When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, thanks to my country director's very liberal interpretation of the Peace Corps vacation policy, we got five weeks of vacation a year. Not that being in the Peace Corps wasn't already like being on vacation all the time, although I did go to work every day from nine to five and try to improve sales, cut expenses, and reduce accounts receivable.
Unfortunately, although those were my objectives, what I ended up spending most of my day doing was telling the interns that even when I wasn't in the office, I didn't want them to smoke - yes, I could tell that they'd been smoking in there the night before, I could! I could smell it!, asking my co-workers not to put their crap on my desk, locking my toilet paper in my desk drawer, and sitting through eight-hour meetings in which we debated should the mission of the organization be to serve Mapuche women or young Mapuche women.
And I was cold all the time, which is not my idea of vacation. And when I rented a room from Maruja la Bruja, I had to heat water on the stove to bathe because it was too dangerous to try to get hot water to emerge from the shower. [See: How I almost electrocuted myself taking a shower.] And there were bedbugs. So maybe it wasn't like being on vacation at all.
But the five weeks away was like being on vacation. Because you know, it was. A vacation.
My friend Kelly and I decided to go to Machu Picchu. Just one small country away. Might as well. As long as we were there. We took the bus to Arica, in the north of Chile in the Atacama desert, which purports to be one of the driest places on earth. No recorded rain in hundreds of years.
I believed this when I discovered I could not flush the toilet in any public place. Our bus stopped at a remote outpost. I, who had been experiencing some distress, ran to the bathroom. Then realized there was no way to flush. Emerged. Asked the bathroom attendant what there was to be done. She explained that after everyone had taken care of their needs, she would take a bucket of water into the stall.
Oh no, I explained. That would not be a good idea.
But that's how it's done, she said.
No no no, I said. I must have the bucket now.
But one must wait until everyone is finished!
I assure you you do not want to do that.
I insisted. And insisted. She surrendered. Gave me the bucket. I know the people who followed me thanked me, even though they didn't know why. And we'll leave it at that.
We got back on the bus. Stopped again a few hours later in a small Aymara village. Waited for the llamas to get out of our way so we could look inside the whitewashed church in which crucifixion scene painted on the wall showed Roman soldiers dressed as Spaniards.
When we got to Tacna, on the other side of the Peruvian border, we decided we'd had enough of buses and that taking a 26-hour bus ride through the mountains at night was probably not the wisest thing to do. I don't remember if it was because we were concerned about the roads, the driver, or the Sendero Luminoso.
Instead, for a mere US$45, almost 10% of our monthly stipend, we could fly from Tacna to Cuzco, the base city for Machu Picchu. Oh, the travel agent added, there is a $5 airport usage fee. We assumed she meant that fee was included in the price of the ticket and wondered why she was even mentioning it to us. Whatever.
Smug in the knowledge that we had gotten a real bargain, we arrived at the airport the next morning at 5 a.m. and pushed our way to the front of the mob waiting at the ticket counter, which we had to pass even though we already had our tickets.
England, Costa Rica, and the U.S. are the only countries I have ever been where people actually line up.
The mob seemed to be unusually grouchy, even for 5 a.m. We discovered why when the ticket agent told us we had to pay an 18% value-added tax on our tickets. There must have been a pact amongst the travel agents in the region that none of them would breathe a word of this to clients. Not a single customer there had heard about the tax before and boy were they mad about it.
The idea of collecting the tax when the ticket was sold had apparently not occurred to anyone. It would have occurred to Kelly and me because we are both organized businesswomen who would say, "Why not collect all taxes, fees, and other monies related to the ticket at once and disburse them to the appropriate agencies later as this will make things easier for the customer and also reduce manpower and operational costs associated with collecting said monies," but they hadn't asked us. They never do.
Over the din of protesting flyers to be, we looked at each other, chuckled indulgently, and noted that indeed, when one is in a third-world country, one must expect this kind of thing. One must expect inefficiencies, some of them deliberate. Sometimes, they are means of increasing employment. Sometimes, they are means of reducing fraud. The more people involved in collecting money, the harder it is to steal it. Think about that, churches that have only one person counting the collection plate. I am always shocked to find that any church in this day and age can have money stolen from the collection plate. The way you do it is you grab three people from the congregation to count after the service is over and their counts all have to tally. It's that simple, people!
We paid without protest, then passed through the elaborate security system - the hall - to the waiting room. I guess they didn't care if they were hijacked. Hijackers never want to go to nice countries. They just want to go to hellholes. Peru was already a hellhole. I mean, it's a beautiful country with good food, but the Sendero Luminoso was making things a nightmare for poor people. I don't know how Cuba could be much worse. Actually, at least in Cuba, people would be warm. Peru is cold as heck in the mountains. So yeah, they didn't seem to worry much about hijackers. Although buses got hijacked. So go figure.
We wondered when we would eat again. There was no cafeteria - this was a minimalist airport. Apparently, the government had figured out it could make money by taxing the heck out of passengers but not by selling them food? Peru, I'm disappointed in you. Or I am disappointed in the 1993 you.
At five minutes to 6:00, we lined up to board the plane, which allegedly left at 6:00 a.m., although time has a totally different meaning in the southern hemisphere. Six a.m. could mean "any time once it gets light."
The ticket taker looked at my ticket and told me I hadn't paid the airport usage fee.
We shall leave the debate over whether one should be charged for walking into a building to get to an airplane for another time.
Yes, I did, I told him calmly. Had we not cleared this up yesterday with the travel agent? It was included in the ticket price.
He said no, I didn't have the appropriate orange sticker on my ticket.
Well, I demanded, Why didn't they tell me this when I paid my 18% value-added tax and they re-wrote the entire ticket?
He just shrugged and pointed me to the Airport Usage Fee Pay Window.
Confident that this was a mere administrative misunderstanding that I, because of my command of the Spanish language, could clear up in no time, I strode with determination to the Airport Usage Fee Pay Window and waved my ticket in the agent's face. Note that this window is not to be confused with the 18% Value-Added Tax Window. That was a separate window staffed by a separate agent.
I have paid this tax! I announced to the agent. It was in my ticket price!
He shrugged and indicated that I lacked the orange sticker.
NO! I maintained. I paid it, I paid it, I paid it! My voice rose with each declaration and tears of anger and frustration welled in my eyes, but to no avail. The agent merely stared past me with blank bureaucratic indifference - he would have been a Miami DMV employee had he been American - at the passengers behind me who, in an attempt to board the plane before it left, were reaching over my shoulder and frantically shoving US$5 bills into his hand.
Just pay! Kelly hissed.
Oh like I should trust someone who packed all white clothes for a three-week trip to Peru and Bolivia?
Pay! She said. We're going to miss the plane! Then she remarked conversationally, This is a perfect example of commitment escalation like we learned in business school.
I looked at the runway. The line was getting shorter. I looked back at the agent. He was looking at his fingernails. He didn't care. He was paid no matter what. He was quite unlike the bus drivers in Chile, who got a cut of the fares. This was good if you wanted to catch a bus. All you had to do was wave one down and it would come to a screeching halt, but not so good if you were already on a bus and wanted to get somewhere already. The bus was always stopping! For other people!
I pulled five dollars out of my pocket, threw it on the counter, hissed that I knew I was being cheated and that I hated his stupid country, thrust my ticket at the agent for the sticker, gave my ticket to the ticket taker, and ran on the plane.
Whereupon after some reflection and thought I realized that the ticket price had not included the airport usage fee after all and that I had wasted a perfectly good fit.
Next time: We take the train to Machu Picchu and sit next to two beautiful Brazilian men who are too young for us.
Showing posts with label bad landlords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad landlords. Show all posts
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
In which I have a weird roommate who thinks the peeling tile in the bathroom is my fault
When I first moved to Temuco, the city where I lived when I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I shared a house with two other gringas.
It took me a while to get used to using the term "gringa," i.e., female foreigner. In Panama, where we lived when I was in high school, it was a serious insult, on the level with the n-word. When I moved to Chile, I heard "gringo" and "gringa" bandied about casually and I flinched every time I heard it. I asked one of the Chilean Peace Corps trainers about it and she laughed, telling me it just means "foreigner" in Chile.
Not all words mean the same thing in all Spanish-speaking countries. When I was working in Miami, the company had marketing materials where they referred to one of the product features as a "pico." "Pico" means "beak," as in a rooster's beak, but in Chile, it is also slang for man parts. I tried to point out the error to my boss - they had had the translation done by a firm in Cedar Rapids because you sure can't find any translating agencies in Miami, but he just shrugged.
Back to Temuco. I don't remember how I found Bridget and Yolanda, my roommates. Bridget was a Scottish student majoring in Spanish and Portuguese. She was spending her junior year in Chile. Yolanda was American, working on her thesis in political science, I think.
Bridget and I got on like a house on fire.
Yolanda and I - not so much.
It was all three of us for the first month. The house was big and old, but had only two bedrooms. I had what was essentially a closet - a small room between the two bedrooms that didn't even have a door. I had a sleeping bag that took 2/3 of the width of the room. My feet almost touched the wall when I was lying down. I am not that tall.
I stacked my clothes on top of my duffle bag next to the sleeping bag. I had brought my boom box with me (why? why? why would I transport something like that all the way from the US to Chile by air?) and had some cassette tapes. That was the extent of my decor.
After the first month, Bridget left for a few weeks, so I got to stay in her room on an actual bed. Poor Yolanda. She was strange. I didn't help matters, though, by hosting a Peace Corps Christmas house party at the house. However, I was paying a third of the rent, so it was as much my house as it was hers. Still, having over a dozen people strangers - to her - in the house for three days was maybe a little much.
