Routine Maintenance
A week of broken things... some more broken than others.
As we've previously reported, our apartment complex's maintenance guys have been in the process of gutting and completely redoing the downstairs apartment since our dirtball neighbors moved out...
And, in true low-rent fashion, they've been doing the renovations themselves instead of calling in professionals—which wouldn't necessarily be the end of the world, if not for the fact that these two clowns seem to be locked in a perpetual contest of any dumb you can dumb, I can dumb dumber.
So, suffice it to say, it's always quality stuff with these guys. Every single time.
For about three weeks now, the other guy Leon has inevitably been knocking on our door every day, sometime in the late morning or early afternoon...
No advanced notice.
Never a "hey, how're you doing?" or a "could you do me a favor?"
Just,
Yeah; don't use your water for about... maybe an hour? Hour and a half? I'm fixin' a drain pipe downstairs... for probably an hour and a half, two hours. So don't run any water for about two hours.
"Just gimme an hour and a half to two weeks; or, you know, like 10 months; or about a millenium."
Alright, bud. Sure.
Day after day after day, this is how it's been going.
Not the end of the world, but annoying nonetheless—especially when I work from home and Riley schools from home, and we're not exactly robots that never have to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom.
But, there's a time to make waves and a time to let things slide; and my thinking for the first three weeks was more or less, it's just a remodel: it can't last forever; right?
But, cut to Thursday the 11th, when I headed out to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee and some lunch.
No hot water coming out of the tap.
No temperature.
No pressure.
Nothing.
This was around 2:00 P.M.
Top notch. I really appreciate it.
I let it go until Kitten got home from work and was ready to start dinner—which would involve handling raw chicken, and would require hot water to properly wash her hands afterward.
By then it was 6:00 P.M. So we called the emergency maintenance line.
...Could you maybe come turn our water back on?
...Pretty please, with a fucking cherry on top?
So Leon came over with the attitude dialed up to about 1,000—which I found curious, given that he had been the cause of this problem in the first place!
(It would've been a completely different story, had we called and interrupted his dinner to say something like, "Hey man, our refrigerator light went out and we're too lazy and stupid to change it ourselves. Can you come fix it right this second?")
No. We're not those kind of people.
And this had had nothing to do with us, save for the repercussions; so I did not appreciate the implication that we were inconveniencing him by calling him over to fix his problem!
But, he was short and snippy and totally unprofessional with us; and it took him 10 minutes to put two and two together and realize that he had somehow shut off our water earlier when he was shutting off the water to the apartment downstairs.
But even a stopped clock is eventually right, and even this particular stopped clock finally got our water going again before huffing away to get back to... whatever it is that attitudinous imbeciles do with their lives.
What fun.
As we've also previously reported, Athennia recently began to suspect that Taylor was laying the groundwork to stay up in Connecticut indefinitely; and, just as we finished our [very late, thanks to Leon] dinner that evening, Taylor called with... an update of sorts.
She admitted that, though her plan was still to come home on the 17th, it was also to get back up to Connecticut as quickly as humanly possible... but she was worried that there would be animosity when Lou realized that she would be back to living alone with no one to take care of her after Taylor left.
I think that warrants documenting, only because Ahlina couldn't manage to hold a job or produce a single cent of rent over the year that Athennia let her live here. (And I don't imagine that she paid very much to Lou during her time living at the trailer either.)
What fun!
But anyway, Athennia assured Taylor that Lou would not hate her. And she rightfully told Taylor that this was a conversation she and Lou needed to have directly.
Lou: And Taylor won't come get me a glass of water when I call her. This is "Oma" abuse!
Athennia: Mom! Taylor has school at 6:00 in the morning. You can't be doing that to her at 3:00 in the middle of the night. You need to ask her before she goes to bed. Otherwise, you're perfectly capable of getting your own water.
Taylor: Yeah, and tell her not to eat my food when I'm the one doing the cooking!
Athennia: Ummm, no: If you're cooking with ingredients that Oma bought, and you're doing it in her house and with her gas, then you can cook enough for both of you to eat.
(And so on and so forth, ad infinitum.)
The next day, Leon came up and knocked to politely ask tell me not to use the water for two hours... and this time, instead of responding with calmness and understanding, I sarcastically told him,
Sure! NO problem!
