The Chronicles Of Jessica

Paul and I are moving out of our apartment exactly two weeks from today. We haven't packed a thing yet, but I have collected a grand total of FIVE boxes, which should just about cover half of one bookshelf. Reading is such an overrated habit, people. Take up business card collecting or staring into space instead; the real estate required is much more minimal.

Obviously we're thrilled to be leaving because this has been, as I believe I've stated on several occasions, the worst apartment in the history of the universe. In fact, once we're done with this nutjob and we never have to go back to the building again and we have our deposit back and all that, I'm going to change the title of the post to the address, so that anyone searching for it on Google will be brought straight to this entry and they will know to run far far away as fast as their little legs will take them. Ryan K. says we can't get sued for libel if it's true, and he is not a lawyer, nor did he go to law school, so I'm just going to believe him.

I've been pretty detailed in these blog entries about our various woes with this apartment, so I'll just recap them briefly here. Zombie fly infestation. Mice. Smell of rotting garbage from downstairs neighbor. Constant cigarette smoke smell in the bathroom from downstairs neighbor. Windows that were installed somewhere around the turn of the century (not the aughts, I mean the other one.) No outlet in the bathroom. Electricity that goes out if you try to make toast and coffee at the same time (or make toast and do ANYthing else at the same time). Washers and dryers constantly breaking and/or leaving soap crust on all your clothes. Pathetic heating and air conditioning that never reaches to the bedroom so you're either roasting or freezing. You get the gist.

But the landlady is really the key to the whole thing. If she was a sweet little old lady who loved us and made us baked goods and treated us like one of the family, it would be different. The place would just seem quirky, instead of like the seventh circle of hell. But she's terrible. The only facet of being a landlord that she's competent at is cashing the checks (and she can't even be bothered to do that half the time until a couple of months have gone by.) For instance, she promised to replace the rotted out windows before winter came (both of the last two winters) and she never did. When we approached her about it she came up with the helpful suggestion of stuffing plastic grocery bags into the cracks and crevices to keep the windows from rattling in the frames and to cut down on the drafts blowing through. Classy! And thrifty, no? I thought for sure that she's have the work done before she tried to move new people in - but oh no. She's trying to get someone in for the day after we vacate. And as a consequence, our lives are being inconvenienced to an alarming degree.

Apparently in DC there is no law governing the amount of notice that a landlord must give before they can enter your dwelling (in a non-emergency situation.) They can come in any time they want. In other (normal, actual) states, it's a minimum of 24 hours or in some cases 48. In any case, you would think that a courtesy call or post-it note saying, "Hey I plan to show your apartment today" would be benificent to both parties. We know she's coming and we can tidy up, put away our adult props and that sort of thing. (I kid!) But no. It's more convenient for her to just come in, whenever and however the urge strikes her. The first time she did this, Paul was home but the bed was unmade and the laundry was divided into color groups on the floor, where I had sorted it the night before. We had planned to actually wash the clothes after sorting them, but then we got our dvd of The Wire from Netflix, and you'd be surprised how much energy it takes to make 3 - 5 trips up and down four flights of stairs to wash ones clothes on any given night.

Anyway, she poo-pooed his apologies and said it made the place look "lived-in", so who were we to argue? The second time it happened, I had been at a yoga class and came home to find her yappy dog in my front hallway, yapping at me while the LL ran around our apartment like some crack-addicted home organization show hostess. Apparently she had shown the apartment (again without telling us), found it lacking, and decided all on her own to just...fix it! She stuffed clothes under a desk, she shoved books and magazines under beds and into closets, she scooped jewelry and picture frames into drawers and cubboards. She stashed the dishes from breakfast under the sink (with the bleach and ant spray - well done!) and tossed clean silverware into the junk drawer where we keep the super glue and saran wrap. She even took our garbage, which wasn't half full. By the time I came in she had pretty much concluded the spree and even though I was fairly shocked and horrified by our personal belongings having been manhandled by a lunatic, I barely had the presence of mind to say anything to her. In hindsight of course, all sorts of things come to mind. "Stop touching my things, you lunatic", for instance. "Why are you so effing crazy?", for another. "Have you ever heard of Prozac?" You always think up the retorts on the way home though, right?

A word about the dog: I love dogs. I've had two dachshunds in my life, which in some circles are the yappiest of yappy dogs, and I love them and I think they're great. I would never hurt an animal and I think there's a special place in hell for people who would. But this dog? I literally want to take my foot and punt it out the window in a hilarious display of cartoon violence. It's not the dog's fault. She's only had it about five months and in all that time it hasn't been taught anything. It's never even been on a leash, she just chases it down when it runs into the street. She lets it run around the building and in and out of people's apartments and she lets it up on everyone's furniture (you know, while she's making empty promises about fixing things). It's really rude and it drives me up a wall. If she actually deigned to ask, "Hey do you mind the dog being in here?" of course I'm going to say no. But that would presume so much, concepts like normalcy, manners and common sense. Cripes.

In any case, last week I wasn't feeling well and went home from work a little early one day to lie down. I'd been asleep about an hour when all of a sudden I woke up with this stupid dog on me. Apparently she had let herself in to show the unit and because I was sleeping soundly I didn't realize anyone was in the apartment with me until the devil hound hopped on my bed. Well I screamed bloody murder, which I'm sure impressed the hell out of the prospective tenants (curiously, they decided not to take the place). I heard her spluttering around in the living room and then she left and she didn't come back. After that incident I literally begged her to please PLEASE just call us when she was going to be coming in there, and that seems to be working so far. Since then she's marched through with about three different couples, none of whom have ESP, because I have been sending them really strong, really urgent brain messages to run, run for their lives and not one seems to have picked up a thing.

But in exactly fourteen days we'll be free. And this will all be one of those hilarious anecdotes that middle-aged people tell at parties about their newlywed salad years. That's what I'm aiming for, anyway. If anything else happens I'd have to go to jail for murder, which I guess would dampen the hilarity.