(no subject)
Jul. 24th, 2019 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardSo.
Mostly these days I only show up on DW to complain and then vanish for six months, and this is probably no different; if you follow me on Twitter or Tumblr you've already heard this saga, but oh well.
So, my previous landlord sold my house a few months back, to a new landlord who actually lives directly behind me. (This happened while I was at SWCC, which means I was sitting in my hotel room with half my body paint on when J texts me and goes, "I'm buying the house! Is Tuesday a good day for me to come by with the mortgage inspector?" The mortgage inspector asked if I was a "cosplay girl" and if I was a furry too.) New landlord is fine, mostly, except for as part of the home-buying process he keeps having various people over to look at the house and take pictures and measure things exactly when I was in the middle of writing 60 pages worth of final papers. Then I had an online pedagogy class and a summer French class and the online Latin class I'm teaching, all staggered with some overlap and starting the day after I turned in my final final paper.
So, flashforward to the second week of July. Two weeks ago, July 9. Landlord J texts me to let me know that there will be handymen around the property for the next few days, and also he's going to begin the process of updating the electrical. (This house still had fuseboxes and all the outlets were two-prong, not three-prong.) Okay, whatever, I obviously cannot do anything about this. It is the fourth week of my Latin class, and I am giving a final on Wednesday.
Wednesday morning, July 10, about 11 am. I stagger out of bed. Someone's knocking on the door. It's the electrician. I'm barely awake, I'm barely dressed, I'm not caffeinated or fed or anything, and I let the electrician in to look at the fuse box in the house. He's an older white guy wearing a cross. He asks if I believe in God. I say no because I don't want to get into the specifics of my religious beliefs with a stranger. "You can't see electricity, but you believe in it, don't you?" "My mother's brother and grandfather are literally Buddhist priests." Then he asks if he can turn the electricity off for a few hours. NO! I'M GIVING A FINAL TODAY! "Oh, are you a teacher? Do you teach kindergarten?" Then he tells me about a kindergarten teacher he had who never missed a day of class for thirty years and was I going to be like her. No, because I'm training to be a university professor. He tells me he doesn't need to turn the power off today and can do it tomorrow instead. What time? Eleven? I say hopefully, but he says ten am is better for him. Okay, fine, whatever. He's down in the basement for the next hour or so, moving things around to get at the fuse boxes. I go down to laundry after he's left (the machines are in the basement). He's moved the dryers to get at the fuse boxes. Anna, who lives on the other side of the duplex and has a baby, is doing laundry too, and we talk about the electrician/handymen surprise. She has family visiting that weekend. When I go to switch my laundry from the washing machine to the dryer, I realize that the air hose is now disconnected from the dryer, so I take my laundry inside to hang up and text my landlord in a panic. The landlord sends one of the handymen he has working on his various properties on the neighborhood to fix the dryer. He goes to the wrong dryer and tells me it's fine. I go down to the basement, point out the one I mean, and he fixes it, but then just leaves -- he doesn't come and tell me it's done.
Thursday morning, July 11. 9 am. I get up so that I'm fed and caffeinated and have things downloaded to my Surface so that I can do work while the power's off. The electrician comes at ten. He talks to me and to Anna, who also gets the "do you believe in Jesus?" question, drops a lot of personal information on us, mentions his dead daughter's "Oriental doctor," tells Anna he can do her side in the afternoon, and finally goes and turns off my power. He changes out the fuse box in the basement for a circuit breaker, tells me that he'll be back to change the fuse box in my house for a circuit breaker, doesn't give me a day or a time. Later that afternoon, a handyman shows up with a list. I put my head out to see who this stranger is and what he wants. He has a list of things to be done to the house, including things that are going to be done inside the units (did not get warned about this by landlord J). He tells me that he'll come by at 9 am to do the stuff inside my unit so that I can go on with my life. A little bit later, more handymen show up, which is about six white guys of varying ages who wander around the house. Anna and I both go out to see what they want.
