Straw, Meet Hump

Hi, Drunkards. I'm going to rant a bit today.

Hair may be pulled.

As apartment-dwellers go, I'm pretty fortunate. Over the last nine years, the property management in my building has seldom given me cause to get pissed off at them. Friendly people, great maintenance crew, good communication, all that stuff that I'm told can be rare in the world of renting from a corporate landlord.

People tend to be amazed when I tell them I've lived happily in the same apartment for almost a decade. While that's mostly the result of my Aergian* levels of laziness and extreme susceptibility to inertial forces, it's also a testament to the fact that my current residence has been a good place to live. I've seen no reason to roll the dice on a new place, given the horror stories I've heard from other renters.

This guy totally looks like he has a peephole
hidden behind a picture frame on the other side
of your bedroom wall.

(Also, when I moved Precocious Daughter and myself into this place, we didn't even own kitchen chairs. Or a kitchen table to put them around. Or a sofa to eat dinner on because we didn't have a table or chairs. In short, I've got way more stuff now than I had then. Moving seems exhausting.) 

So I've stayed put, and life has been good. Except that, as of last summer, my apartments are now in the hands of a new corporate landlord. And, to put it as elegantly as I can, it's been death by a thousand fucking cuts ever since.

I won't go into details that I'm sure are boring as hell if you're not me. I don't know why anyone reads any of this stuff, frankly. But here we are and, you know, thanks. 

For real.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we've arrived at the straw that landed on the camel's hump and broke that bastard. Except it's not a straw. It's a fob.

I live in a secure building. The parking garage is gated, and the building entrances, including elevators and stairs, are access-restricted. Until recently, all of that was controlled by a fob, which hung from my key ring. One fob to rule them all, one might say.

LOL, you really can find anything on the Internet.

But my corporate landlord, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the convenience of a single electronic access device that goes wherever I go and provides instantaneous entry is, apparently, some kind of affront to decency. Or maybe the manufacturer kickbacks dried up or something. I dunno.

As of last month, garage access is now controlled by a coded sticker on the windshield of my car. A little electronic eye reads the code when I get right up to the gate and makes it slide open while I wait. Over the past nine years I've perfected the art of activating the gate from the perfect distance away so that it fully opened just in time for me to glide through without stopping. Now the perfect distance is literally six inches from the gate so the electronic eyeball can sense the sticker. While I wait. And while the cars in front of and behind me that also used to glide through without stopping also wait.

But there's more, oh lawd yes. If my car is in the shop and I have a loaner? I can't get into the garage without the permanently stuck sticker (or stucker, if you will). If I'm traveling and I want someone to look in on Tacocat? I can't give them my fob so they have access. My car, and not me, now has exclusive control over who gets into the garage that I pay for every month.

And my car can be kind of a bastard, tbh.

But it gets better. The fob also no longer works on the access-controlled doors and elevators of my building. Instead. We have. To use. A goddamn app.

Because why use a fob, which is attached to the key ring you're already carrying and can simply be waved at the door to open it? Especially when you're also carrying a purse, a coat, several bags of groceries, and the bottle of vodka you're going to desperately need by the time you stop, pull out your phone with your convenient third hand, open an app, and wait for a count of three-Mississippi for it to unlock the door? It's inconvenient and wastes time? Sign me up!

Don't forget - if you go anywhere on the property without your phone, you are locked out. If you go downstairs to check the mail without grabbing your phone, you are locked out. If, God forbid, you leave your phone at the office or a restaurant or a friend's house, locked out. Because your phone now has exclusive control over whether you get into the building you pay to live in every month.

Download me, I'm eeeeevil.

This turn of events is causing me to seriously consider moving. Which maybe is just a sign that subconsciously I was already wanting to go. Or it could be simply that this aggression will not stand, man.

It just won't.

Anyway, I'm looking at a lot of real estate listings these days. Because I don't think this is the end of my corporate landlord's shenanigans (see also: we're no longer allowed to put out a welcome mat, but that's another story). And I don't think I'll be able to find another landlord that isn't an order of magnitude worse than what I've got.

I just want a place where Tacocat and I can hang out and play fetch. And I don't have to download any apps I don't want to download.

Wish me luck.

* Aergia is the Greek goddess of sloth and idleness. She is frequently depicted lounging on a sofa or comfy chair and is totally my new hero.

A Tale of Two Trees

It's hard to believe, but this year marks the fifth Christmas that Precocious Daughter and I have spent in our little post-divorce apartment. It's been a pretty great home for us. We've seen some good times here, and some not-so-good times. And now, five Christmas seasons.

