move day. Three days from now, two men (and their truck) will be here to haul boxes, lift my fabulous red couch, and in general just uproot my life to somewhere new.

It’s all a bit bittersweet. As much as I hate my landlord and wish I lived somewhere nicer, I feel like I’ve made a home here in my little neighborhood and I’m sad to see it go.

Then again, I’m already working to create a new “home”. Today, I hauled my high-heeled self to the Secretary of State and changed my address so that I can vote in the City of Detroit. After all the scandal our local government has seen, I decided that if I was going to move downtown (and pay the exorbitant car insurance rates that come with it), I wanted to be able to have a say on things. I’ve always kept my parents’s address on my driver’s license and voted in that district, but it’s no longer representative of who I am. Finally making the change is a big deal.

So while I’m sad to say good-bye to one way of life, I’m anxiously embracing a new way.

I’m also anxiously awaiting the whole moving thing. It must be the Army brat in me, but I love to move. I hate the transition of being half packed and half unpacked, but I love the act of packing and unpacking. In fact, it’s the only time my stuff gets a good cleaning as I dust all the shelves and pictures and trinkets before carefully wrapping them up. Then on the other end, I love unpacking and starting fresh. Re-organizing my stuff and finding a new place for everything. I’ve gotten this whole move thing down to a science, so for me, it’s a finely orchestrated plan with nightly goals, labeling protocol, and checklists. And oh how I love to check things off!

Only three more days.

Movin’ on up

For the past month or so, I’ve become fed up with good ole Landlord S. I’ve finally decided I’m moving.

But then becomes the question of where. I LOVE my current neighborhood. I can walk to coffee shops, restaurants, my nail/facial salon, etc. However, given the trendy nature of it, I can only afford an old apartment. And I’m kind of a modern gal. But, the modern hip and trendy lofts in my neighborhood start at $900 and up/month — and that’s for small ones.

Then there’s downtown Detroit. Where I work. Where DD lives. Yet, it’s not quite as walkable. Still somewhat walkable, but not as much as my neighborhood. There’s also less foot traffic downtown. Which makes me feel ever-so-slightly less safe. But on the flip side, I can afford a more modern apartment because it’s not as hip and trendy.

So I’ve looked at two places, an old place in my current neighborhood that’s a slight upgrade from my current locale…and a modern-ish loft downtown.

Now comes the decision process. Here’s a list of pros and cons to each neighborhood/apartment. Asterisks indicate the reallly important things.

Option 1: Current neighborhood

Pros: walkability*, things open at normal hours, familiarity/enjoyment of  neighborhood*, central to entire region (which is important when your region lacks mass transit), cheaper than Option 2; walk-in closet

Cons: new apartment would not be much of an upgrade from current sitch; several hundred less square feet than Option 2; hate the kitchen

Option 2: The D

Pros: walking distance to work (save on gas $$)*; walking distance to DD*; more potential for making new girlfriends (I’d actually be starting from scratch in current neighborhood)*; modern appliances and loft-style look; central air; washer/dryer in unit; open/spacious kitchen

Cons: Some businesses operate odd hours/closed on weekends; slightly less walkable; less general foot traffic; feel slightly less safe walking alone at night; no window in apt. bedroom; more expensive both in rent and utilities

There’s a part of me that feels I should look at more than two places. But I feel like I know the rental market in both neighborhoods and have picked the options that would be comfortable for me. Plus I really don’t feel like dragging this process out for a month.

So, where would you live?

The no good very bad day

Remember that children’s book Alexander and the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day? I used to love that book.

Probably because Alexander was a glass-half-empty-cynic after my own heart.

Remember how I said on Monday that I wanted to get back to blogging and get back to exercising? Well, wouldn’t you know that I came down with my usual head cold on Tuesday. Since I’m basically a wimp when it comes to being sick, I proceeded to drag myself home from work on Tuesday and curl up on the couch for some TV and recuperation instead of blogging and yoga.

About an hour into said recuperation, I was met with the screeching and scratching of an animal — probably a squirrel — in my attic. I ignored it at first, because let’s face it, this has happened before and I know Landlord S ain’t gonna do anything about it. But after awhile it got so loud that I was afraid it was actually somewhere inside the apartment. I got on top of my kitchen table (because isn’t that what you do when you fear rodents are in your house?) and called my favorite useless drunk of a Landlord.

Landlord came by after 10 minutes of coaxing and heard nothing, giving him no incentive to light a fire under his britches and call pest control.  I spent the next 20 minutes in a very mentally painful conversation with the man and then proceeded to spend the next two nights at DD’s in the hopes of forgetting about my new rodent roommate.

And then I got sicker. Like unable to breathe, up until 4 a.m., sicker. I finally dragged myself home this morning, hoping maybe Landlord S. had made some progress.

Nope still screeching. And no signs of pest control stopping by. It took me no less than 10 calls to reach Landlord S. today, who claims he did call pest control.