Friday morning, July 12. 8:30 am. I get up so that I'm fed and caffeinated and dressed because I expect the handymen to show up at 9 am, as I was told, and possibly for the electrician to return. Electrician turns up, deals with Anna's side. (I think.) At some point, her parents have arrived, so now there are five people there. 11 am, the handymen show up and start doing things to the outside of the house and the carport. I'm doing work because I'm still teaching and waiting for someone to come knock on my door. (You can see me very clearly because I'm right by the back door and a window.) 3 pm. A handyman finally wanders up to me and tells me he's going to replace my locks. O...okay? He replaces the deadbolts on my front and back doors, takes my front doorknob off, and realizes that he can't replace it because he needs his doorknob hole-making gadget to make the hole bigger. He puts the old doorknob back on, but very loosely, leaves the package of doorknobs, and tells me he'll finish when he comes back. When will that be? I ask urgently. Oh, probably tomorrow. Will he finish the rest of the stuff inside the house today that he said he would? No, they're not even going to get to my side of the house today. Oh.
Saturday morning, July 13. 9 am. I'm awake so that if the electrician or the handymen or whoever comes by I won't be taken by surprise. And I might as well go to the farmer's market while I'm up. I text my landlord to ask when the handymen will be back to deal with the door situation. He says in the next few days, and the electrician will be back Monday morning. 1 pm, two handymen come. They spend the day working in the basement. I go down to ask what they're doing. I don't really understand what they're doing, but they tell me they're fixing the sump pump and some other stuff. Are the machines hooked up and functional? Oh, yeah, everything is fine. So I can do laundry after they leave? Yeah, sure. 6 pm, they leave. I go down to check out the basement situation. They've piled up all their caulking and paint cans on top of my dryer, so I assume they're coming back either the next day or Monday. At one point I leave to go to the grocery store and get stopped my a city road worker who wants to know my ethnicity. "But you're too dark to be Japanese! Aren't you Filipina?" No, it's called a tan, because it's July in Atlanta and I walk everywhere.
Sunday. Nothing. I get to sleep in, wonderful. At this point I'm hopelessly sleep-deprived because I had to rearrange my entire schedule, not being a morning person.
Monday morning, July 15. 9:15 am. Crawl out of bed, food, caffeine, work downloaded to Surface so I can do lesson planning. 10 am, the electrician shows up, but not at my side of the house, at Anna's. At one point when he's outside I put my head out and ask when he'll be getting to me. "Oh, in a bit," he says, "she answered her door first." Eventually he gets to me, turns off my power, replaces my fuse box with a circuit breaker. Tells me he'll be back tomorrow to replace all the outlets. He tells me and Anna he thought about coming Saturday but decided not to.
Tuesday morning, July 16. 9:15 am. Crawl out of bed, food, caffeine, work downloaded. Electrician shows up at 10ish, having been over on Anna's side replacing some of her outlets. He gets to work replacing mine. This requires me to move furniture, naturally, but not that much. He makes small talk. "What nationality are you?" American. "No, I mean, where are you from?" Seattle. "I mean, where are you --" I'm half-Japanese. Five minutes later: "Have you ever heard about Japanese internment?" I have a moment of sheer "am I about to be murdered in my house?" terror, but apparently he means it as a fun historical fact of bad things the U.S. has done! Later he asks if I know who Jefferson Davis is. He gets through three-quarters of the outlets and runs out, and has to get more. He's also going to go do more of Anna's side. He leaves. I text my landlord to ask when the handymen are coming back because I still have a loose front doorknob. "But the handymen are finished." No, the handymen are NOT finished, they did zero of the things in my house they said they would. Am I sure about the doorknob situation? Yes. I have the package of unused doorknobs. And there's still stuff piled up on my dryer, so I assumed they'd be back. Landlord is so bewildered he asks me to call him, and I detail everything I was told that never happened. "But the handymen finished Sunday." The handymen were not here Sunday. He says he will come by this evening to personally fix my doorknob and check out the situation. Also, is the electrician coming back today or tomorrow, since he's now nowhere in sight? He calls the electrician, who is coming back today, but has to do Anna's side first. The electrician comes back an hour later, finishes replacing all my outlets except the outside one, and tells me that he will be back on Thursday or Friday morning to do the outside outlet and replace the smoke detector. He will definitely not be back Wednesday. That evening the landlord shows up to fix my doorknob, move the paint cans, and realizes that the handymen have done NO painting, but they won't be back for a while because they're working a big job somewhere else.
