I’m currently rediscovering the joys pains of apartment living. A few months ago, my wife and I decided to sell our townhouse and start the process of looking for a free-standing house (I like to refer to them as “walkarounds”). Early on we determined that the endeavor would be stressful enough without trying to coordinate the sale and purchase of a home simultaneously. Instead, we opted for concentrating on selling our house first, and we planned on moving into an apartment for a few months while we looked for a new home.
Good news! The plan went exactly as we’d hoped. Our efforts to make our house presentable for sale (and the hard work of our Realtor) paid off. We sold our house within a few weeks of listing it, and we got fairly close to our asking price. We were all set to start the fun part – looking for a new house.
As I mentioned at the outset, we moved into an apartment while the search was underway. No big deal, right? We can live in an apartment. We had done it before. Never with a toddler, but that has turned out to be the easiest part – Sarah loves that all of her stuff is on one level, so she’s never far away from anything she needs. Even our cat, Otto, has adjusted to the new environs.
But holy shit, do I hate this place!
Let me count the ways:
If The Key Fits
The lease for our apartment started on January 15th. I know that because it said so in bold print right on the lease. So on January 15th, I went to the apartment complex’s leasing office to pick up the keys. I had to use my lunch break to do it, but no big deal, this is just the next step required to move forward with our quest for a new home. One problem: When I went to pick up the key (at a time previously agreed upon with the staff in the rental office), they mentioned, rather casually, that the previous tenants had not yet moved out of the apartment.
“Oh? When do you think they might be out?” I inquired.
“Most likely by tonight,” said the troglodyte hunched behind the office desk.
“And when do you think I might pick up the keys then?” I asked curiously.
“Tomorrow. Between 3 and 5,” she responded.
“Oh. In the middle of the work day? How convenient,” I said. “And only a day or two after my lease started.”
I returned to the rental office the next day around 3:30. The same troll “greeted” me – clearly having no idea why I was there.
“I need to pick up my keys. Is the apartment ready?”
It wasn’t. She had to raise the maintenance fellow on a walkie-talkie, ham radio or some shit.
“Clarence, are you done changing the locks?”
He wasn’t.
“Well, the guy’s here. He wants his keys.”
Imagine that.
“He’s on his way over now. You can sit on the couch.”
The “couch” seemed to have been recently retrieved from a dumpster or a backwoods hamlet done in by some brand of Middle Age pestilence.
“I’ll just stand.”
After about 20 minutes, Clarence finally arrived with my keys. Unceremoniously, he shoved them into my hand, and I was on my way.
In order to get into the apartment, i had to first walk across a foot bridge, go through an outer door, an inner security door (locked) and finally our apartment door (also locked). I jammed the newly cut key to the security door into the lock, and tried to turn it. You’ll notice that I said tried…that’s going to come into play in just a moment.
The key wouldn’t turn, so naturally I assumed that I had used the wrong key. I tried each of the other two keys (for the apartment door and the mailbox). Neither worked, so I returned to the original key. I tried – a bit more aggressively – to get the lock to turn. No luck. Unless, of course, you consider it lucky to snap a key off in a lock. If you do, then there was lots of luck.
Welcome home. I hated this place already.
Birds! F*ckin’ Birds!
Within the first week of moving into the apartment, I had to pick up Sarah from school – she was running a slight fever. I carried her and all of her stuff (toddlers have a lot of stuff…just all the time) across the footbridge, through the gauntlet of doors (I now had working keys to each of them) and into the apartment. Once inside, I put Sarah down and started to unload the several hundred objects that your toddler needs to have with them at all times. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a bit of motion.
No big deal. We have a cat. I then watched my cat mosey out of the hallway on the other end of the apartment.
Then I saw it – a small bird just doing laps around the living room. This seemed odd to me because, as far as I could remember, we did not request to live in an aviary. Nevertheless, there it was – small brown bird of indeterminate species. I’m sure someone could have determined its species, but neither me nor my two-year-old daughter happened to specialize in ornithology. My daughter did, however, think it was a very exciting thing to have a bird inside the apartment. I disagreed.
Luckily, I was able to place my daughter safely in the crib in her bedroom along with our cat (who had also begun to look excitedly at our visitor). For clarity’s sake, the cat was in her bedroom not in her crib. Now that the children were taken care of, I dashed (as much as I dash anywhere these days) to the sliding door and opened it widely. It only took me a minute or two to usher bieber our flappy little friend back into that great big world.
This would be an amusing little anecdote if we didn’t come home to yet another bird a few weeks later. This one was bigger. And far less interested in going back outside. With a helping hand from my wife, a few cardboard box lids and some ill-advised usage of a ceiling fan, extricating our second volitant proved substantially more difficult but was nonetheless accomplished after about 10 minutes.
I think it is worth reminding you that there are no less than three doors between the outside world and the interior of our apartment. I have scoured every inch of this apartment attempting to locate the hidden ingress used by these foul little…err…fowls, but I have found none.
Motherf*cker, Where’s My Car?
There have been several other minor annoyances – obnoxious neighbors, mystery noises, weird food smells – but nothing too far beyond what you sign up for when you opt to live in an apartment. We had made great progress on our house hunt, and we were now only a few weeks away from closing on a new home. While I still hated it, i had come to terms with most things related to our temporary return to a communal living situation. There was an end in sight, and I just had to ride it out.
Yesterday, my wife and I were returning home after picking up our daughter from school, and as we pulled into the apartment complex, we noticed that one section of the parking lot was resplendent with newly sealed asphalt and freshly painted lines. The parking lot had never looked so spiffy. And then something occurred to me. My wife and I work at the same company, so most days we drive into work together, as we had that morning. I realized that the spot where we parked our other car was smack-dab in the middle of the newly surfaced portion of the parking lot.
But the spot where it had been parked was empty. As you might guess, this was a bit unsettling.
I decided not to panic – I figured we could always panic later, if needed. I tried to just focus on getting everyone (and a certain toddler’s daily assortment of jackets, lunchboxes, sweatshirts, close-range nuclear weapons and whatever else had been loaded into the car that morning) into the apartment.
After this was accomplished, I returned to the parking lot. I first looked around to make sure that I had mistakenly parked in a different location and forgotten. No dice. I then walked over to the office to determine if there was some explanation for what might have happened to our car. I didn’t expect the office to be open – it’s never open – but I thought maybe there would be some posting providing some small clue as to where our car had absconded. Nothing.
Next, I did what any person at the end of their rope would do. I wandered aimlessly around the complex frantically and continuously pressing the button on the key fob for the missing car. And then, as if a small child at the bottom of a deep well, I heard a barely audible “meep”. I hit the button again.
“MEEP!”
And there, on the other side of the parking lot, no less then 500 yards from any spot that I would reasonably park our car, stood Millie. It would be useful for you to know that we refer to our little blue Hyundai Elantra as Millie or Millicent (if you’re fancy).
My only guess is that the car was towed out of its/her normal spot and deposited at the far end of the complex. As far as I know, there had been no prior notice of the parking lot resurfacing, no indication that cars should be moved, no warning that failure to comply would result in a the redistricting of automobiles. Millie seems none the worse for her unplanned travel. Of course, I have not been able to get in touch with anyone from the rental office.
I hate this place. I just really hate this place. In closing, The Escarpment (my wife insists that I not use the real name of our complex) can suck it.
(Passive)Aggressivist 