I have my doubts. Truthfully, in the two years I’ve lived here, he has not fixed one thing I’ve asked him too.  It’s as if I have battered woman’s syndrome. I keep going back because he tells me he doesn’t want to lose me, he wants me to stay, he will fix things, and I keep hoping he’ll change so I can keep paying my cheap rent in my fabulous location.

But, dealing with his ineptitude while my head is filled with snot has actually provided a moment of clarity.

I deserve better than this. I’m escaping.

I called an apartment building down the street that is a couple hundred bucks more in rent and not that much of a step up from my current place. But, it’s managed by an actual property company instead of some random dude. I’ve learned that some random dude does not a property manager make.

Needless to say, the past couple days have been negativity fests, which isn’t abnormal given my tendency to look at the glass as half empty.  Knowing that this does nothing for my mental health, I’ve been trying to reverse it by thinking positively: Your cold will be better in just a couple days, at least it’s not swine flu! OR At least the squirrel’s not IN the house.

It’s sort of working. But I’m kind of ready to feel better. And then move. Because I’ll bet you $10 that that squirrel outlasts me as a tenant at the House O’ Rodent.

The one where I use f*ck. A lot.

Well, I’m back. And apparently with a vengeance. So sorry if you’re easily offended. I’m not one to drop the F bomb, at least not in my writing. But these letters (and my general case of the Mondays) warrant such vulgarities.

 

Dear work IT guys,

 

I love you. I really do. You hook me up with good stuff and talk me through all my computer issues. And I totally know it wasn’t your fault that the entire e-mail system crashed over the weekend, royally f*cking our Mondays up.

 

But, does it really take you four days to look up a software price for me? Seriously? Perhaps instead of just telling me the software I want is expensive, you could instead tell me how much “expensive” is. Instead of acting like you know better than me and thinking that I don’t need said software, you could instead realize that my job has changed in the past week and I now maybe need this software to do my job better. It’s not like I ask for things just for fun. (Well, except for a laptop. I really want a laptop.)

 

So, tomorrow, instead of putting me off yet again, could you please just look up the cost of the f*cking software and tell me what it is. Don’t judge my reasoning, just tell me the damn price and let me and my boss make a decision on whether I need it or not.

 

I promise I won’t bug you about a laptop again for at least a week.

 

Thanksomuch,

Your favorite marketing girl

 

********************************************

 

Dear Landlord S.,

 

Well, we’ve now finished Day 2 of me attempting to contact you. And I’m not just talking about a call here or a voice mail there. I’m talking a call-you-every-hour-between-10-and-5 type of contacting you.

 

And you haven’t answered.

 

I swear Landlord S., you have no idea how much mental and physical energy I have to waste when I need to get in touch with you. This is why I never contact you.

 

And hence why my bedroom AC unit has been broken since I moved in.

 

You did admit you are “lackadaisical” when I moved in. So part of this is my fault. But to not answer a ringing phone at least once in the 20 times I’ve called you in the past 2 days? That’s a new level of lazy.

 

Mostly, I try to avoid you and it works. Yet, on occasion, things arise where I really need your help. A broken AC unit is an inconvenience. An exterior door that is peeling paint all over my “foyer” and looks like shit? That’s something that needs to be fixed. A DTE Energy letter telling me they haven’t been able to read my meter since December and have been billing me an estimated bill ever since? That’s something that needs to be addressed.

 

I need you to be f*cking available. I do not like setting an MS Outlook reminder to go off every hour telling me to call you again.

 

And yet this is what I’ve resorted to. And it’s still not f*cking working.

 

I’ve really gotten to like my little ghetto fabulous apartment and its very cheap rent. But if you don’t get your shit together, I will move. I’m no longer bound to the ghetto by my income and I will take my rent check somewhere else. It will hurt my pocketbook, but my Outlook reminder list will thank me.

 

You cash my checks every month; you can take my phone call.

 

Hoping for a winner on Day 3,

Your pushover tenant

Tales from the ghetto, Volume 1

I’ve alluded to my awesome landlord and equally awesome apartment before, but thought I’d take a moment and give you another glimpse into my ghetto fabulous life.

Actually, I don’t live anywhere near the ghetto. I live in a very hip and trendy suburb of Detroit, complete with a walkable downtown and condos that, in a decent housing market, would go for $500K. I live smack in the middle of the walkability, but not in one of the plush condos. You’ve seen Psycho, right? You know the Bates motel? That’s basically my building, except two stories instead of one. And without a proprieter with a deadly mommy complex.

Though my landlord has his own brand of crazy.

Basically, he’s a lazy drunk. He doesn’t fix things, rarely answers his phone, and speaks at about the pace of someone who has severe brain damage — which he probably does from all the alcohol I’ve been told he consumes. But the place is cheap and safe and a mere two blocks from the aforementioned trendy “downtown”. When I got my promotion, I thought maybe I’d move someplace a bit nicer, but, well, I’m kind of too lazy to deal with that. So in the ghetto apartment I sit.