Wednesday, July 17. Nothing. I go for a long walk and get caught in the rain, get completely soaked through, it's the one day I don't have an umbrella, and my purse turns out not to be even a little waterproof and everything inside it gets at the very least damp. Including my passport, which was in my pocketbook. Still not sure if the passport was actually damaged or not, since I'm not sure how damp it is has to be to count as water damage.
Thursday morning, July 18. 9 am. I wake up early because I expect the electrician to come back. No electrician. Fine, whatever. I do laundry. There seems to be water on the basement floor, but it drains quickly and Anna and I have both been doing laundry all day, so maybe the system is just overloaded.
Friday morning, July 19. 9 am. Up early again. No electrician.
Saturday-Monday, July 20-22. Nothing. Okay. I'm slowly starting to feel normal again.
Tuesday morning, July 23. Landlord texts me to know the handymen will be back, but won't need to get inside my unit. Okay, whatever. The handymen do not show up. I go to do laundry. There's soapy water on the basement floor, and in the sunken pit where the sump pump is. I text my landlord about it. I spend the rest of the day having a panic attack. Two of the original handymen show up, work on the machine while I stand over them because FOR ONCE I want to know what's happening. They tell me it's fine.
Wednesday, today, July 24. Landlord texts me to ask me to test the washing machine. I do. There's soapy water on the basement floor, and in the sunken pit where the sump pump is. (It does drain, but I feel like it...should not be there in the first place?) This time I take pictures and text them to him. Haven't heard back.
...
so, that's where we're at. this whole experience has basically destroyed my mental health and worked me into a state of anxious panic where one little thing will send me into tears, I'm paranoid because people keep telling me they're coming and then not coming, telling me they have to do things, changing those things, not doing the things, BREAKING things, my sleep schedule went to hell in a handbasket, I started waking up in the middle of the night in panic, I'm now having digestive problems? which I'm assuming is from stress? and oh yeah, I'm LEAVING TOWN ON MONDAY, so now I'm living in frozen terror that something else will go wrong while I'm out of town and I won't know about it until I get back. I need to text my landlord again later this evening so that I can give him my rent check and tell him I'll be out of town. And I'm still TEACHING through all of this, which is difficult when I'm living in a constant state of intense panic. Normally getting out of Atlanta and going home would be good, except that I'm so terrified that something else will happen that it's now a matter of dread. And since my French class ended a few weeks ago I haven't had any human interaction with people other than the electrician, the handymen, and my landlord, and various cashiers at the grocery store, so I'm sure that's not helping anything.
ETA: Landlord texted me back, says that the pipe probably has to be replaced, I can use Anna's machine or the one at his house until then, but since my machine seems to be working fine it's probably safe to use it. I saw Anna when S and I got back from lunch, updated her on the situation, she's fine with me using her machine and knows where my spare keys are, so depending how the handyman situation develops she can let them into my house. And hopefully landlord will get the sump pump fixed before I come back.
Ironically I'm one of the few people I know who likes doing laundry, I find it soothing.
Mostly these days I only show up on DW to complain and then vanish for six months, and this is probably no different; if you follow me on Twitter or Tumblr you've already heard this saga, but oh well.
So, my previous landlord sold my house a few months back, to a new landlord who actually lives directly behind me. (This happened while I was at SWCC, which means I was sitting in my hotel room with half my body paint on when J texts me and goes, "I'm buying the house! Is Tuesday a good day for me to come by with the mortgage inspector?" The mortgage inspector asked if I was a "cosplay girl" and if I was a furry too.) New landlord is fine, mostly, except for as part of the home-buying process he keeps having various people over to look at the house and take pictures and measure things exactly when I was in the middle of writing 60 pages worth of final papers. Then I had an online pedagogy class and a summer French class and the online Latin class I'm teaching, all staggered with some overlap and starting the day after I turned in my final final paper.
