House Of Various Pains

In an effort to combat the syrupy fuzzy-wuzzies of that last post, let's now look at the difficulties that have befallen my girlfriend and I while living in our three-bed, railroad apartment of sin. An argument could be made that we're beset upon by these various plagues because we're living in sin, however that would be an argument made by a fool. To it, then...

Roaches

Oh man, did we have roaches. We had whole football stadiums of roaches; if everyone that's currently thinking about buying tickets to the Van Halen reunion tour was a roach (not too much of a stretch, granted), that's how many roaches we've had in our apartment. Now, don't think we're a filthy people, or anything. Things do get cluttered around our place occasionally, no denying that, but frankly I don't trust people who's apartments are squeaky clean all the time. Those are the people who've got bodies in their crawlspaces. Anyway, it turns out we had the First Family of Disgustingville (which is a suburb of Grosstropolis) living next door and they were entirely the cause of our infestation. We almost never saw them, but our landlord told us that there were at least 9 or 10 people living there and that the place would have made a Hazmat worker gag. Packages of food left open and out, trash piled up, animal shit and piss everywhere... the works. It's a miracle we didn't have rats or, worse, hobos.

Mice

We did have mice, though. Fortunately we've got a cat who's always ready, willing and able to unleash hell upon any rodent that feels like being brave enough to show it's beady, hate-filled eyes out in the open. Girlfriend has handled the mouse issue in stride; she grew up on a woody patch of land where mice were a common occurrence. Me, not so much... Arlington, Texas is a lot of things, but it's not a home to many mice. Far as I know, anyway. Okay, truthfully, it could have been just blind, dumbass luck that prevented me from encountering one of those small, grey bastards until my mid-20's. Whatever. Mice freak me out.

Crazy Neighbors

Not "oh, you SO crazy" crazy... we're talking "keep the door locked, they might want to taste human blood soon"crazy. Besides the aforementioned nasty ones, we've also got the perpetually fighting, loud-cussing neighbors one flight below us (though, to be fair, they've been better recently) and then, the next flight down, we've got... Her. She's in her mid-thirties, is mildly racist, has fairy tattoos, doesn't seem to have any friends, complains to the landlord about everything, and will hold you hostage with overbearing, soul-destroying conversation if you're cursed enough to cross her path. Two incidents:

1. She and I just happen to take our garbage out to the curb at the same time a few weeks ago. I set mine down and she says, "Oh, is that where we're supposed to put our garbage?" I say, "As opposed to where." She sets her garbage bag a foot down the curb from mine. "Well, I thought we were supposed to put it here. I'll talk to the landlord about it." I roll my eyes so hard a passing taxi flips over and I walk away without saying another word or, it should be noted, punching her in neck.

2. Girlfriend's coming home from a hard day's teachin'. As she passes Her door, it's flung open and she galumphs out. She says, "I saw a cow walking down the middle of the street!" and then stands there, staring, as if Girlfriend and her should suddenly be best friends now. Girlfriend mutters something along the lines of "that's great" and hightails it out of there before she's entirely overcome by the noxious fumes of pure crazy. We never found out if she really saw a cow and I'm pretty sure we've still got our sanity because of that fact.

Ugh. Not doing the evil of this woman justice. You know those old ladies you see in bodegas that are arguing about the price of fruit and they've got curlers in their hair at 4pm and they smell like cat pee? She's them in their younger days.