Cute Kid

I often talk about the tenants I would like to slap around, but I think you deserve to hear about some good ones too. For example, the other day a tenant asked to have the locking door knob on his bedroom replaced as the old one didn't lock anymore. Now, it is not very cost effective to have me do much manual stuff, so normally one of the maintenance guys would just go take care of it. But the guy I had lined up ended up having a family emergency and had to leave early. I had promised the tenant that it would be taken care of on Friday, so I just went to do it myself.

When I showed up at his apartment, the tenant expressed his surprise at the fact that I was the one doing it. "I didn't know you could do fix-it stuff," he said. "Yeah, no one is supposed to know, so keep it to yourself, " I replied with a smile.

The knob was on his son's door, and his son was in his room playing video games. He is a cute kid who must be around 4 or 5, but it's hard to tell because I think he is small for his age. He knows me well because he often stops by my office to raid the candy dish I have set out. He's at that stage where his speech is sometimes hard to understand, but it sure isn't for lack of trying.

As soon as I enter his room he starts in, "I'm payin' games, Mista Boss!" I'm not sure where he gets the Mr. Boss thing, but it makes me smile.

"I see that, what are you playing?"

"It's the snow scate... the board snow, scate game. I'm gooood 'cause I pactice. Watch this move, watch me do this one, Mista Boss. Can you watch?"

I lean over so that I can see his TV while I'm unscrewing the lock. "Very nice, you are good."

"You want to try? You try this game? Can you stay in my house, Mista Boss?"

"No, if I stayed much later you might have to serve me dinner. You just keep practicing."

It never ceases to amaze me how something so small can make even a crap day smell better.

Apparently, I'm trendy

I've never considered myself a trendy person. I don't really try, nor am I interested in various fads that roll in and roll back out. Generally, I just have a pretty good idea of who I am and what I like, and take it from there.

I dance to the beat of my own drummer boy

Yeah, pretty much. Although, from time to time I come to realize that a particular trend coincides with what I'm already doing. I'd like to say in those instances that I am the inspirational trend setter, but somehow I doubt it. This was the case when I recently came across an ACB News story. The story was entitled "Macho Men with Small Dogs" (can anyone say slow news day?). Apparently "the pairing of macho men and toy sized breads is sweeping the nation." It says that men are realizing that they don't have to walk a big dog to look manly. Everyone from Hulk Hogan, to Steve Schrippa (The Sopranos), to P. Diddy, is down with small dogs. To see the video of this story click here.

Now, I am an animal lover in general. I have owned dogs my entire life. I've had big dogs, little dogs, and everything in between. It just so happens that the dog I have now is a Bichon Frise. It was less let me pick you out of the litter and more let me rescue you from a family who has no clue how to take care of you. They were a wealthy family we knew who bought her because they caved when the oldest daughter insisted. Even with the best of intentions, they quickly realized they didn't know what they were doing, and just kept her locked in their laundry room (the dog not the daughter). The poor pooch's only real reprieve was when I would come to visit. Finally, they gave up and asked my wife and I to take her; we gladly accepted.

Everything happens for a reason, because she is the coolest dog I have ever owned. My wife still says I look funny walking her, but I could care less. She is smart, loyal, loving and playful. Plus, she doesn't shed, which is always nice. Anyone who meets her falls in love after 5 minutes. Therefore, in her honor, I present a day in the life of Daisy...

Look, I don't know what this work thing is you always go on about, but some of us are still in bed.

OK, I'm up, time for my nap.

Alright, new spot, and nap number 2.

Dude, I'm happy you're home too, but easy on the hugs.

No, seriously, did someone say something about dinner?

I'm rested, I'm fed; enough pictures, time for ball.

Drama, its what's for dinner

I know that every relationship has its ups and downs. I realize that if you spend enough time with someone you will eventually, occasionally rub each other the wrong way. I don’t care if it’s a man and a woman or a same-sex couple, your best friend, a relative… whoever it is. From time to time you are going butt heads and, in your own way, “throw down.”