I am, however, rethinking this course of action after the last 24 hours.

Last night around 6:30, I was waiting for my friend so we could walk over to yoga (see? love that walkability!). Anyway, someone knocked on the door and thinking it was her, I opened it, only to find Landlord S standing there with a flashlight and hose. In his usual s-l-o-w voice he asked if he could bother me. Then paused. Didn’t launch immediately into why, just stopped, with his smelly-ass cigarette by his side. He went on to say he needed to get into my hall closet to try to drain the heater (it’s a water-based heater and it has an uncontrollable banging issue because it needs to be drained. Of course this is the first I’ve heard of him trying to actually do that.

I explained that now wasn’t a good time, that I was getting ready to leave, but that he could come back while I was out and do what he needed to do. Truthfully, I didn’t want to be alone with him. It’s not that I fear for my safety, but I do fear for my sanity. I seriously can’t talk to or be in the presence of this man for more than 5 minutes without wanting to throttle him and his lazy speech pattern.

Anyway, after what felt like 10 minutes, but was probably only 2, he went on his way and told me to call him when I was ready. Five minutes later, my friend showed up and I called him and left a message that I’d be gone and that he could get in the apartment. I came back an hour and a half later to find the apartment untouched.

Today, I called again and got his voice mail. From past experience, I know that he doesn’t listen to his messages, so I basically have to call every hour until he actually decides to pick up the phone. I usually wouldn’t care less, but I had cleaned out my hall closet so he could get into it, and now the stuff was sitting everywhere. I really just wanted to know if he was planning on coming so I could plan my day and clean up the apartment. I called a couple more times while I was eating breakfast and watching TV. Nothing.

Finally, I went to work out and called him when I was done. He finally picked up. I asked if he still needed to get into the apartment and he replied that he didn’t and then launched into a 5 minute conversation about the problem. Most of which was incoherent due to his usual unbearable speech pattern.

I was happy that he didn’t need to get into the apartment after all, but then remembered that due to the crazy winter weather we’ve had in Detroit, there are some mean icicles forming in my stairwell. See?

Spears of Death

Anyway, I’ve seen that Grey’s Anatomy episode when Yang gets impaled with an icicle and you better believe I didn’t want any of that shit. So since I had Landlord S on the phone, I politely asked if he had something tall enough to break them off, because I didn’t.

His reply:

Well. Here’s what we could do. We could become engaged and you could walk down the stairs and the icicle could fall into your eye.

[Pause.]

I’m being flip.

Seriously? Who says that? I don’t even know what that means. If you’re insulting my stupid paranoid worry, well, that’s one thing, but you could at least come up with a good insult. This? This doesn’t even make sense to me.

After that, I didn’t really know how to wrap up the phone call, so I awkwardly backtracked my way out of the Landlord S web of conversation and hung up as quick as I could.

And immediately started thinking that the apartments I’ve been eyeing a few blocks away may deserve a look, even though they’re $300 more a month, probably smaller in size, and have a less convenient parking situation.

Follow up to my electrical perils

As you probably read, I had a small electrical issue with my stove a couple weeks back. When deciding how to deal with it, I called my dad, not my landlord, because my landlord is notoriously lazy/drunk and takes forever to fix things. As in, he takes three weeks to unclog my shower. He also took about three weeks to resolve a squirrel issue in my attic – and that’s still not resolved, it’s just how long he took to even start to resolve it.

But my dad has the response time of a normal, non-lazy/drunk person. So I called, he promptly fixed the stove, and $54 later, I was back in the business of cooking.

I finally got a hold of my landlord today (because he didn’t return my voice mail from a week ago) and told him what had happened and that I’d gone ahead and replaced the burner and would there be a way I could get reimbursed. The conversation went something like…

Supergirl: Hey. I blew a burner on my stove. My dad replaced it, but it was $54. Is there any chance I can get reimbursed?

Landlord S: Well…I will this time, but I really prefer to make the repairs myself, because I will probably have an appliance guy come take a look and now I’ll also have to pay him.

Supergirl: Well…I would have called you, but it seems to take you a couple weeks to fix things, and this needed to be fixed right away.

Landlord S: Yes, well, now that we understand each other….

Supergirl (to myself): Yeah, well, maybe if you didn’t take a bajillion weeks to get rid of a squirrel that still isn’t gone, and then only took any action about it after I stalked you for a week, then I’d be more apt to call you when emergencies arise. But in the meantime, I don’t have time to stalk your ass for everything that goes wrong in my apartment. And since I’m living in your ghetto-ass apartment building, it should also be obvious I don’t have $54 to just go around replacing things with. So give me my money and start being a responsive landlord and this won’t happen again.

Yes, Landlord S, we definitely understand each other. If by understand  you mean I communicate something to you and you respond with vague, incomplete sentences and we end up nowhere.

I’ll bet money he doesn’t even call the appliance guy to check on the place like he said he needed to.