...and then I slammed our apartment door in his face harder than I have ever slammed a door in my entire life.
Later that evening, Athennia arrived home from work and went to get started on dinner, when... guess who had NO hot water pressure again?
So, we called the emergency maintenance line again—and this time we got Ralph instead.
What do you think he said?
Give me about 20 minutes; I was just about to step in the shower.
The fucking shower?!
God, that must be nice. I wonder what that's like, having hot water anytime you need it.
Being able to expect it, anytime you turn on the faucet.
The sheer degree of class on display here! Just... wow, guys.
In his defense, Ralph was 10,000 times nicer than Leon had been the night before—and, while it's impossible to know for sure, he seemed to have some sort of revelation as far as the apparent reality that shutting off the water downstairs will effectively shut off ours as well.
Perhaps he'll relay it to Leon and this won't have to happen again.
Athennia and I got into a big argument about it after Ralph left: As is par for the course, pretty much the only thing we ever fight about is when people external to us try to back up their dump truck at our family doorstep and unload a metric ton of bullshit.
You take that steaming pile right back to wherever it came from. That is not ours. Unsubscribe us immediately.
Athennia's position, when the apartment is involved, is that we can basically never make waves, because what if we get evicted?
And my position is that she has a perfect 14-year streak here of paying her rent on time and in full, even during COVID when almost nobody was paying their rent anywhere... and sometimes, things are so over-the-top ridiculous that you need to throw your weight around and get some answers—which is why, were this to happen again on Monday, I was 100% ready to lawyer up and checkmate someone not just for their negligence...
Not just for the resultant harassment...
Not just for this particular violation of the terms of our lease...
But for every violation of the terms of our lease.
I didn't go out looking for random people with whom I could disagree to create conflict...
I spend every waking moment holed up in our apartment with the expectation that, as long as we continue upholding our end of the lease by paying our rent, the landlord will uphold their end of the lease and grant us the rights and privileges outlined in the document by which we're each legally bound.
Like, how's that noise ordinance at 10:00 P.M. working out?
And, why are 80% of the windows in our unit impossible to open or close?
And, how come half of our outlets melt plugs?
And, what's with all these structural cracks?
I didn't go out gunning for these pukes. I've put up with their antics every day since the day I moved in. But, good God, if you're going to keep kicking the hornets' nest day after day after day... expect a fucking stinger at some point.
And that is exactly what I had conveyed to Leon when I slammed the door in his face earlier that day:
We have moved past the point now where I am mostly happy to shoulder the inconvenience of accommodating you because I realize you're just doing your job. You have officially become a nuisance to me that I will no longer tolerate; and if you come around to cause problems to this hive one more time, you should expect stingers. I am fully prepared to dedicate immense time, money, and energy into stinging you at this point; and that was 100% YOUR decision.
It was approaching 8:00 P.M. by the time we finished arguing, and we still hadn't done anything about getting started on dinner. So, we caved and decided to head over to the Oxford Valley Mall to pick up Chinese food from Mister Wok.
Incidentally, I took these five pictures of the sky during the course of our argument, which almost perfectly reflect my mood over that time...
Saturday the 13th, Riley had a morning appointment at the dentist—which is all the way down in the city and about as far away as Mars.
The Shitty of Brotherly Love has far worse things than that.
But, we got there on time and waited for them to call Riley back. Then Kitten and I sat in a quiet corner of the waiting area and played on our phones to kill time.
I wrongfully assumed that the highlight of the visit would be the Jay-Z-looking thug who came in to kick off the age of enlightenment...
Wait, hole up—
<whips out his phone to place a call>
—Ay girl, what kanna insurance you got?"
Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that a dentistry practice called Pediatric Dental Associates will probably not be willing to accommodate your 24-year-old-looking ass...
...And, even if they were, this is not Miller Time at your neighborhood pub, and you can't just open up a tab on someone else's health insurance.
Eventually the guy took his teef and walked out... hopefully to try his luck on Mars instead, where I hear the air and soil are great this time of year.
And, as I was sitting there wondering just how it is that someone so stupid can actually survive past infancy, let alone "pediatric" age, I found my thoughts suddenly shattered by a CRASH!
Jeez, that was loud!
It sounded like maybe an open window somewhere back in one of the exam rooms might have let in a breeze that got a hold of a door and slammed it shut.