In 2015, our first Christmas here, we bought an artificial tree. We bought the best one we could afford. It wasn't great. But it was ours. We decorated it with the half of the lights and ornaments I'd taken from my marriage. The first year it seemed as if a lot of memories and cherished baubles were missing. But as the years went by, and we added a few new bits and pieces that were only ours, our little Christmas tree seemed more and more like a new tradition we had created ourselves.

I'm pretty sure that tree skirt came along later. Our first Christmas here, I think we used a very old skirt that my mom had made in the 70s, which was falling apart. I was very pleased when I could justify spending money on a new one, somewhere around our third Christmas.

But ever since that first year, I've been promising PDaughter and myself that one day we would buy a bigger and better tree. Every December, when we pull out the long skinny box it lived in the rest of the year, and PDaughter carefully arranges the wire "branches" on the plastic "trunk" (that's her job; stringing lights is my responsibility, and we hang the ornaments together), I watch her and promise her, "One of these years we're going to get a new tree." And every December, I watch my budget go to other, more important things. After each Christmas, the little tree gets disassembled and put back in its box, waiting to be called into service again.

This year, PDaughter is a sophomore in college, amazingly. Although she's not far away, she has an apartment on campus. I love that she's tasting independence, but I miss her like crazy during the semester. Last week, while she was taking her final exams, I pulled out all the Christmas stuff. I decorated the apartment so it would look nice when she came home for the winter break. Everything except the tree. That we would put up together. 

It went according to tradition at first. PDaughter fired up her Christmas playlist (because you can't trim the tree without Andy Williams, the Carpenters, and, uh, the Ramones). Then she began to assemble the little tree while I sighed, "One of these years we're going to get a nicer one." Tradition.

But then something happened.

Stay with me here.

If you've ever assembled an inexpensive fake tree, you know it's not brain surgery. You have a couple of lengths of pipe that fit together to make a tree-high pole. You have a base consisting of plastic or metal feet that you attach to the pole. And you have a bunch of metal arms covered with faux greenery, bent into a hook at one end to fit into the pole in an approximate tree-shaped pattern. You slide the hooks into a series of holes or notches or some such and voila - fake tree.

This was our fifth go-round with this particular specimen of pinus artificialis. PDaughter knew exactly what to do.

Except...she didn't. And I didn't. 

And damned if we didn't stare at that pole and those branches like a couple of Martians who had never so much heard of a Christmas tree, let alone tried to make one out of a box of parts.

I don't know how else to explain it, but we could not, for the life of us, figure out how the thing went together. Where were the holes, the notches, any little clue of how to insert Branch A into Trunk B? It was as if someone (the Grinch, perhaps) had snuck into the closet where our Christmas decorations live, removed our tree, and replaced it with something that sort of resembled our tree but wasn't. Like a box of Legos that's supposed to make a fire truck except none of the pieces inside are red or fire engine-shaped.

It made no sense. But that's what happened. And as we haplessly tried to figure out how two competent, educated women could suddenly forget how to put together a tree (or how said tree could suddenly become un-put-together-able), I said in frustration, "In about 30 seconds, I'm bundling us into the car to go look for a new tree."

PDaughter watched me uncertainly, not knowing if she should encourage this train of thought or not. We continued to puzzle over the pile of plastic and metal between us. Thirty seconds later, I said the same thing: "This is nuts. We're about to head to the store to get a new tree." 

And then, all at once, two thoughts hit me. The first was, You just got a Christmas bonus. You have a little extra money right now.

The second was: This is a sign.

I'm not one to ignore signs. They don't come around often, but when they do I pay attention. So we packed that sad, maddening little tree back into its box, and we went out and bought a new tree. 

As you can see, it's a touch larger than the old one. OK, it's a monster, relatively speaking. It's a big, beautiful tree. It fills our small living room in the most wonderful way. And it fills my heart, too. I feel as if PDaughter and I have earned this tree.

We kept the old tree. It's back in the closet, unassembled. PDaughter says she may put it up in her campus apartment next Christmas.

I have no doubt that she'll be able to assemble it without a hitch. It no longer needs to be difficult to put together, you see. Now it can go back to doing its job of being a small, modest Christmas decoration in someone's first apartment. A job it was - and will be - very good at doing.

It's hardly a miracle, even a Hallmark Channel-quality one. But it's a good Christmas story. Who doesn't need a good story to take from year to year?

Choose My Decor: Tentacles or Nah

Drunkards, I need your feedback.

I want to add some color and personality to my small apartment space.

There is a long narrow corridor that leads from my front door to my living room. It sort of cries out for a runner rug.

