Bits of Catching Up

I have had a headache for four days.

It won’t go away. It was bad all weekend, but today it’s so horrible it’s making me nauseous, and my vision is blurry. I’m not prone to migraines, so I don’t know what’s going on.

I’m trying to reach the doctor’s office, but the line is busy.

Look, I feel so awful that nearly every sentence contains a "to be" verb. Ugh.

In the meanwhile, I forgot to update everyone on my neighbor situation. The past month has seen an increased instability in my home environment. (Don’t worry, Simon and I are getting along just fine.) Smoking Neighbor Ted is gone. His cat of nearly twenty years died in mid-October, and shortly thereafter his family came and took him to an assisted living facility. I didn’t get to say goodbye or wish him well; he just disappeared.

So The Lazy Landlord prepared Ted’s tiny efficiency for new tenants. I waited in dread to see whom he would rent it out to.

My fears were pretty much confirmed when he leased it to a middle-aged woman and her teenaged daughter...and the teenaged daughter’s two-year-old daughter. Three people in a room the size of a generous kitchen. And our house is not built to accommodate a two-year-old. You could hear her every noise right through the walls.

I could have taught myself to live with that. But within twenty-four hours of moving in, they were knocking on my door asking if they could take my patio furniture off the porch and up to their apartment for awhile. I said, "Uhhhh...no. You can borrow these folding chairs for tonight, though." I didn’t get them back until I asked for them, two days later. (My philosophy, and that of most people I know, has always been, If you don’t have something, you buy it yourself, or you do without. Especially with furniture. MP and I sat on the floor for nine months in our first apartment.) Not to mention that every time I knocked on the door I heard a panicked and suspicious "Who is it!" Like I was the police.

I called the LL every day for a week about them. I informed him of the illegality of three people in such a small square footage, particularly with a small child. The next day he told me the teenager and her daughter had gone to a shelter. (Great. These are people to whom going to a shelter is a normal option.) I complained about the cigarette smoke pouring into my apartment from their vents.

THEN I began to see a man around. A big, scary, mean-looking man. He accidentally rang my doorbell one night, and when I opened my door I saw him coming up the stairs from the porch...by himself. You need a key to get in that bottom door. So either the woman across the hall was leaving the door cracked open (scary) or she’d given this strange man a key (terrifying). Since the LL said that she was from Pennsylvania and didn’t know anyone in South Bend, I began to fear a rotating circuit of creepy men. And, for the first time since the week after moving in, I began to fear a break-in, or worse.

Of course I called the LL about that. Finally, a week later, they were gone. Which I take as divine protection, because when the LL called to ask if I had seen them recently, he told me the big scary guy was supposed to take over the lease. (For an associate pastor at his church, the LL takes remarkably poor care of his tenants.)

So I was glad they were gone, and freaked out about who would come next. But so far the new neighbors aren’t that bad. Most of the time it’s a middle-aged woman by herself, and she’s energetic and friendly. Her boyfriend, a man in his fifties, is there quite often, and sometimes her son. She enthusiastically agreed to have the LL give her an alternate heating source, so that her cigarette smoke wouldn’t pollute my apartment. She aired out her apartment this weekend to clear out the smoky smell in the hall.

And if I ever forget her name, it’s tattooed on her neck.

Last night the first signs of trouble brewed...a lot of thumping and the sharp sounds of an argument taking place next door, and someone slamming his way down the stairs at 11:30 p.m. I’m hoping that’s only temporary, because I like her. She doesn’t bother me, or ask for my stuff. And generally she’s very quiet. At least so far.

I hope this one works out. I’ll call the LL again every day if I have to. But I’d rather not have to.

If crap like this keeps going down, I may have to reevaluate my get-a-house-at-the-age-of-thirty-one plan.

Oh and another recent bit of good news is that I quit smoking. (Yes, those of you who didn’t know: I smoked. Full time for about nine months.) Two weeks ago, cold turkey, haven’t looked back. I feel much better, and boy is it going to save me some cash!

A good year, this.