...At least, that had been my best guess—until I noticed a woman sitting against an adjacent wall near us suddenly arching her neck to stare intently at something outside.
What are we lookin'—oh.
There was a pole just outside the dentist's front door... and, as you can see from these pictures, there's not much space to get around it...
Let's be real: That can't be more than 45 feet of clearance; so, if you're piloting a jumbo jet, good luck getting around this showstopper!
Despite this being Philadelphia, the ground here had not been covered in debris when we'd headed inside 20 minutes earlier. Those were in fact the remains of the not-quite-a-jumbo-jet that had tried... and failed... to squeak unnoticed around that pesky pole.
But the pole wasn't having it. Not today. It struck quickly and without warning!
And so, that crash we had heard?
That was this cuboid receiving some assistance stopping from a very high rate of speed...
It looked like an old guy driving... but this is Philadelphia.
So, who knows whether it was in fact an elderly man, perhaps with something like dementia... or whether it was some kid in his 20s who's just done enough methamphetamine to look like he's old enough to be someone with something like dementia?
Hopefully you have a friend or loved one with good insurance, and you can put this on their tab ;)
A short while later, we found ourselves on the infamous Roosevelt Boulevard—that curious brainchild that began as a proposed expressway to allow traffic to move quickly through the city... and somehow ended up manifesting as a sadistic stretch of start-stop sluggishness, traffic cameras, and red lights every ten feet.
With a pointless dam every block or so, making you have to get up and out of your tube to get going again...
All while fishermen in police-officer costumes stand on either shore and try to hook your wallet as you sail past...
And also, the river is polluted, rife with crime, and taxes your soda purchases.
At some point Athennia asked,
What is it, Skittles Day on the boulevard or something?
And she wasn't wrong...
We headed in the direction of my parents' house—stopping at Dunkin along the way for coffee... and then stopping at Weis for doughnuts, since Dunkin's doughnuts are so terrible these days, they even took the word out of their name.
After a supremely healthy breakfast, I went outside and filled four garbage cans' worth of compost to drag them up to the garden to dress it with a nice hefty layer.
Then I ripped out the mustard greens trying to overtake our garlic, and I set two huge piles aside to take home to our neighbor Jeff later...
Kelly, Steve, and the girls got there later in the afternoon...
Liv was in a tiny dancer kind of mood...
...So Hannah showed her up by transforming into Elton John himself!
We ordered takeout from Taormina's and had a lovely evening together; and then it was time to head home.
This guy thought he was frowning, but he should've experienced what it was like being stuck behind him...
Also, check out Mars. It's awesome.
Sunday the 14th, the highlight of the day was that our toilet broke... and guess whom we were not about to call?
If you guessed our Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber maintenance guys? You. Are. Correct.
Anyway, it was only that the external handle portion of the flusher had separated from the internal part anyway; so, how hard could it be?
Like, whether the toilet is oriented in such a way so that a lefty can't really get in there and apply a decent amount of torque to the nut inside the toilet tank.
...And whether the nut and the bolt in question are older than time itself, such that they've so thoroughly rusted that they've all but fused together into a single mass that's at once harder than diamond but also has the tensile strength of Play Doh when you actually try to bear down on it and just end up stripping the thing entirely.
Fortunately, Kitten does precision work with sensitive components and possesses awareness of all the tricks of the trade; so she had the know-how to apply a few drops of alcohol periodically to serve as a lubricant—which ended up being enough of a boon to our cause for me to use just enough strength to get the nut loose without risking a slip of the wrench that would've either shattered my elbow against the vanity or made me clock my wife full-force in the jaw.
But, the next day was a Monday... and guess who was back in play?
Sometime late morning I came out to make my second cup of coffee, to find that we had...
No hot water.
No cold water.
No water of any kind.
Just as my adrenaline was granting me enough strength to fight a gorilla, I spotted Leon walking outside in the parking lot. And, since our living-room window was already open, I took the opportunity to apprise myself of what the actual @#$% was going on...
Me: YO! How long's our water gonna be out?! You didn't even give us a heads up this time!
Leon: 'Ay man, I can't be goin' around to every apartment with a heads up if iss-an emergency!
Me: Routine renovation work is an "emergency"?! This is three fucking weeks that we've put up with this now...