That was when I discovered that one can leave a turkey - a cooked turkey - out overnight and survive to tell the tale. We didn't have a refrigerator in the house - used appliances were hard to find and I sure wasn't going to buy a new one for a rental property. Yogurt, too, does not have to be refrigerated.
Yolanda and I didn't spend much time together. She creeped me out. When we would eat together, she would pick at her toenails, then reach for her food. With her fingers. I don't mind the picking of the toenails and I don't mind the eating with the fingers, but the two should never mix and they should definitely never mix when one is not eating alone. Toe picking is a solitary activity that should be followed by hand washing.
She had grody underwear. I know she didn't have much money, but I have never seen such dreary, gray, drab, elastic shot underwear in my life and I am known for my thrifty ways. But there has to be a line somewhere and that somewhere is underwear that looks like my grandmother wore it 50 years ago and then used it to wash the floor. Of the basement. After a flood.
But her nastiest habit was the way she wiped the bathroom floor with her towel. And then didn't hang it outside to dry. And then used it again. On her body.
We had a troublesome shower. It was completely inside the house, with no windows to the outside and no other ventilation. The showerhead sprayed water out of the shower and onto the bathroom floor, no matter how you had the showerhead adjusted. This meant the bathroom floor was wet after every shower.
I used a rag to wipe the bathroom floor, but Yolanda used her own towel.
Which, as I mentioned, she then left inside, where it did not dry but merely went from sopping to damp and then to horribly stinky. That bathroom reeked with her nasty mildewing towel.
I stayed in that house for about six weeks, then found new quarters. I didn't like living with Yolanda and once Bridget returned, I did not want to pay a full third of the rent to sleep on the floor in a closet. Bridget and I moved out to Maruja the Bruja's house and we were happy, except for the bedbugs and the shower that almost killed us, etc.
A few weeks after we had moved, Yolanda came to my office. She had moved as well, as she could not afford the rent all by herself. Her landlord was keeping her deposit to repair the peeling linoleum on the bathroom floor.
Yes, that is what happens when a floor is exposed to water for two years, which was the time Yolanda had lived in the house. The adhesive gradually loosened under the tiles and the linoleum curled up around the edges.
I would maintain that the landlord has the responsibility to ensure that the showerhead is directing water within the confines of the shower and not without, but if the landlord is not informed of the problem by the person who signed the lease and who has a financial interest in keeping the property as she found it, perhaps that problem belongs with the tenant.
Yolanda wanted me to pay for part of her deposit.
I had lived in the house for less than two months. She had been there for two years.
No, I told her. No way.
But it was my fault that the floor had gone bad, she said. The problem didn't start until I showed up!
I pointed out that the reason the problem hadn't shown up until recently was that it had taken two years of her getting the floor wet - without complaining to the landlord - for the problem to develop.
She was just like Crazy Carmen, the Washington DC landlady who blamed me for the leaky shower that caused the ceiling problems. I lived in Carmen's house for only a few months. I noticed that water dripped from the shower door onto the floor, so I bought a squeegee and squeegeed the door every time I showered. The other renter, with whom I shared the upstairs shower, did not squeegee. After I had been in the house for a month, the plaster under the shower became damaged. Carmen was convinced it was my fault.
Correlation is not causation, ladies. If I am squeegeeing the door and wiping the water off the floor, then I am not the cause of the problem. Or, better said, I have taken all reasonable steps to prevent the problem and the next step is the landlord's: repair the showerhead, re-grout the bathroom, whatever.
Yolanda claimed that it was me plus my many houseguests who had caused the problem. I laughed and told her that most of my Peace Corps friends were environmental education volunteers who did not believe in daily bathing. Even the business and municipal management volunteers were known to skip a day. Or two. Or three. It was cold in Chile! And we had to pay for the gas to heat the shower water. Nope. Not their fault.
Yolanda was furious, but I was not giving her $200 - of my $600 monthly stipend - to cover her deposit and her problem.
She had no way to compel me. I suspect that if she ever got into the subleasing business again, she asked for a share of the deposit up front. I would.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
In which the neighbors prove to be complete losers
My Miami duplex was part of a pair - two duplexes sharing the same yard. My across the yard neighbor, Mousson, was great. We were friends. Her duplex neighbors were two Argentine guys whom we rarely saw. There are more fun things to do in Miami for a young man than hang out with his neighbors.
My duplex neighbors were jerks.
The first neighbor, who moved out after a year, had two big dogs that she let poop in the yard and on the sidewalk. This would not have been a problem except I had to go past her half, on her sidewalk, to get to my half, on my part of the sidewalk.
She did not think it was her responsibility to clean up any dog poop after her half of the yard or the sidewalk. Actually, I don't even think she cleaned the poop out of the yard.
My half of the sidewalk was always poop-laden, which is bad for its own sake but really bad considering I rarely got home before dark. Once I had navigated my way through the land mines that Neighbor's two DOBERMANS had left, I still got to smell the poop as it wafted into my bedroom window.
She finally moved out.
Then Marta and her husband moved in. At first I thought, well cool! She's from Venezuela and her husband is Brazilian, so I can practice both Spanish and Portuguese.
Then I asked Marta to watch my place while I was on vacation for two weeks. (Mousson was in Haiti for the summer.)
"Please take my newspapers," I asked her.
"I don't read the paper," she told me.
"Then please just put it in the trash," I asked her. I hadn't put the paper on vacation hold because there was a rumor that some of the customer service people at The Herald would provide that information to burglars.
"Please move my mail away from the mail slot in the door," I asked her.
"Please water my plants," I asked her. Then I gave her my house key.
Then I went happy to Ireland with my friend Lenore. Tralalalala I don't have to worry about my house in Miami, where I have to chain my washer and dryer to the outside wall next to the back door and guess what? dryers are not meant to be outside in the rain and they will rust on the inside and you cannot get rust out of your clothes for love or money, where late-night revelers from Cocowalk pee on the side of my fence and throw used diapers and condoms into the ditch, where my license plates have been stolen twice and my car has been broken into by thieves who smashed the window and stole everything - my prescription sunglasses, the spare change in the ashtray, four quarts of motor oil - except my music cassettes, which was a real slap in the face. I mean, you guys steal the old shower curtain in the trunk in case I had to change a tire in the mud yet you don't want my music?
Philistines.
I returned from Ireland with a little gift for Marta because she had done me this enormous favor.
My friend Susan, who picked me up from the airport, and I arrived at my house.
My car interior light was on.
What the?
It was on because the door was slightly ajar.
Because it had been broken into. Again.
I opened the gate (the one with the "Perro malo" sign that kept out nobody but the FedEx guy, so when I got my job offer and signing bonus from my post-yellow truck employer, it was delayed for three days as I tried to convince FedEx to deliver it) and saw two weeks' worth of newspapers in the yard.
I tried to open my front door. I had to push hard to get through the mail that had accumulated at the mail slot.
My plants were dead.
I went next door and knocked. Marta opened the door and started to speak fast in Spanish: "They tried to break into your house! They broke into your car and then we heard somebody late one night trying to break into your house so we called the police and yelled at them and they went away!"
"Thank you," I said. "Thanks for preventing them from breaking into my house. But - um - Marta? How do you think they knew I wasn't at home?"
She looked at me wide eyed. "I don't know!" she answered.
"Do you think it could have been that all the newspapers were in the yard?"
She gasped. "No! That's how they figured it out?"
"Yes," I told her. "That's why I asked you to put them in the trash."
"Who would have thought," she mused as she shook her head.
Yeah. Who would have thought.
She never did explain why she hadn't bothered to close my car door.
My duplex neighbors were jerks.
The first neighbor, who moved out after a year, had two big dogs that she let poop in the yard and on the sidewalk. This would not have been a problem except I had to go past her half, on her sidewalk, to get to my half, on my part of the sidewalk.
She did not think it was her responsibility to clean up any dog poop after her half of the yard or the sidewalk. Actually, I don't even think she cleaned the poop out of the yard.
My half of the sidewalk was always poop-laden, which is bad for its own sake but really bad considering I rarely got home before dark. Once I had navigated my way through the land mines that Neighbor's two DOBERMANS had left, I still got to smell the poop as it wafted into my bedroom window.
She finally moved out.
Then Marta and her husband moved in. At first I thought, well cool! She's from Venezuela and her husband is Brazilian, so I can practice both Spanish and Portuguese.
Then I asked Marta to watch my place while I was on vacation for two weeks. (Mousson was in Haiti for the summer.)
"Please take my newspapers," I asked her.
"I don't read the paper," she told me.
"Then please just put it in the trash," I asked her. I hadn't put the paper on vacation hold because there was a rumor that some of the customer service people at The Herald would provide that information to burglars.
"Please move my mail away from the mail slot in the door," I asked her.
"Please water my plants," I asked her. Then I gave her my house key.
Then I went happy to Ireland with my friend Lenore. Tralalalala I don't have to worry about my house in Miami, where I have to chain my washer and dryer to the outside wall next to the back door and guess what? dryers are not meant to be outside in the rain and they will rust on the inside and you cannot get rust out of your clothes for love or money, where late-night revelers from Cocowalk pee on the side of my fence and throw used diapers and condoms into the ditch, where my license plates have been stolen twice and my car has been broken into by thieves who smashed the window and stole everything - my prescription sunglasses, the spare change in the ashtray, four quarts of motor oil - except my music cassettes, which was a real slap in the face. I mean, you guys steal the old shower curtain in the trunk in case I had to change a tire in the mud yet you don't want my music?
Philistines.
I returned from Ireland with a little gift for Marta because she had done me this enormous favor.
My friend Susan, who picked me up from the airport, and I arrived at my house.
My car interior light was on.
What the?
It was on because the door was slightly ajar.
Because it had been broken into. Again.
