Life in Apartment Land

Let me start this posting by saying that I am thankful everyday that I have a roof over my head. Having said that, I will now begin my mild rant on the "joys" of living in an apartment complex.

1. Non-soundproof walls! If I can hear my neighbors and EVERYTHING they do in their apartment, surely they can hear me as well. I simply assumed that they would figure out that if they can hear me, I can hear them, thereby adapting their behavior accordingly! I miss sleeping and lack of sleep makes me a very cranky teacher!

2. A new apartment manager who is a complete jerk: my water heater started going on the blink Thanksgiving weekend. Phone calls were made on Monday and I stopped by the office where he wasn't keeping his scheduled office hours, repeatedly, to get maintenance there to see if it was the element or the whole water heater. On the Wednesday following Thanksgiving, the apartment manager says that he can't get the maintenace man into my apartment because he doesn't have a key, and that if I don't give him a key, he's going to drill my lock, replace it with a new one, and says to me, "You'll get the key at my convenience." Approximately 20 minutes later in a rambling, one-sided conversation, he says to me, "I didn't think anyone was living in your apartment (what - are you incapable of reading the lease I signed in August?) so I was really surprised when I unlocked the door and saw all of your furniture and your pets when I was showing a prospective new tenant the vacant 2 bedroom apartments." To which I pointed out that he said he didn't have a key, so how could he have opened the locked door? He became really angry and rude and said he'd be over at my apartment by 5:30p.m. to check the water heater himself. I go home, move everything away from the laundry closet, and Kenny and I about throw our backs out trying to move the washer and dryer. 5:30 comes, no apartment manager. 6:30, 7:30, 8:30, 9:30, no manager. We move everything back because we both need to get out the front door to go to work the next morning. At 10:30, the manager knocks on the door and says he's there to check out the water heater. Okay, let's pull everything out again! He just turns the water heater temperature up, so now instead of having 2 minutes of warm water, we have 4 minutes of warm water. We also make sure that he has a key to get into the apartment and ask him to let us know when he's going to come in with the maintenace man or another repairman so we can lock up the cats. By the way, in my lease, it says that the apartment manager is to give us at least 24 hours notice that they are coming into the apartment, unless it's an emergency, and we are allowed, and encouraged, to be there when the manager comes into the apartment. Cut to last night, my phone rings again at 10:30. It's the manager who informs me that the maintenance man will be at the apartment at 5:00a.m. today to look at my water heater. He says that he'll probably turn off the electricity to the water heater, see what's going on, and hopefully will get it fixed by this afternoon. I get up at 4:30 this morning, get dressed, and move as much as I can out of the hall. 5:00a.m. comes around, no one shows up. Since I had early morning duty, I locked up the cats and left at 7:00 to go to work. I have absolutely no idea if anything has been done in my apartment or not. The manager also implied last night that I should have let them know the water heater was going out as soon as I noticed it, but he wasn't surprised that I didn't "being a female, and all." I guess not being able to perform a mind meld to notify him that my water heater would start going out on Monday from my parents' house in Malden on Thanksgiving is a particular flaw that I would not have if I were a man. For all of my intelligent male friends, ignore this next comment and don't accuse me of being a male basher. Just remember, I only bash the idiots and in that respect, no gender is safe. Save me from stupid, egotistical males who have short man syndrome and think that just because something goes wrong in my apartment, because I'm female, I am too stupid to let them know in a timely manner. Personally, I would like hot water from my faucet that I don't have to heat on the stove to do such things as dishes and take a bath! So would Kenny, my male roommate!

3. The drug dealers living in the apartment across the street: I yearn for the days when the tenants across the street only had affairs on their significant others! In the summer, I was able to watch a real live soap opera being played out when a woman came home and caught her husband/boyfriend in bed with his other girlfriend. Let's just say, the girlfriend ran out of the house half naked, the guy wasn't far behind, and the wife began tossing all of his worldly possessions out the door. Now, I get to watch all of the deals going down, which freaks my dad and brother out.

I can't wait to get a house!