Leon: 'Ay man, we got pipes leakin' water in the basement. Talk to Kayla in the office. Complain to her if you want.
So, I relayed this development to Athennia and asked if she wanted to make that call, since the body count would likely be considerably lower if she handled it than if I did.
Needless to say, Kayla had been completely unaware of the last three weeks' festivities (to say nothing of Leon's attitude Thursday night); but it turned out that today's little emergency fiasco was a legitimate emergency that just happened to be discovered by coincidence with the ongoing renovation work downstairs.
Kayla was sympathetic to our grievances and assured us this would be a one-day issue. And, to her credit, we have not experienced any subsequent interruptions to our water temperature or pressure since.
And, if not? I guess a pipe will burst and flood the entire downstairs... and we'll just have to go on not having new noisy neighbors until the day we finally get out of here.
It'll be quiet and lonely; but I can live with that.
Jumping backward in a time just a bit... sometime back over the weekend, Athennia finally caved to her mom's repeated pleas to "help her" find a new motorized reclining chair to replace her current one, which had apparently broke.
Athennia found Lou a comparable chair on Amazon for $600 and told her to just pay us back $500 over time.
(I have a certain opinion of how that's likely to play out, considering that Lou is actively in the process of declaring bankruptcy; but, what do I know?)
And so, the night of Tuesday the 16th, Lou called Athennia at 10:00 P.M. to let her know that the motor half of the chair had arrived and was sitting on the front porch; and, if we were perchance "out and about," was there any way we could come bring it inside?
And also? You've filled every inch of your trailer with garbage; so it's not like this is going to be a five-second trip to pop over and lug the thing to a vacant corner of your living room or something: We're going to have to excavate a space for it.
Athennia knew I didn't want to come; but I knew she wouldn't be able to lift the thing up the front steps and into Lou's trailer by herself.
(The product info said the chair was 150 pounds total, with the motor half being 100 by itself.)
So, we drove over to Lou's together...
And, there was the box—about the size of one of those enormous boxes they display watermelons in at the grocery store...
And, I know I've trended towards massively out of shape since I moved in with Athennia and Riley; but this was by far the heaviest 100 pounds I had ever attempted to lift: I could just barely lift the thing about an inch off the ground; but there was no way I was picking it up to carry it up four steps and through Lou's front door.
We'd find out two days later that the entire chair was in fact in the box—making it a full 150 pounds instead of the 100 we had anticipated.
As expected, the entire ordeal was a giant nightmare:
Lou had stacks of mail everywhere, and a side table full of sandwich fixins' like peanut butter and unrefrigerated jelly (yum!) so that she can live her entire life never having to stand up and walk to the bathroom or the kitchen.
I honestly can't even begin to guess what time we might have finally returned home, once we had finally cleared a space and finagled the box inside.
With any luck, maybe it wasn't too far past 11:00.
Oh, no; wait!
Tomorrow night is when Taylor's train arrives and you got voluntold to go pick her up!
...at 11:00 P.M.
...in safe, friendly Trenton!
YAY!
And that went super well, by the way:
Three weeks since Taylor saw her mother, and all she could do for the half-hour ride home was whine...
Whine about how Lou had guilt-tripped her the entire time about how difficult it was to be on her own without Taylor there to wait on her hand and foot...
Then whine about the lack of food she expected to find back at the trailer...
Then whine about the backlog of schoolwork she and Ahlina (ahem, her actual learning coach) had failed to complete the whole time she had been away...
And finally, pout like a child when she asked if she could come over the next three nights to catch up on all of it, and Athennia firmly insisted that we already had obligations until early next week.
We were by then sitting outside Lou's trailer; and so Taylor just muttered a "fine" and stormed out of the car without so much as a thank-you for the ride home or an I love you to her mother.
Was I perfect? Hardly. But good God was I more capable than Taylor contents herself with being... and infinitely more grateful for all the help I did receive from my parents.
Kitten keeps assuring me that this is only until Taylor graduates in the first week of June. And I know that she honestly believes that; but God, do I hope she's ready to stick to it.
If just having to complete high school while having no other reaponsibilities whatsoever is really this much of a challenge on an ongoing basis, then I fear that graduating is not going to make everything better: It's going to be catastrophic, because there will no longer be any excuse for Taylor not to embrace adulthood... but she has spent so long hiding from reality at this point that she's completely unprepared.