Holy crap. I have totally neglected to update this journal with any news at all of trying to move out of the shithole we live in.
Apparently I’ve only been ranting to another online forum. GAH, where to begin…
We moved into this place in May of 2003. During our first winter in this place, we had an ant invasion from hell. The ants crawled up the outside wall, onto the balcony, across the living room carpet and got all over the couch and into my bicycle bag to enjoy a Balance™ Bar.
I can’t recall if it was February 2004 or 2005 that the ants came in through the interior wall, through the cupboards, and got into our food, and proceeded to also crawl into the freezer.
That year, I turned on the baseboard heater in the bedroom one morning, and ants poured out of it to escape burning death.
THAT was traumatising. I called the apartment management and bitched at them. They sent an exterminator, who sprayed poison right into the heating unit.
While the ants never returned, I’ve also never used that heater ever again because I’m not a fan of heating up poison in a closed up room.
These ants I’m complaining about are tiny brown ants by the hundreds.
In winter of 2005, the ants came through another interior wall to get to the cat food. They’ve also come through the interior walls in the bathroom to hang out in the shower.
But that’s not all!
During our first winter here, we noticed brown droppings coming from the ceiling, which is made out of what they call “popcorn” spray-on rubberised paint.
Northern California winters are wet. The rain starts in November and gradually turns to a daily downpour by February, clearing up by the end of April.
We thought that we must have an ant colony in the walls and ceilings. I shuddered at what would happen should the place suffer structural damage in an earthquake.
That summer, the sun was so hot that it melted the rubberised paint on our balcony. The paint and wood from the balcony stuck to my boyfriend’s bicycle tire! He had to replace it.
Both of my tires and the inner tubes melted from the immense heat!
The next winter, when the brown droppings came back full force again (and by full force, I mean we had to brush off our monitors and keyboards in the computer room nearly every day), we collected a sample of droppings and gave it to management, who never did anything with it.
Then, this past winter, when the droppings once again returned, we spoke to some friends about what the droppings could be. One friend identified it as termites! We were told to look for little holes in the popcorn paint. We found dozens! Termite nests above our heads in all of our rooms!
We collected another sample and complained to management, this time demanding them to visit our apartment. They came up, acknowledged the holes, and began patching them up with putty. I downloaded and printed out images of termite larvae and showed it to the guy doing the patch job. He panicked, and began looking for holes he hadn’t patched yet, so he could exhume a termite, larvae or carcass. He succeeded in getting a carcass and he presented it to the building owner.
During that time, one of my computer monitors blew out. I opened it up and thousands of termite droppings poured out of the bottom. I complained again to management and got the building owner to pay me a personal visit, whereby he scoffed and said I couldn’t prove that my computer monitor died from termite droppings landing on the tubes and board inside.
He offered to fix up our apartment right away, and said he’d have to drill screwdriver-sized holes all through the ceiling and squirt in poison to rid the unit of termites. I gaped at him. I told him that our unit isn’t the only one affected - that if our unit has termites, the entire building has termites. He was completely unfazed by this comment.
That’s when I fired this place. I told them they can tear this place apart after we leave. He asked when we were leaving. I told him we’d give official notice. I gave a verbal timeframe of June - August.
We had already been saving money for two months to move out of this shithole when I officially fired the management and told them to leave my apartment.
Our upstairs neighbor had been a pain in the ass for a year anyway, and the crime in this neighborhood has always been a source of worry for me.
The first Halloween we lived in this place, someone set the dumpster on fire.
Every year, about a month before the Fourth of July, kids set off fireworks and M80’s in the school field behind our complex.
There’s been multiple domestic disputes requiring the police to come speeding into our complex. One guy was served an arrest warrant through his sunroof in the parking lot, because he wouldn’t exit his vehicle. He tried to set it on fire in his car, so the police rammed his window and dragged him out of his car.
There’s been thefts, homeless people sleeping in the fire exit stairwells, and countless car break-ins on the street in front of our complex.
Then the murder happened in May and … oh damn, I just found an entry where I do talk about all this stuff.
Oh well. I went into more detail in this post, so I’ll leave it.
Anyway, so we’ve been saving money to look for a new home since last December, and just last month, we started really looking at places.
Well, on June 6th, I found a place I finally thought we would both like. We submitted our paperwork, and I was going to have my boyfriend view the place this weekend, but within 48 hours, we found out that we were accepted and chosen to occupy that residence!
So my boyfriend walked through the place on Saturday, thought about it, slept on it, and today he gave his approval. Without delay, I presented our 30-day notice to the apartment management. This week, we will sign our new rental papers.
The place that we got is in a Victorian house that has been divided up into a sixplex. Our flat is a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom on the first floor, under the stairs.
Here’s a photo:
The place has been completely gutted and remodled with new paint, wood floors in the living room and hallway, and updated electrical. Each unit has its own water heater. And it’s not in direct burning sunlight which melts things, like the place we’re in now.
The downsides:
- Uncovered street parking only
- No balcony or deck for visitors to smoke on
- No dishwasher
- Only one washer and one dryer on site
- No storage/shed/garage
Despite those downsides, I’m ecstatic.
Now, we have to get moving on the packing. Our move-in date is July 8th, which is four days after we get back from a holiday at Yosemite National Park to escape all the rabid patriots (Yosemite forbids fireworks and drunken misbehaviour).