I opened the gate (the one with the "Perro malo" sign that kept out nobody but the FedEx guy, so when I got my job offer and signing bonus from my post-yellow truck employer, it was delayed for three days as I tried to convince FedEx to deliver it) and saw two weeks' worth of newspapers in the yard.
I tried to open my front door. I had to push hard to get through the mail that had accumulated at the mail slot.
My plants were dead.
I went next door and knocked. Marta opened the door and started to speak fast in Spanish: "They tried to break into your house! They broke into your car and then we heard somebody late one night trying to break into your house so we called the police and yelled at them and they went away!"
"Thank you," I said. "Thanks for preventing them from breaking into my house. But - um - Marta? How do you think they knew I wasn't at home?"
She looked at me wide eyed. "I don't know!" she answered.
"Do you think it could have been that all the newspapers were in the yard?"
She gasped. "No! That's how they figured it out?"
"Yes," I told her. "That's why I asked you to put them in the trash."
"Who would have thought," she mused as she shook her head.
Yeah. Who would have thought.
She never did explain why she hadn't bothered to close my car door.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
In which I realize I have a bad landlord and even worse neighbors
When I got the job in Miami, the Yellow Truck Sweatshop Employer, who shall go unnamed, flew me to Miami for a few days a month before I was supposed to start working so I could find a place to live. That day, I found a cute, cute duplex in Coconut Grove. A little stucco house with wood floors and a porch and arched doorways and a built-in bookcase. It was to die for. Expensive, but hey I was rolling in the dough now.
I also got my drivers' license in about two seconds because Florida allows you to make appointments at the DMV. I was the only person who seemed to have figured this out, because when I got there, there was nobody at the "appointments" counter and a huge line at the other counters.
Driver licensing is the one public service that Florida does well. Getting license tags and getting the car inspected were nightmares. My first year, I got to the car inspection place, which closed at 5 during the week, not that I could have gotten there even if it stayed open until 7, or 8, or 9 because I would still have been at work, on Saturday morning at 7:30 in anticipation of the 8:00 a.m. opening. There was already a long line around the block. When they opened the gate, we moved into four lanes. After I had been waiting 40 minutes, someone drove from the outside, around those of us waiting, and to the front of the line.
NO ONE DID ANYTHING!
Another car decided to try the same trick. I thought, "Not on my watch, buddy," so I honked and did the Latin America finger wave, which is when you move your index finger from side to side. That means, "No way in heck are you doing this and if you do, there will be severe repercussions."
It worked. Spurred by my example, the other drivers showed a bit of cojones and honked as well. The breakaway car had to slink to the back of the line. That had probably never happened to him before, as line cutting is an enormous problem in Miami. They would even cut in line at communion at church, which come on - you're not going to miss communion and it's not like church will end any faster if you cut, unless you're like me and leave right after communion because you cannot stand to hear one more awful song from the "Gather" hymnal.
Back to the landlord. He seemed like a decent guy, although it's pretty clear from some of my other rental decisions that I am completely incapable of judging landlord character. I told him if he would buy the paint, I would re-paint the living room. He dropped off the paint and the brushes. I asked where the dropcloths and the tape were.
Oh no me preocupe, he told me. Don' worry 'bout it.
I didn't understand how he could be so cavalier about his own property. I bought tape and dropcloths because although I do only a half-assed job on things like washing dishes - clean enough not to give anyone food poisoning is my mantra - I am a kick-ass painter. Dishes can be re-washed. Painting is a different story.
He did jump to my aid when I called him to announce there were rats in the kitchen. Or rat. I didn't know how many. At least one - it was eating my bread (through the wrapper). Then I saw it scurry under the stove one night. In a completely instinctive reaction, I jumped onto a chair. When you see that scene in a movie, do not laugh. It is what rational people do in response to seeing a nasty, disease-laden, eats the noses off babies rat.
He came over the next day with a mousetrap and the advice to get a cat or a snake. Because snakes eat rats, you know, and wouldn't it be nice to have a snake roaming the house?
The trap didn't work. I put cheese in it and the rat stole the cheese. I read that I should use peanut butter instead. I tried that - the peanut butter was untouched, but the bananas were nibbled upon.
I bought poison, something the landlord had been unwilling to do. Cheap? Ignorant? Who knows.
I saw the poison level (the box was in the kitchen) decreasing a little bit each day, but saw no dead rats. A few days into it, I came home to find a stoned rat in the poison box.
He had been eating the poison and was happy, happy, happy. I tried to sweep him out of the house, thinking to take advantage of his drunken slowness, but he still scrambled under the stove.
The next night, the same thing, only this time the rat had the nerve to wave at me.
Then I didn't see him again, but a few days later, I smelled a whiff of something nasty. That whiff became a horrible odor.
The rat(s) had climbed underneath my floor to die. And to decompose. Thank you, humid Miami climate, for carrying that stink into my house for two weeks.
I checked into getting cats. I went to the adoption fair that the crazy cat ladies were running at the bookstore. I picked two cats, but could not take them home until my house had been inspected by the crazy cat lady.
"Vere vill ze kitties eat?" she demanded.
"In the bathroom."
"Zey cannot eat in ze bazroom!"
"Um, in the kitchen?" I said weakly. It's not like she would be coming back to inspect once the cats arrived.
She seemed satisfied with that answer.
"Vere vill ze kitties sleep?" she continued.
I shrugged. "Wherever they want, I suppose." Had she never observed a cat in action? If someone can tell me the secret of keeping a cat from going where you do not want it to go, please share this information with me. Primo and I have two cats who have taken over the kitchen. Over the house. I have surrendered and now use a cutting board (stored in the cupboard) for preparing all food because I do not want my food to touch the counter where the cats have trod using the same feet they use in their litter box.
"Vy do you vant ze kitties?"
"Because I have rats," I told her.
She staggered and put her hand to her chest. (OK, not really.) "You cannot haf ze kitties if you haf ze rats!" she exclaimed, horrified.
"Why not?" I muttered. "I have to work for a living. Why shouldn't my cats?"
Somehow, I passed. I don't know if the cats could have killed any rats, but perhaps their constant killing and eating everything but the heads of the cute bright green geckos that lived on my blinds served as a warning to the others. The heads and tails would disappear on Saturday mornings when I would put on my glasses and clean the house. The rest of the week, I just didn't look. Plus I usually didn't get home from work until like midnight and who cares if she has a clean house at midnight. Have I mentioned I hated my job at the place that rhymes with "Sider?"
I don't think the rats were scared of the cats (whose names I have forgotten - shame on me - I had to give one of them away when I moved to Cedar Rapids - the other was killed by a car and more about that later when I talk about my really clueless neighbor), but perhaps their mere presence was a deterrent. Yes, there was the gecko killing, but it's easy to pick on something smaller than you. The rats were almost as big as the cats and it's not like my cats were hungry or anything because during the day while I was at work, they hung out with my neighbor Mousson (not the bad neighbor - Mousson was really nice), who, along with her teenage son, Rudolph, fed the cats on demand. Cats need to be a little bit hungry to be truly effective hunters.
Back to the landlord. His responsiveness kicked into super low gear when I discovered that the roof was leaking and that the plaster above my sofa was getting soggy. I called him every day for five days, telling him that there was a leak and it was damaging his ceilings. On Sunday, I awoke to see that the plaster was sagging about an inch. It was going to fall.
I pulled as much furniture out of the living room as possible and covered the sofa with an old sheet. A regular sheet. I didn't have many old sheets in the sense of "used up and replaced by new sheets" because I had been in grad school for two years, then a year unemployed, then two years of Peace Corps, then another year unemployed, all of which meant that I had only the sheets that I had had for years.
But a sheet is easier to replace than a sofa, so there you go, just as the Good Towels are easier to replace than the basement carpet when the sewer drain backs up, which it has done every summer since Primo and I bought our house. Primo freaks out that I am bringing the Good Towels downstairs to blot the water ("blot" being used in the sense of "try to sop up the five gallons of water that are now inhabiting our new basement carpet") but I point out that the carpet cost $1,000 to install and yeah, the insurance paid for it but still do we want to go through that hassle again and towels are not that expensive at TJMaxx and you can even get stuff that's not made in China, which is a quality I seek as I am not a fan of slave/prison labor.
I called my landlord again and left the message that the ceiling was about to fall and he might want to arrange for the repair.
Then I went to a movie. When I returned, the plaster had indeed fallen - a chunk about 3' x 8.' I pulled my trash can in from the street and began tossing the plaster into it.
Do you know how heavy wet plaster is?
It is very, very heavy. And a trash can full of it is very, very, very heavy, even when you are dragging it back out to the curb rather than carrying it. I could hardly walk the next day at work. Who knew my glutes needed so much work? I should have left it for the landlord to clean, but I didn't want wet plaster soaking through to my sofa. And he probably wouldn't have done it.
Why he just hadn't fixed the leaky roof in the first place I do not know. Wait. I do. I was in Miami a few years ago with my former boyfriend (the one who gave me the belt sander, which I still love) and we drove past my old place. Only it was gone. It had been replaced by some crappy new construction. My place had been built in the '40s. It was solid, good construction - wood, stucco, tile. The corners were square. The materials were high quality. It had character.
It had been replaced by a McCondo. So sad.
I was going to talk about my bad neighbors, but I'll do that next time.
I also got my drivers' license in about two seconds because Florida allows you to make appointments at the DMV. I was the only person who seemed to have figured this out, because when I got there, there was nobody at the "appointments" counter and a huge line at the other counters.
Driver licensing is the one public service that Florida does well. Getting license tags and getting the car inspected were nightmares. My first year, I got to the car inspection place, which closed at 5 during the week, not that I could have gotten there even if it stayed open until 7, or 8, or 9 because I would still have been at work, on Saturday morning at 7:30 in anticipation of the 8:00 a.m. opening. There was already a long line around the block. When they opened the gate, we moved into four lanes. After I had been waiting 40 minutes, someone drove from the outside, around those of us waiting, and to the front of the line.
