The Deadbeat Landlord

My deepest apologies for falling off the map. A lot has happened in the last few weeks. The most stressful by far is our living situation. It appears that our landlord has not been paying his mortgage for some time. I started my new job, flew back from California and had a notice to foreclose posted on my house when I returned. A few days later a man came by to serve my landlord with papers (it appears he claimed this house as his primary residence).

So now the problem…. It seems we have about 2 weeks to find a new house and move. My husband and I were planning on buying a house in about six months when we could have a larger down payment. This is not going to happen now. Our timetable has been moved up a tad. I talked to the real estate company that manages the property and faxed them over the notice. They called me back and said that he has 5 total properties that are being foreclosed on and they only reason they found out was because of my notice. What the hell? I’ve been paying my rent, where has this money gone? He not only has gotten behind over $10,000 on his mortgage here, but has failed to pay the property taxes and the homeowner’s fees. Everyone wants a piece of our house now, which they think is the house where he lives. And to top it off, I have the same last name as this deadbeat, so things look even more suspicious to outsiders when I claim I’ve never even met the man. What are the odds?

The bank considers us illegal tenants since he had no right to rent the place according to his mortgage. It appears that they will give us anywhere from 24 hours to 7 days to get out. I have offered to take over the mortgage payments as rent (since they are about the same) to try and buy us more time to move. They said they won’t discuss this with me until they actually foreclose because I’m not currently an interested party. When I’m illegally in THEIR house, then I’m interested I guess.

Now I have no idea what my legal rights are, but I’m trying to find out (if anyone out there knows, please shoot me a message). Most of the real estate people have the same response, “you have no rights, get out now.” One of my friends had this happen to her in Florida and she said they had 7 days to get out. They didn’t get all of their stuff out and they lost what was left. The police actually came and made them leave.

So tomorrow my husband and I go on a massive house hunt. We went last week and didn’t find anything we liked. I cannot believe how people live!!!! Why the fuck would you buy a really nice house and then let your dog chew up the molding and the cats pee all over the place? Some places were just unbelievably disgusting, some were merely too big or small or too far from the highway. I’m hoping tomorrow we have better luck.

My Beef This Week

My beef this week is with people who have no sense of responsibility. What the hell is up with our deadbeat landlord? He gets rent from 5 properties (I asked and everyone paid) and pockets it all for 5 months? He should go to jail, and I hope he does. I hope at the very least he has to pay every cent of that money back plus a bunch of fines. But the asshole will probably declare bankruptcy and all of the rest of us responsible suckers will bear the financial burden through some means.

And what is with these other people that can’t even take care of their own homes? What are you teaching your children when you let your pets destroy your home like that (and judging from their house they had several kids)? One house we went into had 3 cats abandoned there INSIDE! I made the real estate agent call animal control. These poor cats had run out of food, who knows how long ago. For water they must have been drinking out of the toilets because they were damn sure peeing everywhere. No litter boxes to be seen so you couldn’t really blame them.

Many people don’t seem to care when they are inconsiderate or irresponsible anymore. They are either so self-centered they have no idea how it affects others or they are so self-centered that it doesn’t matter to them.

I went to a meeting in Los Angeles last week and there was this presentation I went to where I sat in about the third row. Two French physicians sat next to me and talked through the entire presentation in conversational level French so that the rest of us could not hear a damn thing. I asked them to stop and they did for about 30 seconds then it continued on. Other people shushed them or stared daggers into their faces, but it continued through the whole 1-hour presentation. The poor presenter was exasperated. What the fuck? We all paid a lot of money to hear these talks and they were oblivious to how their behavior pissed off over 200 people.

Yesterday I nearly killed a man in Office Depot. It was one of those “last straw” days. This guy held up 2 clerks and a manager for 30 minutes. 30 MINTUES, while he demanded to get his 10 dollar gift certificate, which he technically was not supposed to get since the special started today. He tore into those poor people for a measly 10 bucks and refused to let any other customer pass until he was satisfied. The one clerk who was having to check everyone else out in the store had line a mile long. I waited in that line for almost 30 minutes (after I waited in the asshole line for about 10). The manager finally gave him an in-store credit just to get him out of the store. What the fuck???? If I would have had 10 bucks cash on me, I would have slapped it in his hands and told him what an asshole he was. Instead I told him what an asshole he was for free, which felt just as good and was even cheaper.

So all of you out there, be courteous to your fellow man (unless of course they are being discourteous, then politely tell them to go fuck themselves after checking for weaponry). You never know when you’ll be some gun-toting person’s “last straw.”

The Schizophrenic Fighter

My Beef This Week

I never really understood that I could really love someone and hate someone at the same time until I got married. I remember hating my mom and dad when I was a teenager and even younger, but I never really thought much about it then because it was fleeting. I was usually just pissed because they wouldn’t let me do something I wanted to do, and the anger left as soon as I found something else to do.