Bring it on bitch!

In fact I’ve heard it argued that couples who never fight are doomed to failure because they don’t care enough about the relationship to get mad. Or maybe they are too afraid to express their true feelings to the other person, which isn’t good either.

So, this is all very natural. Then what is my point? The point is that during these episodes of relationship non-bliss, is it really necessary to alert every neighbor in your surrounding area? Now, God knows I’ve had my share of passionate verbal bouts. I am a pretty laid back person, and therefore there are only two people in my life who can actually upset me. One is my mother; the other is my wife. I still say this is because they are the two people I care the most about, so they are the only ones I feel are worth getting upset about.

On the rare occasions I do get riled up, I unleash a pack of spoken daggers wrapped in painful sarcasm. If it goes on long enough, I may even raise my voice to the point that our little dog hides under the bed and tries to find her happy place.

I have not, however, gone outside of my living space calling my partner every foul name I can think of at the top of my lunges. I have never knocked on a neighbor’s door during the heat of the fight, whom I barely know, to profess how my partner has wronged me. I have never taken my partner's clothes and thrown them at (not in) the dumpster outside of my living space. I have never done a dance on the said clothes while they lay in the parking lot. Likewise, I have never called the cops on my partner after she broke the back windshield of my vehicle with a hammer during the argument, only to be told that since her name is also on the vehicle title that she has the right to do anything she wants to it.

I have never done these things my fellow readers, but then again I don’t live in the complex I manage either.

Trust Issues

This was the note that was left for one of my maintenance guys inside the apartment he was working in. Now, in all fairness to the tenant, we do normally give at least 24-hour notice before entering their apartment when it comes to something they didn’t request. But when it is an emergency call, we have to do what we have to do. That was the case here, as we received a call from the tenant living below saying that there was water coming through her ceiling.

Now the tenant who left the note really is a good guy, but there are a few screws loose. He served in the armed forces in his past, so he must have been all there at some point. I don’t know at what point things got off track mentally, but they did and he’s never looked back. Again, for the most part he just works and keeps to himself. He does have a very low tolerance for those who live around him and tends to think everything anyone else does is to spite him. You know the “The guy below me keeps closing his front door loudly because he’s trying to upset me,” type of stuff. Then there was the time he came into the office and asked me if I was the Arch Angel Gabriel. I told him, “not that I am aware of,” and he never mentioned it again.

Now for some reason he had it in his head that he didn’t like the maintenance guy. There was never any reason given, but he made it pretty obvious. On a previous occasion he had told me, with the maintenance guy sitting in the same room, that he would rather fix the problem himself than have the guy go in his apartment.

The maintenance guy has since worked his way into the tenant's good graces and the two of them have buried the hatchet, even though only the tenant knew what the hatchet was.

Part Three

In my former life I thought I wanted to be a psychologist. I worked both with adults who had mental illness and with kids who had severe behavior handicaps (SBH). Every day was a challenge, which I liked. What I didn’t like is the fact that there never seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel for most of them.
What if this is as good as it gets?
One of the schools I worked in was pretty rough. I found out that all of the kids, which the other schools had trouble with, were shipped to this one school. I’m not sure who the genius was that thought this would be a good idea. But, when the school eventually closed, no one was all that surprised. The kids there would fight pretty regularly. If someone said the wrong thing, or even looked at them funny, it was on. I even had one kid whose socialization skills were so low that he would pick fights just for peer interaction.

Why am I telling you this? Well, because I had a pretty serious flashback at work yesterday. It started with yelling coming from outside of my office. I was in the back room, and before I could make it to the front I hear Skinny-hoe yell,
(she calls me by Mr. and my first name, then) “you betta come get her. She’s crazy.”