I found this.

It is orange and blue, has tassels, and features OCTOPUSES AND FLOWERS.

It's less than a hundred bucks. It harmonizes with my color scheme. And I can have it delivered in about a week.

What do you think? Octopus rug for the win? Or gross unnecessary addition to the decor?

I will totally act upon your reaction, so please react.

Dear Sucker Who Pays Rent...

I love my little apartment. You guys know that.

This is Kendall Jenner's apartment, not mine, lol. Mine is smaller,
but has the advantage of no fucking antlers in the living room.

To be honest, I'm thrilled to not be a homeowner. I did that for almost 20 years, and yeah, owning your own home on your own plot of land is wonderful in many ways. Like being able to paint your bedroom purple.

But right here, right now, having a place that is compact, easy to clean, and has a maintenance staff on call to fix whatever breaks is awesome.

Full disclosure: I totally unclogged my own toilet recently.
But I could have had someone do it for me...for free.

Of course, there are drawbacks to apartment living. Not being able to practice clogging because of downstairs neighbors. Having to wear headphones when possessed by the urge to listen to show tunes at maximum volume. Um...no nude treadmilling allowed in the free community exercise room. Uh...must use professional-quality gas grill next to well-appointed pool when wanting to barbecue.

The struggle is real.

Really real.

But seriously folks, the numero uno drawback of apartment living is that you have a lot of neighbors in very close proximity. And some of them - I don't care where you live or how much you pay in rent - are assholes.

And unlike a single-family residence, where assholes in violation of community standards can be reported and fined for being bad neighbors, in an apartment complex everyone suffers the consequences of their rude and slovenly behavior.

Case in point: The community letter.

If you're employed in a company of any size, you know about the community letter. Two or three people have fucked things up for everybody else by being douchenozzles, but to avoid the liability of actually holding individuals accountable for their behavior, the home office chastises everyone in the most carefully parsed, passive-aggressive way possible.

Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh.

So when I got home tonight, one of these charming missives was stuck in my front door-crack. It was just the most cheerful, chipper reprimand I've ever read. Absolutely no one who needs to heed its admonishments will give it a second thought, and absolutely everyone who is fed up with the jizzbuckets in our midst is sure that it will be ineffective.

It's exactly like the online sexual harassment course I had to take at work today.

Look, it's not the offensive familiarity I mind so much as
the systemic marginalization of my validity in this organization.

I thought I'd share a few excerpts from this amazing memorandum, along with a passive-aggressive-to-real-talk translation.

"Thank you for choosing xxxxx [as] your place to call home! We appreciate all of you and our goal is [to] ensure your expectations are exceeeded."

We know damn well we could jack up the rent on your apartment by $75 a month if you would only move out. But whatever, fair housing laws.

"To help make our community a better place to live we need your help. It's as simple as being courteous to your fellow neighbors and abiding by the community rules."

A fucking barn...were you born in one? The fact that we need rules for being a decent human makes us think that money can't buy class.

"[P]lease help us keep the community clean and pick up after [your] pets. We've noticed more animal waste throughout the community recently."

I stepped in dogshit walking into the leasing office yesterday. Fuck, people. You know what kind of dog owner fails to poop-scoop? Lonely, disgusting douchebags who never get laid. That's what.

"Do not throw [cigarettes] off your patio/balcony or in the breezeways/stairwells."

Clearly your crack-whore mother and your three-strikes father didn't teach you not to be a piece of shit. Fair enough. Here's the lowdown on how to become a 1% better human being.

"Please be courteous and mindful of others in the parking garage. Drive at a reasonable speed and be cautious of others in the garage."

Forty mph is not a reasonable speed, dickweed. Also, in America we drive on the right, not in the middle of the fucking lane. Oh, and if you're driving an enormous vehicle to compensate for your tiny penis, be extra courteous to those who drive with confidence in their sexuality. Thanks.

"The trash cans in the garage are for small items only."

Do NOT leave the shipping crate for your blow-up Buxom Betty sex doll next to the small trash can meant for, like, Whataburger bags. Unless you neglect to peel off the shipping label first. Then at least we can mock you and share your apartment number for all to see.

"Thanks for your time and cooperation."

We can totally let ourselves into your apartment and piss on your dishes whenever we want. And then we can evict you for no good reason, per our ridiculously restrictive lease. HA!

I'm fine with these rules and regulations. Because I'm not a complete twat. But apparently the twats are among us. Maybe some of them even wrote this letter.

Whatever. Just leave me alone. I promise not to paint my bedroom purple, OK?