I’ve been pissed at my friends and family but not the same way I get pissed at my husband. He can make me so mad that I can’t even speak. No one else can do that, although many have hoped I’m sure. Most of it stems from the fact that I’m a logical methodical human being; he is creative and random and thinks like no one else I’ve ever met. When he is mad, he comes up with these bizarre interpretations of events and comments that would only make sense to me if I were on crack. At first I thought I lacked perspective, but after several people have witnessed our seemingly LSD-induced spats, they told me they were just as baffled as I was. It is like arguing with a schizophrenic, which is why it leaves me speechless.

At work I’m paid to debate. Someone says something, I rebut, it goes on and on in a very professional manner. Typically, no one gets offended. But with my husband, it is like this: Me, “What year did Mama Cass die?” Him, “You never liked my mother!” Me, “What are you talking about? I just asked about Mama Cass, I wasn’t talking about your mother.” Him, “Haven’t I spent enough time with you family? I put up with your fucked up uncle D and your parents were here last weekend.” Me, “WHAT are you talking about?!” Him, “I’m going to divorce you if you talk about my mother like that.” Me, “Whoa, back up. Please tell me what you are talking about.” He then goes into a 5 minute rant about some ‘yo momma’ joke I made in December and how I disrespected his mother. This is where I’m speechless…

I love this man dearly, but he frustrates the fuck out of me. Now I understand (usually) why these random fights happen. They happen when he is pissed at someone else or frustrated/stressed about something and can’t verbalize it. He never was allowed to verbalize frustration or anger when he was younger so now as an adult, he fights like a 5 year-old would. Sometimes the shit he pulls out of his ass makes me laugh, which just pisses him off more, so I try not to laugh now.

But I’m not sure how to deal with this. If I point out what he is doing, i.e, you’re mad at your mom so you’re picking a fight with me since you can’t fight with your mom, he gets mad because I psychoanalyze him. If I try to rationalize and order the argument, he makes something else up to argue about or pretends he didn’t hear me. I can’t argue his way since I’m not schizophrenic. If I refuse to participate while still in the same room, he’ll pull up stuff from before I was born to be mad about. So what I usually wind up doing is leaving the room or the house until he calms down, but I don’t feel like this is the solution either.

These arguments don’t happen very often, only when he is really stressed (maybe 5 or 6 times in the 5 years we’ve been together). But they are weird and unsettling because it is like he’s a different person, an IRRATIONAL person. And I hate that person, but I still love HIM. And so goes my marriage conundrum…

Wash up, it's time for dinner!

Updates:

My mom’s doctor is still a loser. He told her that the fluid in her peritoneal cavity is actually gas. You can palpate it and tell that it is fluid. She said he never even touched her stomach. What an asshole. So she tried to give him another shot, he failed. Now she’s going to someone else.

I got a new job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it is the one that I really wanted to boot. Apparently they really wanted me too since they offered me more money than I asked for. I have never had that happen before. Now I can really tell that NIH guy to go and screw himself with the bird flu.

Mary started her new job today and had someone call at 11 AM to make sure she wasn’t falling through the cracks. It had been 3 hours! So I think she’s going to be happy and taken care of.

Since things seem to be going so smashingly well today it is hard to rant, but I know I can pull up something…

My Beef This Week

My problem this week is with people who don’t wash their hands after they use the bathroom. Come on! I have been to 5 states in the last week and saw this about 15 times in a week. I almost want to lecture the person leaving the restroom, but I know someday someone would punch me.

In the Microbiology and Immunology Department in grad school, I actually did lecture people that worked there. They should fucking know better. We had herpes and CMV on doorknobs and on random surfaces. We had shit that would scare your doctor growing on the copy machine. I washed my hands BEFORE and AFTER I went to the bathroom. Try explaining how you got that random case of herpes from work, it’s a motivator.

Two years ago at an infectious disease conference where physicians that specialize in INFECTIOUS DISEASES primarily attended, they did an experiment. They had med students sit in the bathrooms and count hand washers vs. non-hand washers. Outcome: Men 50% hand washers, women 90% hand washers. Now the women had the upper hand, pun intended, because there were less of them in the profession and they have entered into it later, WAY after Pasteur discovered microbes. Most of the older men were the culprits. No wonder we are transferring diseases all over the hospitals and having issues like “flesh-eating” Staph and antibiotic resistant Pseudomonas. The fucking doctors aren’t washing their hands after each patient OR after shaking the snake!

My mom says I’ve always been a chronic hand washer, ever since I was little. I think she actually made me that way, but she likes to pretend it’s genetic. I just don’t understand why we continue bad behaviors when we KNOW better. Human nature, I guess. But it’s not like we’re talking about complex behaviors like addiction or positive reinforcement, we are talking about being lazy.

I had one woman rationalize not washing her hands to me by saying that she never touches anything, only the toilet paper does. Guys are the ones that need to wash, she says. Um, ok. Do you think she’d be that confident if I went to the bathroom and then rubbed my hands all over her face? She better pray I’m really fucking accurate. They don't call it the fecal-oral route for nothing!

This is just one of those things that I bang my head against the wall about. We have to enforce hand washing in some patients rooms for healthcare professionals, not just visiting family. If trained, educated professionals can’t be trusted to do it, what is the hope for the general community? Think of all the diseases we could thwart if people all over the world would just pick up a bar of soap.

…now if only I could get everyone vaccinated…