NO ONE DID ANYTHING!
Another car decided to try the same trick. I thought, "Not on my watch, buddy," so I honked and did the Latin America finger wave, which is when you move your index finger from side to side. That means, "No way in heck are you doing this and if you do, there will be severe repercussions."
It worked. Spurred by my example, the other drivers showed a bit of cojones and honked as well. The breakaway car had to slink to the back of the line. That had probably never happened to him before, as line cutting is an enormous problem in Miami. They would even cut in line at communion at church, which come on - you're not going to miss communion and it's not like church will end any faster if you cut, unless you're like me and leave right after communion because you cannot stand to hear one more awful song from the "Gather" hymnal.
Back to the landlord. He seemed like a decent guy, although it's pretty clear from some of my other rental decisions that I am completely incapable of judging landlord character. I told him if he would buy the paint, I would re-paint the living room. He dropped off the paint and the brushes. I asked where the dropcloths and the tape were.
Oh no me preocupe, he told me. Don' worry 'bout it.
I didn't understand how he could be so cavalier about his own property. I bought tape and dropcloths because although I do only a half-assed job on things like washing dishes - clean enough not to give anyone food poisoning is my mantra - I am a kick-ass painter. Dishes can be re-washed. Painting is a different story.
He did jump to my aid when I called him to announce there were rats in the kitchen. Or rat. I didn't know how many. At least one - it was eating my bread (through the wrapper). Then I saw it scurry under the stove one night. In a completely instinctive reaction, I jumped onto a chair. When you see that scene in a movie, do not laugh. It is what rational people do in response to seeing a nasty, disease-laden, eats the noses off babies rat.
He came over the next day with a mousetrap and the advice to get a cat or a snake. Because snakes eat rats, you know, and wouldn't it be nice to have a snake roaming the house?
The trap didn't work. I put cheese in it and the rat stole the cheese. I read that I should use peanut butter instead. I tried that - the peanut butter was untouched, but the bananas were nibbled upon.
I bought poison, something the landlord had been unwilling to do. Cheap? Ignorant? Who knows.
I saw the poison level (the box was in the kitchen) decreasing a little bit each day, but saw no dead rats. A few days into it, I came home to find a stoned rat in the poison box.
He had been eating the poison and was happy, happy, happy. I tried to sweep him out of the house, thinking to take advantage of his drunken slowness, but he still scrambled under the stove.
The next night, the same thing, only this time the rat had the nerve to wave at me.
Then I didn't see him again, but a few days later, I smelled a whiff of something nasty. That whiff became a horrible odor.
The rat(s) had climbed underneath my floor to die. And to decompose. Thank you, humid Miami climate, for carrying that stink into my house for two weeks.
I checked into getting cats. I went to the adoption fair that the crazy cat ladies were running at the bookstore. I picked two cats, but could not take them home until my house had been inspected by the crazy cat lady.
"Vere vill ze kitties eat?" she demanded.
"In the bathroom."
"Zey cannot eat in ze bazroom!"
"Um, in the kitchen?" I said weakly. It's not like she would be coming back to inspect once the cats arrived.
She seemed satisfied with that answer.
"Vere vill ze kitties sleep?" she continued.
I shrugged. "Wherever they want, I suppose." Had she never observed a cat in action? If someone can tell me the secret of keeping a cat from going where you do not want it to go, please share this information with me. Primo and I have two cats who have taken over the kitchen. Over the house. I have surrendered and now use a cutting board (stored in the cupboard) for preparing all food because I do not want my food to touch the counter where the cats have trod using the same feet they use in their litter box.
"Vy do you vant ze kitties?"
"Because I have rats," I told her.
She staggered and put her hand to her chest. (OK, not really.) "You cannot haf ze kitties if you haf ze rats!" she exclaimed, horrified.
"Why not?" I muttered. "I have to work for a living. Why shouldn't my cats?"
Somehow, I passed. I don't know if the cats could have killed any rats, but perhaps their constant killing and eating everything but the heads of the cute bright green geckos that lived on my blinds served as a warning to the others. The heads and tails would disappear on Saturday mornings when I would put on my glasses and clean the house. The rest of the week, I just didn't look. Plus I usually didn't get home from work until like midnight and who cares if she has a clean house at midnight. Have I mentioned I hated my job at the place that rhymes with "Sider?"
I don't think the rats were scared of the cats (whose names I have forgotten - shame on me - I had to give one of them away when I moved to Cedar Rapids - the other was killed by a car and more about that later when I talk about my really clueless neighbor), but perhaps their mere presence was a deterrent. Yes, there was the gecko killing, but it's easy to pick on something smaller than you. The rats were almost as big as the cats and it's not like my cats were hungry or anything because during the day while I was at work, they hung out with my neighbor Mousson (not the bad neighbor - Mousson was really nice), who, along with her teenage son, Rudolph, fed the cats on demand. Cats need to be a little bit hungry to be truly effective hunters.
Back to the landlord. His responsiveness kicked into super low gear when I discovered that the roof was leaking and that the plaster above my sofa was getting soggy. I called him every day for five days, telling him that there was a leak and it was damaging his ceilings. On Sunday, I awoke to see that the plaster was sagging about an inch. It was going to fall.
I pulled as much furniture out of the living room as possible and covered the sofa with an old sheet. A regular sheet. I didn't have many old sheets in the sense of "used up and replaced by new sheets" because I had been in grad school for two years, then a year unemployed, then two years of Peace Corps, then another year unemployed, all of which meant that I had only the sheets that I had had for years.
But a sheet is easier to replace than a sofa, so there you go, just as the Good Towels are easier to replace than the basement carpet when the sewer drain backs up, which it has done every summer since Primo and I bought our house. Primo freaks out that I am bringing the Good Towels downstairs to blot the water ("blot" being used in the sense of "try to sop up the five gallons of water that are now inhabiting our new basement carpet") but I point out that the carpet cost $1,000 to install and yeah, the insurance paid for it but still do we want to go through that hassle again and towels are not that expensive at TJMaxx and you can even get stuff that's not made in China, which is a quality I seek as I am not a fan of slave/prison labor.
I called my landlord again and left the message that the ceiling was about to fall and he might want to arrange for the repair.
Then I went to a movie. When I returned, the plaster had indeed fallen - a chunk about 3' x 8.' I pulled my trash can in from the street and began tossing the plaster into it.
Do you know how heavy wet plaster is?
It is very, very heavy. And a trash can full of it is very, very, very heavy, even when you are dragging it back out to the curb rather than carrying it. I could hardly walk the next day at work. Who knew my glutes needed so much work? I should have left it for the landlord to clean, but I didn't want wet plaster soaking through to my sofa. And he probably wouldn't have done it.
Why he just hadn't fixed the leaky roof in the first place I do not know. Wait. I do. I was in Miami a few years ago with my former boyfriend (the one who gave me the belt sander, which I still love) and we drove past my old place. Only it was gone. It had been replaced by some crappy new construction. My place had been built in the '40s. It was solid, good construction - wood, stucco, tile. The corners were square. The materials were high quality. It had character.
It had been replaced by a McCondo. So sad.
I was going to talk about my bad neighbors, but I'll do that next time.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
In which I rent a duplex from Michelle the worst landlady in the world
I had been accepted at the UT-Austin graduate school of business. My friend Rebecca and I were sharing a house, but she was moving to D.C. for a job with the Department of Labor. I couldn't afford the house on my own.
I found a cute duplex in the same good zip code neighborhood. We were Oh-three-ers. Highly desirable Austin location. I looked at it, thought yes, this will work, and the landlady, Michelle, and I signed the lease.
Four hours later, she called me to say that she needed to charge more rent than we had agreed upon.
Can you say, ENORMOUS CRIMSON FLAG BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD?
But I ignored that banner. And I - this is where it gets worse - agreed to the rent increase.
How dumb was that?
I moved in. Cute cute little Tarrytown duplex. Walking distance to the shuttle bus to school, although I tried riding my bike at first, which is not the best idea when it is 112 degrees outside. For a week straight.
A few days after I moved in, I came home to find that someone had closed the blinds, removed my plants from the windowsill, and put a "for sale" sign up in the front yard.
Michelle. She left me a phone message: "Please keep the blinds closed. It looks tacky to have them open."
The "for sale" sign? I spoke to my upstairs neighbor. "This place has been for sale for months," she told me. "Michelle took the sign down before she tried to rent your place."
Because knowing if a place is for sale and that I could possibly be displaced by new owners is not information that would be useful in making the rental decision.
Deep breath. All the Drama was over. Still a cute place.
No. Michelle stopped by my neighbor's house on her way home from aerobics "just for a glass of water." As in, let herself in with the key while the neighbor was out, got a glass of water and left the dirty glass in the sink.
Realtors started bringing people by. Unannounced. When I was busy studying, something I did in grad school. A new experience for me. Who knew that studying could improve your grades so much?
In the middle of studying for finals, I was interrupted by a realtor and a client. The client was a pompous jerk who worked at Dell. I told them that they couldn't look right now; I was busy. Yes. They should have called. And yes, it would only have taken a few minutes to let them look, but I was not inclined to be charitable to someone who might displace me from my home and who was in any way in cahoots with Michelle.
The client and I got into a bit of a yelling match. (I know! I don't usually yell at people to their faces! I wait until later that night after someone has ticked me off and yell about him to an innocent person.)
He made some snotty comment about the UT business school - he had his MBA from Wharton.
"How much did you pay for your MBA?" I asked.
"$60,000," he admitted.
"Mine will cost me about $5,000 and guess what? UT is a top-20 school. Plus we're both here in Austin. Looks like I made the better investment," I snapped.