So, flashforward to the second week of July. Two weeks ago, July 9. Landlord J texts me to let me know that there will be handymen around the property for the next few days, and also he's going to begin the process of updating the electrical. (This house still had fuseboxes and all the outlets were two-prong, not three-prong.) Okay, whatever, I obviously cannot do anything about this. It is the fourth week of my Latin class, and I am giving a final on Wednesday.
Wednesday morning, July 10, about 11 am. I stagger out of bed. Someone's knocking on the door. It's the electrician. I'm barely awake, I'm barely dressed, I'm not caffeinated or fed or anything, and I let the electrician in to look at the fuse box in the house. He's an older white guy wearing a cross. He asks if I believe in God. I say no because I don't want to get into the specifics of my religious beliefs with a stranger. "You can't see electricity, but you believe in it, don't you?" "My mother's brother and grandfather are literally Buddhist priests." Then he asks if he can turn the electricity off for a few hours. NO! I'M GIVING A FINAL TODAY! "Oh, are you a teacher? Do you teach kindergarten?" Then he tells me about a kindergarten teacher he had who never missed a day of class for thirty years and was I going to be like her. No, because I'm training to be a university professor. He tells me he doesn't need to turn the power off today and can do it tomorrow instead. What time? Eleven? I say hopefully, but he says ten am is better for him. Okay, fine, whatever. He's down in the basement for the next hour or so, moving things around to get at the fuse boxes. I go down to laundry after he's left (the machines are in the basement). He's moved the dryers to get at the fuse boxes. Anna, who lives on the other side of the duplex and has a baby, is doing laundry too, and we talk about the electrician/handymen surprise. She has family visiting that weekend. When I go to switch my laundry from the washing machine to the dryer, I realize that the air hose is now disconnected from the dryer, so I take my laundry inside to hang up and text my landlord in a panic. The landlord sends one of the handymen he has working on his various properties on the neighborhood to fix the dryer. He goes to the wrong dryer and tells me it's fine. I go down to the basement, point out the one I mean, and he fixes it, but then just leaves -- he doesn't come and tell me it's done.
Thursday morning, July 11. 9 am. I get up so that I'm fed and caffeinated and have things downloaded to my Surface so that I can do work while the power's off. The electrician comes at ten. He talks to me and to Anna, who also gets the "do you believe in Jesus?" question, drops a lot of personal information on us, mentions his dead daughter's "Oriental doctor," tells Anna he can do her side in the afternoon, and finally goes and turns off my power. He changes out the fuse box in the basement for a circuit breaker, tells me that he'll be back to change the fuse box in my house for a circuit breaker, doesn't give me a day or a time. Later that afternoon, a handyman shows up with a list. I put my head out to see who this stranger is and what he wants. He has a list of things to be done to the house, including things that are going to be done inside the units (did not get warned about this by landlord J). He tells me that he'll come by at 9 am to do the stuff inside my unit so that I can go on with my life. A little bit later, more handymen show up, which is about six white guys of varying ages who wander around the house. Anna and I both go out to see what they want.
Friday morning, July 12. 8:30 am. I get up so that I'm fed and caffeinated and dressed because I expect the handymen to show up at 9 am, as I was told, and possibly for the electrician to return. Electrician turns up, deals with Anna's side. (I think.) At some point, her parents have arrived, so now there are five people there. 11 am, the handymen show up and start doing things to the outside of the house and the carport. I'm doing work because I'm still teaching and waiting for someone to come knock on my door. (You can see me very clearly because I'm right by the back door and a window.) 3 pm. A handyman finally wanders up to me and tells me he's going to replace my locks. O...okay? He replaces the deadbolts on my front and back doors, takes my front doorknob off, and realizes that he can't replace it because he needs his doorknob hole-making gadget to make the hole bigger. He puts the old doorknob back on, but very loosely, leaves the package of doorknobs, and tells me he'll finish when he comes back. When will that be? I ask urgently. Oh, probably tomorrow. Will he finish the rest of the stuff inside the house today that he said he would? No, they're not even going to get to my side of the house today. Oh.