Apparently Bug-eyes had been over visiting Thinks-with-prick. Actually Bug-eyes has a patch over one eye for some reason, so we’ll call her Bug-eye to be more accurate. Anyway, she was in one of the back rooms of his apartment when Skinny-hoe came over. So, as Thinks-with-prick is out spittin’ game to Skinny-hoe in the living room, Bug-eye comes flying out of the back, mouth going. This whirlwind of yelling and cuss words works it’s way out to the front of the building. The Accountant wanted to call the cops, but I told her no, that as long as it was just verbal and not physical that I would deal with it.

So there I am standing between these two little women who were not happy with each other. Now very few people in this world have ever heard me yell. Normally the amount of physical space I take up, combined with my calm-sternness usually means I don’t need to. This was no exception. I had Skinny-hoe go back upstairs while I walked Bug-eye back to her apartment. After getting Bug-eye to stop exchanging insults with Thinks-with-prick:
“You think you a playa, don’t nobody want your old ass.”

“Then why you down at my apartment, you crazy trick?”

I was finally able to talk with her. “He thinks I’m stupid, trying to run game on me,” she said, more to herself than to me. Now to clarify, she is a little slow, but I guess he’ll have to be slicker than that.

“I don’t know about that. What I do know is that he’s not worth losing your apartment over. Do you understand what I mean?” I say.

She does, and apologizes as she goes back into her apartment. “It will never happen again, I promise.”

One of my workers yells, "You tha man!" to me as I walk back to the office, but I'm in no mood.

This whole scenario is clearly Thinks-with-prick’s fault. He won’t just be straight with Bug-eye and lets the situation string along. He knows this; I think he just likes having two ladies fight over him. But not even he likes this kind of drama, and he comes down later to apologize also.

I didn’t know there was going to be a part three. If there is a part four I fear it will end with me strangling someone.

--I realize that the pictures I use don't always match the right part of the movie from which the quote came. It's for illustrative purposes only. Besides, piss-off, quit being so picky.-- AML

Thanks Mr. Obvious, you're a life saver

That little guy is the young raccoon that was hanging out in front of my rental office. The day before, he was sitting under the apple tree on the complex having a snack. I don't think he is doing all that well. He wasn't acting sick, but they are not normally out during the day. They are more of the nocturnal, scavenger type. Yet here he was, two days in a row, in plain sight.

Coons? When we got coons on the porch at home Momma would just run them off with a broom.

A few of the tenants were freaked out by him, but he didn't seem to mind. And since he didn't mind, neither did I.

Hey, Doctor Doolittle, enough with the nature crap. Get back to the tenant silliness.

Oh, right, sorry. Well, as long as we were talking about spiders last time...

I said enough with...

No, no, this is a tenant story. A tenant walked into my office with an inquisitive look on her face. She is a relatively new tenant, having lived in the complex only a few months. Overall, she is a nice lady, but leans towards the needy side. There always seems to be one issue or another. Plus, when she first came to look at the place she tried to haggle with me over the price. This annoyed me a little, but I can't fault her too much for trying. Then, when she came to sign her lease she tried to trick me into giving her the apartment cheaper by telling me I had said something that I hadn't. This pissed me off. I keep things professional for the most part, but I've never thought much of her since.

"I need your help and recommendation," she began, as she made herself comfy in one of the office chairs. "I saw a big spider sitting in the middle of my living room floor. What should I do about it."

Without saying a word, I leaned over, removed my shoe, and held it up.

She smiled and said, "No seriously."

"I am serious. That's what I do when I see one in my house," I said without a smile.

"Well, I killed it with a broom, because I didn't want to get close to it." She then launched into a long winded story, recalling the event play-by-play. I sat and listened to her, but I couldn't get past the thought: if the damn thing is already dead, then why are you telling me. In fact, even when she finally stopped talking, I still never figured out the answer to that question. As she was walking out the door, she said she was going to go to the store to find something that kills spiders. I made the facial expression equivalent of a sarcastic thumbs-up and shut the door. Sometimes I think people are just lonely, and I am the definition of a captive audience. Lucky me.