I complained to Michelle's husband. He agreed that she was pushy and talked smack about her, but wouldn't challenge her. He would call me to complain about her, which I thought was highly inappropriate. He talked to me - his tenant - about divorcing his wife. I don't know why he stayed except she was very pretty with a large chest. But she was pretty only on the outside. As soon as you spent more than a few minutes with her, you knew that if you looked it up in the dictionary, her photo was next to the phrase, "Beauty is only skin deep."
She re-landscaped the yard and would come in to use my bathroom. Without asking.
She let herself into my neighbor's place while my neighbor was - ahem - busy with her boyfriend.
That was the last straw for my neighbor. She moved out. Prospective tenants started looking. They would ask me what it was like to live here.
I warned them.
One of them told Michelle I was telling people not to move in.
She called me and screamed at me.
I went to legal services at school to see what I could do. The lawyer told me that according to the lease, Michelle did have the right to enter when appropriate, but the devil was in the definition of "appropriate." He agreed with me that her behavior was insane.
I started to have nightmares about Michelle coming after me with a knife. With legal aid's help, I wrote a letter to Michelle telling her I wanted to move out because of what she was doing.
She sent me a letter saying fine, I could break the lease but I had to be out by December 25 and forfeit the deposit.
I was not in a position to lose that money and legal aid said that she was within her legal rights.
I stayed.
The place was still for sale. Nobody wanted it as a rental property and the lot wasn't big enough for a single-family home by current zoning.
She moved onto her fourth realtor in eight months. I spoke to one of them and she told me that Michelle McMichael had a reputation with Austin realtors as being almost impossible to work with.
I got a new upstairs neighbor who moved out after three months. The place was up for rent - again. I continued to warn people.
One of the prospective tenants I warned against renting did indeed rent - not to live there but to cheat on Austin schools and have an address to get her daughter in from out of district.
I ran into the new tenant months after I moved out and she, who did not even live in the property, shook her head and said, "I should have listened to you. That woman is nuts."
"I told you so," I said.
As soon as my lease was up, I moved out.
I found a cute duplex in the same good zip code neighborhood. We were Oh-three-ers. Highly desirable Austin location. I looked at it, thought yes, this will work, and the landlady, Michelle, and I signed the lease.
Four hours later, she called me to say that she needed to charge more rent than we had agreed upon.
Can you say, ENORMOUS CRIMSON FLAG BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD?
But I ignored that banner. And I - this is where it gets worse - agreed to the rent increase.
How dumb was that?
I moved in. Cute cute little Tarrytown duplex. Walking distance to the shuttle bus to school, although I tried riding my bike at first, which is not the best idea when it is 112 degrees outside. For a week straight.
A few days after I moved in, I came home to find that someone had closed the blinds, removed my plants from the windowsill, and put a "for sale" sign up in the front yard.
Michelle. She left me a phone message: "Please keep the blinds closed. It looks tacky to have them open."
The "for sale" sign? I spoke to my upstairs neighbor. "This place has been for sale for months," she told me. "Michelle took the sign down before she tried to rent your place."
Because knowing if a place is for sale and that I could possibly be displaced by new owners is not information that would be useful in making the rental decision.
Deep breath. All the Drama was over. Still a cute place.
No. Michelle stopped by my neighbor's house on her way home from aerobics "just for a glass of water." As in, let herself in with the key while the neighbor was out, got a glass of water and left the dirty glass in the sink.
Realtors started bringing people by. Unannounced. When I was busy studying, something I did in grad school. A new experience for me. Who knew that studying could improve your grades so much?
In the middle of studying for finals, I was interrupted by a realtor and a client. The client was a pompous jerk who worked at Dell. I told them that they couldn't look right now; I was busy. Yes. They should have called. And yes, it would only have taken a few minutes to let them look, but I was not inclined to be charitable to someone who might displace me from my home and who was in any way in cahoots with Michelle.
The client and I got into a bit of a yelling match. (I know! I don't usually yell at people to their faces! I wait until later that night after someone has ticked me off and yell about him to an innocent person.)
He made some snotty comment about the UT business school - he had his MBA from Wharton.
"How much did you pay for your MBA?" I asked.
"$60,000," he admitted.
"Mine will cost me about $5,000 and guess what? UT is a top-20 school. Plus we're both here in Austin. Looks like I made the better investment," I snapped.
I complained to Michelle's husband. He agreed that she was pushy and talked smack about her, but wouldn't challenge her. He would call me to complain about her, which I thought was highly inappropriate. He talked to me - his tenant - about divorcing his wife. I don't know why he stayed except she was very pretty with a large chest. But she was pretty only on the outside. As soon as you spent more than a few minutes with her, you knew that if you looked it up in the dictionary, her photo was next to the phrase, "Beauty is only skin deep."
She re-landscaped the yard and would come in to use my bathroom. Without asking.
She let herself into my neighbor's place while my neighbor was - ahem - busy with her boyfriend.
That was the last straw for my neighbor. She moved out. Prospective tenants started looking. They would ask me what it was like to live here.
I warned them.
One of them told Michelle I was telling people not to move in.
She called me and screamed at me.
I went to legal services at school to see what I could do. The lawyer told me that according to the lease, Michelle did have the right to enter when appropriate, but the devil was in the definition of "appropriate." He agreed with me that her behavior was insane.
I started to have nightmares about Michelle coming after me with a knife. With legal aid's help, I wrote a letter to Michelle telling her I wanted to move out because of what she was doing.
She sent me a letter saying fine, I could break the lease but I had to be out by December 25 and forfeit the deposit.
I was not in a position to lose that money and legal aid said that she was within her legal rights.
I stayed.
The place was still for sale. Nobody wanted it as a rental property and the lot wasn't big enough for a single-family home by current zoning.
She moved onto her fourth realtor in eight months. I spoke to one of them and she told me that Michelle McMichael had a reputation with Austin realtors as being almost impossible to work with.
I got a new upstairs neighbor who moved out after three months. The place was up for rent - again. I continued to warn people.
One of the prospective tenants I warned against renting did indeed rent - not to live there but to cheat on Austin schools and have an address to get her daughter in from out of district.
I ran into the new tenant months after I moved out and she, who did not even live in the property, shook her head and said, "I should have listened to you. That woman is nuts."
"I told you so," I said.
As soon as my lease was up, I moved out.
In which I rent a room in a group house in Washington DC with the three post-college guys who lived like post-college guys
I had to move out of the room I was renting from Crazy Carmen in D.C. I had gone to Washington D.C. after I got out of the Peace Corps in the hopes of finding a job in international development. What I discovered was that someone with my background - master's degree, one foreign language, international work experience, Fortune 50 company experience - could find employment as a secretary. A temp secretary.
The key to a good job was connections, of which I had none. Connections could be developed if one was willing to stick around town long enough, working for almost no money. The people who did this were subsidized by their parents, I suspect. Those of us who had to pay for our own health insurance, car insurance, rent and food on $11/hour from the temp agency had a harder time making ends meet.
I first rented a room from Carmen, a Peruvian woman who was a full-time secretary with benefits at the World Bank. Not a bad gig. The secretary thing, I mean. I temped at the World Bank for secretaries who were on vacation. I don't know if my workload in their absence was anything like what they did, but I had about six spare hours a day after I distributed the mail, printed the boss's emails for him and sent a few faxes. One of the secretaries for whom I subbed passed her spare time looking at internet porn, if her internet bookmarks were any indication.
Note to people who take vacation and are replaced by temps: Delete your porn bookmarks.
Note to temps: On your first day, when the head secretary is showing you around and tells you "there's the bathroom" and "there's the break room" and "here's where the mail goes," realize that the first two statements are for your information but that the last one is so you know where to put the mail when it arrives because for the first time in your life, you are a mail sorter and deliverer, which can be a humbling experience after you have had significantly more responsibility than making sure Mr Smith's mail doesn't go into Ms Carr's box but hey, it pays the bills (sort of) and you are not in a position to be choosy.
I was one of two tenants renting an upstairs bedroom and sharing the upstairs bath. Carmen was reluctant to let me use the kitchen, but acquiesced when I promised I would just make oatmeal in the morning and maybe make a sandwich in the evening. For my $400 a month, she also reluctantly agreed to let me use the washer and the dryer. I was not, however, supposed to sit in the living room. Or have overnight guests, male or female. For $400 a month. For one room. In 1995.
I was not a housemate, as I presumed. I was a renter of one room. One. Other than that, I was to stay out of her sight.
I moved out after she accused me of ruining her ceiling. The plaster on the ceiling underneath the upstairs bathroom fell off because the bathroom floor leaked. The other tenant would bathe and leave the shower door open. The water dripped off the shower door and onto the floor, where it leaked through.
When I noticed this problem, I bought a squeegee and used it on the door every time I showered. I suggested that the other tenant do the same and told Carmen about the problem, suggesting she might want to have the grout re-done.
They both ignored me and after a month, the plaster started to fall.
According to Carmen, this was my fault. That the floor was destroyed because of my one month of showering and squeegeeing and not because of the other tenant's year of not squeegeeing.
And I didn't just move out; she evicted me.
Maybe I am the "X" here. Two destroyed bathrooms and I am the common factor.
On to the group house in Arlington. A DC tradition: a bunch of people who don't know each other sharing a house.
I shared the house with three men in their 20s. Two lived downstairs and had their own bathroom; two of us were upstairs and shared the other bathroom. Knowing that I would be cleaning the bathroom anyhow, I negotiated a deal with my floormate that he would let me use his phone (I did not want to install my own phone - remember, this was in the days before cellphones) in exchange for my cleaning the bathroom.
But I had no such power over the kitchen.
Three guys in the mid-20s vs me.
They won.