Saturday morning, July 13. 9 am. I'm awake so that if the electrician or the handymen or whoever comes by I won't be taken by surprise. And I might as well go to the farmer's market while I'm up. I text my landlord to ask when the handymen will be back to deal with the door situation. He says in the next few days, and the electrician will be back Monday morning. 1 pm, two handymen come. They spend the day working in the basement. I go down to ask what they're doing. I don't really understand what they're doing, but they tell me they're fixing the sump pump and some other stuff. Are the machines hooked up and functional? Oh, yeah, everything is fine. So I can do laundry after they leave? Yeah, sure. 6 pm, they leave. I go down to check out the basement situation. They've piled up all their caulking and paint cans on top of my dryer, so I assume they're coming back either the next day or Monday. At one point I leave to go to the grocery store and get stopped my a city road worker who wants to know my ethnicity. "But you're too dark to be Japanese! Aren't you Filipina?" No, it's called a tan, because it's July in Atlanta and I walk everywhere.
Sunday. Nothing. I get to sleep in, wonderful. At this point I'm hopelessly sleep-deprived because I had to rearrange my entire schedule, not being a morning person.
Monday morning, July 15. 9:15 am. Crawl out of bed, food, caffeine, work downloaded to Surface so I can do lesson planning. 10 am, the electrician shows up, but not at my side of the house, at Anna's. At one point when he's outside I put my head out and ask when he'll be getting to me. "Oh, in a bit," he says, "she answered her door first." Eventually he gets to me, turns off my power, replaces my fuse box with a circuit breaker. Tells me he'll be back tomorrow to replace all the outlets. He tells me and Anna he thought about coming Saturday but decided not to.
Tuesday morning, July 16. 9:15 am. Crawl out of bed, food, caffeine, work downloaded. Electrician shows up at 10ish, having been over on Anna's side replacing some of her outlets. He gets to work replacing mine. This requires me to move furniture, naturally, but not that much. He makes small talk. "What nationality are you?" American. "No, I mean, where are you from?" Seattle. "I mean, where are you --" I'm half-Japanese. Five minutes later: "Have you ever heard about Japanese internment?" I have a moment of sheer "am I about to be murdered in my house?" terror, but apparently he means it as a fun historical fact of bad things the U.S. has done! Later he asks if I know who Jefferson Davis is. He gets through three-quarters of the outlets and runs out, and has to get more. He's also going to go do more of Anna's side. He leaves. I text my landlord to ask when the handymen are coming back because I still have a loose front doorknob. "But the handymen are finished." No, the handymen are NOT finished, they did zero of the things in my house they said they would. Am I sure about the doorknob situation? Yes. I have the package of unused doorknobs. And there's still stuff piled up on my dryer, so I assumed they'd be back. Landlord is so bewildered he asks me to call him, and I detail everything I was told that never happened. "But the handymen finished Sunday." The handymen were not here Sunday. He says he will come by this evening to personally fix my doorknob and check out the situation. Also, is the electrician coming back today or tomorrow, since he's now nowhere in sight? He calls the electrician, who is coming back today, but has to do Anna's side first. The electrician comes back an hour later, finishes replacing all my outlets except the outside one, and tells me that he will be back on Thursday or Friday morning to do the outside outlet and replace the smoke detector. He will definitely not be back Wednesday. That evening the landlord shows up to fix my doorknob, move the paint cans, and realizes that the handymen have done NO painting, but they won't be back for a while because they're working a big job somewhere else.
Wednesday, July 17. Nothing. I go for a long walk and get caught in the rain, get completely soaked through, it's the one day I don't have an umbrella, and my purse turns out not to be even a little waterproof and everything inside it gets at the very least damp. Including my passport, which was in my pocketbook. Still not sure if the passport was actually damaged or not, since I'm not sure how damp it is has to be to count as water damage.