Honestly, how could I expect someone to move the pizza box two feet from the counter to the trash? And to use the drain trap when rinsing dishes? If you do that, gunk gets caught in it. That's gross. Easier to let the food wash down the drain and clog the sink.
I finally got tired of the whole thing and moved away. I wasn't patient enough to wait months or years to meet the right person to get a decent job. I had done my charity work; now I wanted to make real money. And I was tired of sleeping on the floor on my blowup mattress and sharing a bathroom with strangers.
The key to a good job was connections, of which I had none. Connections could be developed if one was willing to stick around town long enough, working for almost no money. The people who did this were subsidized by their parents, I suspect. Those of us who had to pay for our own health insurance, car insurance, rent and food on $11/hour from the temp agency had a harder time making ends meet.
I first rented a room from Carmen, a Peruvian woman who was a full-time secretary with benefits at the World Bank. Not a bad gig. The secretary thing, I mean. I temped at the World Bank for secretaries who were on vacation. I don't know if my workload in their absence was anything like what they did, but I had about six spare hours a day after I distributed the mail, printed the boss's emails for him and sent a few faxes. One of the secretaries for whom I subbed passed her spare time looking at internet porn, if her internet bookmarks were any indication.
Note to people who take vacation and are replaced by temps: Delete your porn bookmarks.
Note to temps: On your first day, when the head secretary is showing you around and tells you "there's the bathroom" and "there's the break room" and "here's where the mail goes," realize that the first two statements are for your information but that the last one is so you know where to put the mail when it arrives because for the first time in your life, you are a mail sorter and deliverer, which can be a humbling experience after you have had significantly more responsibility than making sure Mr Smith's mail doesn't go into Ms Carr's box but hey, it pays the bills (sort of) and you are not in a position to be choosy.
I was one of two tenants renting an upstairs bedroom and sharing the upstairs bath. Carmen was reluctant to let me use the kitchen, but acquiesced when I promised I would just make oatmeal in the morning and maybe make a sandwich in the evening. For my $400 a month, she also reluctantly agreed to let me use the washer and the dryer. I was not, however, supposed to sit in the living room. Or have overnight guests, male or female. For $400 a month. For one room. In 1995.
I was not a housemate, as I presumed. I was a renter of one room. One. Other than that, I was to stay out of her sight.
I moved out after she accused me of ruining her ceiling. The plaster on the ceiling underneath the upstairs bathroom fell off because the bathroom floor leaked. The other tenant would bathe and leave the shower door open. The water dripped off the shower door and onto the floor, where it leaked through.
When I noticed this problem, I bought a squeegee and used it on the door every time I showered. I suggested that the other tenant do the same and told Carmen about the problem, suggesting she might want to have the grout re-done.
They both ignored me and after a month, the plaster started to fall.
According to Carmen, this was my fault. That the floor was destroyed because of my one month of showering and squeegeeing and not because of the other tenant's year of not squeegeeing.
And I didn't just move out; she evicted me.
Maybe I am the "X" here. Two destroyed bathrooms and I am the common factor.
On to the group house in Arlington. A DC tradition: a bunch of people who don't know each other sharing a house.
I shared the house with three men in their 20s. Two lived downstairs and had their own bathroom; two of us were upstairs and shared the other bathroom. Knowing that I would be cleaning the bathroom anyhow, I negotiated a deal with my floormate that he would let me use his phone (I did not want to install my own phone - remember, this was in the days before cellphones) in exchange for my cleaning the bathroom.
But I had no such power over the kitchen.
Three guys in the mid-20s vs me.
They won.
Honestly, how could I expect someone to move the pizza box two feet from the counter to the trash? And to use the drain trap when rinsing dishes? If you do that, gunk gets caught in it. That's gross. Easier to let the food wash down the drain and clog the sink.
I finally got tired of the whole thing and moved away. I wasn't patient enough to wait months or years to meet the right person to get a decent job. I had done my charity work; now I wanted to make real money. And I was tired of sleeping on the floor on my blowup mattress and sharing a bathroom with strangers.
In which I rent from Janette, who I thought was my friend but then went a little crazy
I moved from Maruja la Bruja's house (Maruja the Witch) to Janette's house. I had met Janette when I shopped at her knitting store. I knit a lot in Chile. At work, we had long meetings (on benches, not even on chairs) about important issues like, "Should our mission be to serve Mapuche women or young Mapuche women?"
These meetings would last eight hours and end without resolution. Knitting during these torture sessions made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something.
Rosa, the director of the agency (La Casa de la Mujer Mapuche, "House of the Mapuche Woman," Mapuches being an indigenous group), told me I had to stop knitting because it was "distracting." Rosa's baby was attached to her boob at that very moment. It was not uncommon to see breasts whipped out at least two or three times during meetings for children as old as four. Yet my knitting was the problem.
Note about my working conditions in Chile:
Our office was in an old two-storey house without heating. Offices upstairs, store downstairs. It would get so cold inside that I had to wear gloves while I typed. We didn't have the money for heat, but my co-workers found money in the budget to buy their lunches. Thank you, U.S. taxpayer, who funded the group via a grant from the Inter-American Foundation.
The toilet paper disappeared frequently. Stolen. I brought my own toilet paper to work and locked it in my desk.
My first week at work, there was a party. (Not on my behalf.) Two men came to the office and slaughtered a sheep in the back yard. They stabbed it in the neck with a sharp stick, let the blood drain into a pan (for later eating - mixed with lemon juice and cilantro and left until it coagulated - I avoided that delicacy), then cut a hole in the skin by the back heel and blew it up like a balloon to separate the skin from the flesh for easier skinning.
Then they butchered it and hung the meat on the stair rail of the office, where it rested for two days until it was cooked.
The barbecued meat was good, but a little odd to walk up to my office past raw mutton for a couple of days.
But my knitting was "distracting."
I went to the knitting store a lot. Janette and I became friends sort of. The kind of friend you talk to only in a certain place, like your gym friends who are your friends at the gym but not outside of the gym. Janette was my knitting store friend.
During the Maruja travails, I asked Janette if she knew of anyone with a room to rent.
She did, she told me. She had a little shed in her back yard with one room and a bathroom. I could rent the room and use her kitchen.
Win/win! Rent a room from someone I already like! But with privacy!
I looked at the place (as if there would have been anything to keep me from taking it). It was a small, sturdy building with room for a twin bed and a dresser. The bathroom, which had a shower but no tub, was tiny but it would be my own bathroom, with only my hair and toothpaste in the sink and my shower dirt and my whiskers in my razor.
I moved in.
Janette and I would chat in the evenings as she prepared supper and I made myself something to eat. I liked her two kids. I made them barbecued chicken and baked beans once, but they didn't like the idea of sweet meat and sweet beans. Nor did they like the cornbread. Corn is not for bread. It is for soup - a half a cob thrown into each soupbowl. This would be good if they used sweet corn, but they used field corn, which is only fit for livestock in my opinion.*
I did not take their criticism to heart because the main flavoring in Chilean food is salt. Fifteen years after leaving Chile, I still salt my food too much because I was forced to eat over-salted meals while I was there. (I will say, though, that the produce in Chile was fabulous. The key was to do my own cooking.)
Janette's husband was not around. He, a university professor, had left her for someone else, but they weren't divorced. Maybe divorce wasn't legal in Chile yet? Chile had one of the highest rates of bigamy in the world then, as in, I won't let the fact that I am not divorced from my first spouse keep me from marrying my second.
The door to my room did not have a lock. Janette hadn't gotten around to installing one. I was not comfortable leaving the room unsecured because I had a camera and cash.
The solution?
I removed the doorknob and carried it with me. Without the knob, the door couldn't be opened. It latched closed and stayed that way until the knob was installed and turned.
I soon tired of carrying a heavy doorknob in my bag, so hid it behind the rosebushes instead.
Hi-tech security.
Things were fine.
Then I met that embassy guy in Santiago. The one with the porn magazines hidden under the towel in his nightstand.
He wanted to visit me.
I asked Janette if it was OK if he stayed. She was not comfortable with the idea of a co-ed sleepover for her unmarried tenant.
Oh! I told her. I don't want to sleep with him that way! I was going to give him the bed and I was going to sleep on the floor. (Which was true - not only did I not want to sleep with him that way but there was not room for two people in the twin bed.)
She suggested that I sleep in the house while he was visiting. Perfect. I preferred that solution anyhow.
I thought everything had been resolved.
He came, we drove around the countryside (the joy of driving in a car and listening to the radio after you have had a year of only public transportation on crowded busses is enormous), we stopped for lunch in Pucon, a town at the base of a volcano, we bought Chilean cheese from a farm stand, which is not All That, we got stuff to make supper and cooked in Janette's kitchen.
The kitchen to which I had been granted access. I thought.
The next day, he returned to Santiago.
Janette got mad at me.
Why? I asked.
You let that man into my house! she said.
What? Yes. We cooked supper. You were already done in the kitchen. Why is this a big deal?
You let him into my house! Into my kitchen!
She was adamant that I had done something wrong. She stopped talking to me, which made cooking awkward and difficult for me. Our friendship was over.
I had to once again find a new place to live, me with the scarlet "R" for "renter" or "K" for "kitchen abuser" or "A" for "maybe adulteress."
* Remind me to tell you my fish-flavored chocolate chip cookie story some day.
These meetings would last eight hours and end without resolution. Knitting during these torture sessions made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something.
Rosa, the director of the agency (La Casa de la Mujer Mapuche, "House of the Mapuche Woman," Mapuches being an indigenous group), told me I had to stop knitting because it was "distracting." Rosa's baby was attached to her boob at that very moment. It was not uncommon to see breasts whipped out at least two or three times during meetings for children as old as four. Yet my knitting was the problem.