Thursday morning, July 18. 9 am. I wake up early because I expect the electrician to come back. No electrician. Fine, whatever. I do laundry. There seems to be water on the basement floor, but it drains quickly and Anna and I have both been doing laundry all day, so maybe the system is just overloaded.
Friday morning, July 19. 9 am. Up early again. No electrician.
Saturday-Monday, July 20-22. Nothing. Okay. I'm slowly starting to feel normal again.
Tuesday morning, July 23. Landlord texts me to know the handymen will be back, but won't need to get inside my unit. Okay, whatever. The handymen do not show up. I go to do laundry. There's soapy water on the basement floor, and in the sunken pit where the sump pump is. I text my landlord about it. I spend the rest of the day having a panic attack. Two of the original handymen show up, work on the machine while I stand over them because FOR ONCE I want to know what's happening. They tell me it's fine.
Wednesday, today, July 24. Landlord texts me to ask me to test the washing machine. I do. There's soapy water on the basement floor, and in the sunken pit where the sump pump is. (It does drain, but I feel like it...should not be there in the first place?) This time I take pictures and text them to him. Haven't heard back.
...
so, that's where we're at. this whole experience has basically destroyed my mental health and worked me into a state of anxious panic where one little thing will send me into tears, I'm paranoid because people keep telling me they're coming and then not coming, telling me they have to do things, changing those things, not doing the things, BREAKING things, my sleep schedule went to hell in a handbasket, I started waking up in the middle of the night in panic, I'm now having digestive problems? which I'm assuming is from stress? and oh yeah, I'm LEAVING TOWN ON MONDAY, so now I'm living in frozen terror that something else will go wrong while I'm out of town and I won't know about it until I get back. I need to text my landlord again later this evening so that I can give him my rent check and tell him I'll be out of town. And I'm still TEACHING through all of this, which is difficult when I'm living in a constant state of intense panic. Normally getting out of Atlanta and going home would be good, except that I'm so terrified that something else will happen that it's now a matter of dread. And since my French class ended a few weeks ago I haven't had any human interaction with people other than the electrician, the handymen, and my landlord, and various cashiers at the grocery store, so I'm sure that's not helping anything.
ETA: Landlord texted me back, says that the pipe probably has to be replaced, I can use Anna's machine or the one at his house until then, but since my machine seems to be working fine it's probably safe to use it. I saw Anna when S and I got back from lunch, updated her on the situation, she's fine with me using her machine and knows where my spare keys are, so depending how the handyman situation develops she can let them into my house. And hopefully landlord will get the sump pump fixed before I come back.
Ironically I'm one of the few people I know who likes doing laundry, I find it soothing.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 08:11 pm (UTC)Plus I end up feeling all guilty because of the sleep schedule thing, because surely normal people are awake and functional long before 9 am? Everyone makes assumptions based on that? (Also like! I'm a student during the summer holiday! That's not a safe assumption to make that I'm actually home! I mean, I am, but literally no one else I know is. There was no attempt made to coordinate this with any of us!)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 09:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-26 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-26 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 08:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 08:29 pm (UTC)Surely it would have been more efficient for EVERYONE if there had been some attempt at coordination with us?
Here in California the landlord is required to give minimum 24 hours written notice anytime someone is going to enter your unit to do something you didn't request. And it is vastly more efficient. What you've had to put up with is beyond ridiculous.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-24 08:42 pm (UTC)Like, there was no attempt to coordinate that I or Anna would actually be home! If it had been two weeks earlier I wouldn't have been; I would have been in class! If it had been in August instead of July I wouldn't have even been in the state!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-26 12:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-26 06:00 pm (UTC)(I have a theory that part of the reason this is so stressful is that home repair/reno stuff takes place in your home, which is supposed to be your safe, stress-free space.)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-29 01:35 pm (UTC)And yes, I think you're right. I find home repair incredibly stressful, and workmen in general incredibly stressful. It does feel like your space (which is supposed to be orderly and stress-free and your private space) just gets turned topsy-turvy with workmen, and there's no way to really make that better until they are just done and gone. :P