Note about my working conditions in Chile:
Our office was in an old two-storey house without heating. Offices upstairs, store downstairs. It would get so cold inside that I had to wear gloves while I typed. We didn't have the money for heat, but my co-workers found money in the budget to buy their lunches. Thank you, U.S. taxpayer, who funded the group via a grant from the Inter-American Foundation.
The toilet paper disappeared frequently. Stolen. I brought my own toilet paper to work and locked it in my desk.
My first week at work, there was a party. (Not on my behalf.) Two men came to the office and slaughtered a sheep in the back yard. They stabbed it in the neck with a sharp stick, let the blood drain into a pan (for later eating - mixed with lemon juice and cilantro and left until it coagulated - I avoided that delicacy), then cut a hole in the skin by the back heel and blew it up like a balloon to separate the skin from the flesh for easier skinning.
Then they butchered it and hung the meat on the stair rail of the office, where it rested for two days until it was cooked.
The barbecued meat was good, but a little odd to walk up to my office past raw mutton for a couple of days.
But my knitting was "distracting."
I went to the knitting store a lot. Janette and I became friends sort of. The kind of friend you talk to only in a certain place, like your gym friends who are your friends at the gym but not outside of the gym. Janette was my knitting store friend.
During the Maruja travails, I asked Janette if she knew of anyone with a room to rent.
She did, she told me. She had a little shed in her back yard with one room and a bathroom. I could rent the room and use her kitchen.
Win/win! Rent a room from someone I already like! But with privacy!
I looked at the place (as if there would have been anything to keep me from taking it). It was a small, sturdy building with room for a twin bed and a dresser. The bathroom, which had a shower but no tub, was tiny but it would be my own bathroom, with only my hair and toothpaste in the sink and my shower dirt and my whiskers in my razor.
I moved in.
Janette and I would chat in the evenings as she prepared supper and I made myself something to eat. I liked her two kids. I made them barbecued chicken and baked beans once, but they didn't like the idea of sweet meat and sweet beans. Nor did they like the cornbread. Corn is not for bread. It is for soup - a half a cob thrown into each soupbowl. This would be good if they used sweet corn, but they used field corn, which is only fit for livestock in my opinion.*
I did not take their criticism to heart because the main flavoring in Chilean food is salt. Fifteen years after leaving Chile, I still salt my food too much because I was forced to eat over-salted meals while I was there. (I will say, though, that the produce in Chile was fabulous. The key was to do my own cooking.)
Janette's husband was not around. He, a university professor, had left her for someone else, but they weren't divorced. Maybe divorce wasn't legal in Chile yet? Chile had one of the highest rates of bigamy in the world then, as in, I won't let the fact that I am not divorced from my first spouse keep me from marrying my second.
The door to my room did not have a lock. Janette hadn't gotten around to installing one. I was not comfortable leaving the room unsecured because I had a camera and cash.
The solution?
I removed the doorknob and carried it with me. Without the knob, the door couldn't be opened. It latched closed and stayed that way until the knob was installed and turned.
I soon tired of carrying a heavy doorknob in my bag, so hid it behind the rosebushes instead.
Hi-tech security.
Things were fine.
Then I met that embassy guy in Santiago. The one with the porn magazines hidden under the towel in his nightstand.
He wanted to visit me.
I asked Janette if it was OK if he stayed. She was not comfortable with the idea of a co-ed sleepover for her unmarried tenant.
Oh! I told her. I don't want to sleep with him that way! I was going to give him the bed and I was going to sleep on the floor. (Which was true - not only did I not want to sleep with him that way but there was not room for two people in the twin bed.)
She suggested that I sleep in the house while he was visiting. Perfect. I preferred that solution anyhow.
I thought everything had been resolved.
He came, we drove around the countryside (the joy of driving in a car and listening to the radio after you have had a year of only public transportation on crowded busses is enormous), we stopped for lunch in Pucon, a town at the base of a volcano, we bought Chilean cheese from a farm stand, which is not All That, we got stuff to make supper and cooked in Janette's kitchen.
The kitchen to which I had been granted access. I thought.
The next day, he returned to Santiago.
Janette got mad at me.
Why? I asked.
You let that man into my house! she said.
What? Yes. We cooked supper. You were already done in the kitchen. Why is this a big deal?
You let him into my house! Into my kitchen!
She was adamant that I had done something wrong. She stopped talking to me, which made cooking awkward and difficult for me. Our friendship was over.
I had to once again find a new place to live, me with the scarlet "R" for "renter" or "K" for "kitchen abuser" or "A" for "maybe adulteress."
* Remind me to tell you my fish-flavored chocolate chip cookie story some day.
In which I rent a room from Maruja la Bruja, crazy landlady #240
I will tell you all about Michelle McMichael, the worst landlady I have ever had, but first I need to tell you about other landlords* so you can have some context and understand that I am not exaggerating when I call her the Numero Uno Mas Mala.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, I lived in four different homes. The first was during my three-month training in Santiago. I lived with a poor family who gave me their daughters' bedroom, which had no door, so they strung a sheet across the opening. A sheet door does give one a place to undress in privacy, but does nothing to keep the noise from two little girls who did not go to bed until midnight out of the bedroom.
The house was unheated, which you would think would not be an issue, but that is only if you know nothing about geography. Santiago is in the mountains - remember, altitude more than latitude (longitude?) determines temperature, which means it does get cold.
The family also did not have a toilet seat on the toilet, something I saw over and over again in South America, which makes me wonder if the toilet was installed that way or if there is a secondary market for toilet seats and if so, what is it? How are they used?
My second living situation was when I moved to Temuco, a city of 250,000. There was a Mercedes dealership and there were ox-driven carts clogging the streets. I moved into a house with Mary, a Scottish college student spending a year abroad, and Louise, an American woman doing some kind of fellowship.
My bedroom was the tiny alcove upstairs without a door. No bed. I put a sleeping bag on the floor and both my head and my feet almost touched the walls when I was lying down.
Mary and I got along great, but Louise was a different story. The bathroom was an interior room and no matter how you positioned the shower head, the shower sprayed outside the curtain. The floor was always wet after one of us showered and there was no easy way to get the moisture out of the room. (Remember, interior room, no external windows.)
I kept a rag in the bathroom to wipe the floor after I bathed, but Louise would use her bath towel on the floor and then leave it in the bathroom instead of hanging it outside to dry.
1. It is disgusting to dry yourself with a cloth that has wiped the bathroom floor. 2. A towel left inside a damp room does not dry.
3. A dirty, wet towel starts to stink very soon.
4. Left wet, linoleum tiles will detach from the floor and Louise will try to make the tenant who has been in the house for only one month instead of the entire year previously as Louise has been split the repair cost. The one-month tenant will refuse.
Louise also had some nasty personal habits. She would sit at the dinner table and pick her toenails, then she would use her hands to eat, sometimes out of a communal bowl. It didn't take very long for me to stop eating meals with her, although really, she was an effective weight control method.
Mary and I decided we didn't want to live with Louise, so we sought another dwelling. I put a "room wanted" ad up at the grocery store. Within a day or two, a spry old lady appeared at my office. She had rooms. Come now! See them immediately! As rental property was difficult to encounter, I did as she commanded.
She had a big house not far from my office where she and her husband lived alone. Mary and I could have the upstairs all to ourselves and would use the downstairs bathroom. We could use the kitchen and put food in the refrigerator, which was stored in the dining room. It seemed like a good deal.
The Problems
The shower, #1
Every time one of us used the shower, the power went out in the house. How is this, you ask? Many showers in South America are heated by what is called a calefont, which is a small box that attaches to the wall and consists of a long pipe, doubled over on itself, passing over gas-powered flames. The water goes through the pipe and is heated as needed.
This is a fabulous system, far superior to a basment space consuming water heater that keeps 20 gallons of water hot just in case you need it. I wish I could have a calefont here. You never run out of hot water, unless you run out of gas, which usually happens while you are in the middle of your shower and have shampoo in your hair. Then you have to get out of the shower, call the gas guy, wait for him to come and replace the tank, and then re-commence your shower. But if you are careful about your gas, you do just fine and you spend less money heating water.
The other shower-heating method is an electrical heater that attaches to the shower head.
This is the kind that can kill you. Think about it: electricity and water. That is usually not a good combination.
That is the system Maruja had in her shower. Poorly installed and a drain on the house's antiquated electrical system. While Mary showered, I would stand at the fuse box. When the heater blew the fuse, I would switch it back on. She did the same for me.
We decided that we were not willing to risk death to be clean and threatened Maruja that we would move out and take our rent with us if she did not install a better heating system. She was in no hurry to do so, which meant that I took sponge baths for a few weeks. I would heat two huge kettles of water on Maruja's tiny stove and then carry them into the bathroom to complete my toilette.
I did not shave my legs.
The shower, #2
I made the mistake of thinking that because I was a renter with equal access to the bathroom that I could leave my shower things in the bathroom.
I was wrong.
I would leave my razor on the corner of the tub. It got dull very quickly. But why?
Then one day I noticed bristly white hairs in the razor.
My legs do not have bristly white hairs, nor does any other part of my body.
Using my superior detective skills, I concluded that Maruja's husband, Pablo, had been using my razor. I marched into the kitchen, brandishing the razor with the evidence. Maruja and her husband sat at the table.
"You've been using my razor," I accused Pablo.
"No, no!" he protested, holding his hands up.
"Look at this hair! It's not mine!"
Maruja stood behind Pablo, making a circle with her finger next to her temple and mouthing, "Yes, he did it, he's crazy" then smiling at him when he turned around.
"Don't use it any more, please," I snapped.
Then I made the stupid mistake of leaving the razor in the shower again only to find more white bristles in it. That's when I threw that blade away and started carrying everything back upstairs once I had bathed.
The fleas or maybe they were bedbugs
Shortly after we moved in, Mary and I noticed little red bites on our ankles. And on every other part of our bodies. We were being bitten in our sleep.
There were fleas/bedbugs in our rooms.
I went to the hardware store for poison. The clerk admonished me as he handed me the bottle that this was very dangerous! Note the skull and crossbones!
Great. I could be bitten to death or poisoned to death.
Marjua, incidentally, denied the existence of fleas in her house.
The poison did the trick, but we had poison dust floating around for several weeks. I will probably get some weird flea poison cancer in a few years.
The other tenants
When we moved in, Mary and I were the only tenants. It was our understanding that we were renting the furnished upstairs, which had three bedrooms.
One day I came home to discover a Woody Allenish-looking (that is not at all a compliment) guy in the third bedroom.
Maruja had rented the room to him.
Remember, one bathroom, Mary, Maruja, Pablo, and me.
Now another renter.
Who stayed up late at night playing music, smoking, and telling me that if ever "got lonely in the night," I could "just knock on the wall."
Mary left for six months in Brazil. Back to two renters. Yes, one of them was very strange, but only two.
Then Maruja rented out Mary's room to a married couple. Who fought all the time about his Other Woman. I know because I could hear everything through the thin walls.
I came home to find a carpenter building a wall between the dining room and the living room. Marjua rented the living room out to another married couple.
Let's do the math on this:
One bathroom.
Six tenants.
Two landlords.
The three male tenants got up before I did. They shaved. And left their whiskers in the bathroom sink. They peed. On the toilet seat. They left the shower dirty.
You guys know how I am about sharing a shower with someone I either don't know or don't like.
I would betray my country if tortured by having to use a dirty shower.
Unless the shower has been cleaned, it grosses me out to use a shower after someone else who is not
1. My husband
2. Another relative
3. A good friend
The other tenants did not meet any of these criteria, which meant that every morning, in addition to bathing myself before work, I had to clean the tub and the sink.
The toilet broke.
Maruja wouldn't call a plumber because it was too expensive.
To flush it, you had to fill a bucket from the bathtub tap and pour the water down the toilet. We all know how to do this. We've all been in that situation.
And we all know that the Polite, Civilized Thing to Do is to flush our own toilet.
Yet I would find other people's pee in the toilet.
That was when I moved out.
Unfortunately, my new situation was not much better. I'll tell you about it later.
* Think about that term: "land lord." So feudal. So obvious where all the power is. With God as my witness, I will never rent again.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, I lived in four different homes. The first was during my three-month training in Santiago. I lived with a poor family who gave me their daughters' bedroom, which had no door, so they strung a sheet across the opening. A sheet door does give one a place to undress in privacy, but does nothing to keep the noise from two little girls who did not go to bed until midnight out of the bedroom.
The house was unheated, which you would think would not be an issue, but that is only if you know nothing about geography. Santiago is in the mountains - remember, altitude more than latitude (longitude?) determines temperature, which means it does get cold.
The family also did not have a toilet seat on the toilet, something I saw over and over again in South America, which makes me wonder if the toilet was installed that way or if there is a secondary market for toilet seats and if so, what is it? How are they used?
My second living situation was when I moved to Temuco, a city of 250,000. There was a Mercedes dealership and there were ox-driven carts clogging the streets. I moved into a house with Mary, a Scottish college student spending a year abroad, and Louise, an American woman doing some kind of fellowship.
My bedroom was the tiny alcove upstairs without a door. No bed. I put a sleeping bag on the floor and both my head and my feet almost touched the walls when I was lying down.
Mary and I got along great, but Louise was a different story. The bathroom was an interior room and no matter how you positioned the shower head, the shower sprayed outside the curtain. The floor was always wet after one of us showered and there was no easy way to get the moisture out of the room. (Remember, interior room, no external windows.)
I kept a rag in the bathroom to wipe the floor after I bathed, but Louise would use her bath towel on the floor and then leave it in the bathroom instead of hanging it outside to dry.
1. It is disgusting to dry yourself with a cloth that has wiped the bathroom floor. 2. A towel left inside a damp room does not dry.
3. A dirty, wet towel starts to stink very soon.
4. Left wet, linoleum tiles will detach from the floor and Louise will try to make the tenant who has been in the house for only one month instead of the entire year previously as Louise has been split the repair cost. The one-month tenant will refuse.
Louise also had some nasty personal habits. She would sit at the dinner table and pick her toenails, then she would use her hands to eat, sometimes out of a communal bowl. It didn't take very long for me to stop eating meals with her, although really, she was an effective weight control method.
Mary and I decided we didn't want to live with Louise, so we sought another dwelling. I put a "room wanted" ad up at the grocery store. Within a day or two, a spry old lady appeared at my office. She had rooms. Come now! See them immediately! As rental property was difficult to encounter, I did as she commanded.
She had a big house not far from my office where she and her husband lived alone. Mary and I could have the upstairs all to ourselves and would use the downstairs bathroom. We could use the kitchen and put food in the refrigerator, which was stored in the dining room. It seemed like a good deal.
The Problems
The shower, #1
Every time one of us used the shower, the power went out in the house. How is this, you ask? Many showers in South America are heated by what is called a calefont, which is a small box that attaches to the wall and consists of a long pipe, doubled over on itself, passing over gas-powered flames. The water goes through the pipe and is heated as needed.
This is a fabulous system, far superior to a basment space consuming water heater that keeps 20 gallons of water hot just in case you need it. I wish I could have a calefont here. You never run out of hot water, unless you run out of gas, which usually happens while you are in the middle of your shower and have shampoo in your hair. Then you have to get out of the shower, call the gas guy, wait for him to come and replace the tank, and then re-commence your shower. But if you are careful about your gas, you do just fine and you spend less money heating water.
The other shower-heating method is an electrical heater that attaches to the shower head.
This is the kind that can kill you. Think about it: electricity and water. That is usually not a good combination.
That is the system Maruja had in her shower. Poorly installed and a drain on the house's antiquated electrical system. While Mary showered, I would stand at the fuse box. When the heater blew the fuse, I would switch it back on. She did the same for me.
We decided that we were not willing to risk death to be clean and threatened Maruja that we would move out and take our rent with us if she did not install a better heating system. She was in no hurry to do so, which meant that I took sponge baths for a few weeks. I would heat two huge kettles of water on Maruja's tiny stove and then carry them into the bathroom to complete my toilette.
I did not shave my legs.
The shower, #2
I made the mistake of thinking that because I was a renter with equal access to the bathroom that I could leave my shower things in the bathroom.
I was wrong.
I would leave my razor on the corner of the tub. It got dull very quickly. But why?
Then one day I noticed bristly white hairs in the razor.
My legs do not have bristly white hairs, nor does any other part of my body.
Using my superior detective skills, I concluded that Maruja's husband, Pablo, had been using my razor. I marched into the kitchen, brandishing the razor with the evidence. Maruja and her husband sat at the table.
"You've been using my razor," I accused Pablo.
"No, no!" he protested, holding his hands up.
"Look at this hair! It's not mine!"
Maruja stood behind Pablo, making a circle with her finger next to her temple and mouthing, "Yes, he did it, he's crazy" then smiling at him when he turned around.
"Don't use it any more, please," I snapped.
Then I made the stupid mistake of leaving the razor in the shower again only to find more white bristles in it. That's when I threw that blade away and started carrying everything back upstairs once I had bathed.
The fleas or maybe they were bedbugs
Shortly after we moved in, Mary and I noticed little red bites on our ankles. And on every other part of our bodies. We were being bitten in our sleep.
There were fleas/bedbugs in our rooms.
I went to the hardware store for poison. The clerk admonished me as he handed me the bottle that this was very dangerous! Note the skull and crossbones!
Great. I could be bitten to death or poisoned to death.
Marjua, incidentally, denied the existence of fleas in her house.
The poison did the trick, but we had poison dust floating around for several weeks. I will probably get some weird flea poison cancer in a few years.
The other tenants
When we moved in, Mary and I were the only tenants. It was our understanding that we were renting the furnished upstairs, which had three bedrooms.
One day I came home to discover a Woody Allenish-looking (that is not at all a compliment) guy in the third bedroom.
Maruja had rented the room to him.
Remember, one bathroom, Mary, Maruja, Pablo, and me.
Now another renter.
Who stayed up late at night playing music, smoking, and telling me that if ever "got lonely in the night," I could "just knock on the wall."
Mary left for six months in Brazil. Back to two renters. Yes, one of them was very strange, but only two.
Then Maruja rented out Mary's room to a married couple. Who fought all the time about his Other Woman. I know because I could hear everything through the thin walls.
I came home to find a carpenter building a wall between the dining room and the living room. Marjua rented the living room out to another married couple.
Let's do the math on this:
One bathroom.
Six tenants.
Two landlords.
The three male tenants got up before I did. They shaved. And left their whiskers in the bathroom sink. They peed. On the toilet seat. They left the shower dirty.
You guys know how I am about sharing a shower with someone I either don't know or don't like.
I would betray my country if tortured by having to use a dirty shower.
Unless the shower has been cleaned, it grosses me out to use a shower after someone else who is not
1. My husband
2. Another relative
3. A good friend
The other tenants did not meet any of these criteria, which meant that every morning, in addition to bathing myself before work, I had to clean the tub and the sink.
The toilet broke.
Maruja wouldn't call a plumber because it was too expensive.
To flush it, you had to fill a bucket from the bathtub tap and pour the water down the toilet. We all know how to do this. We've all been in that situation.
And we all know that the Polite, Civilized Thing to Do is to flush our own toilet.
Yet I would find other people's pee in the toilet.
That was when I moved out.
Unfortunately, my new situation was not much better. I'll tell you about it later.
* Think about that term: "land lord." So feudal. So obvious where all the power is. With God as my witness, I will never rent again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
