The first thing I want to say is I have been posting about every weird and annoying event with my landlord and landlady (whatever she is) for the simple sake of documenting it after it started to become clear this was going to be a thing with them. The second thing I want to say is I have always made a point to NEVER use their names – mostly because I wanted to give them a benefit of a doubt, but I’ve just recently learned that the landlady alone has several of my friends and family on her friend list too. Like over 20 people!

Oddly though the few times I have mentioned her name in person, no one claims to know who she is. For what it’s worth I have never mentioned her name to those who have her friended. Probably a good thing. As for the landlord, every time I have mentioned his name I’m immediately told I seriously need to move the fuck out. In those words.

The problem of them not fixing things I was able to explain away by saying our country’s (and state’s) economy sucks right now. Yes it makes me angry but everyone is in a tight spot. But the reality is rent should be to some extent covering the cost of repairs. On a business level it should not all be profit and income. I know for a fact this isn’t their only building they rent out and I’m hearing all their buildings are in crisis like this. So it’s clear they are not investing the money back into the buildings they are renting out the way good business minded people should. And now this happens.

This event runs deeper than them just making a visit and me ranting what little I did on Facebook. The neighbor that showed up with the landlady was the same one I talked about earlier in this post. And my children haven’t been home at the apartment since this post. In fact, my dad reported to me that the neighbor gave him shit wanting to know what he was doing waiting in the parking lot one day the first week when he was waiting for the bus to bring the boys to his house when I had an appointment. Since then I told the bus driver to just drop them off at my parents’ house. The neighbor knew my parents’ lived somewhere up the road because I mentioned it when I complained about the shower problem to her. This means they drove up the road hunting for my car and my dad’s truck looking for my parents’ house to do what they did yesterday. My car was in the shop yesterday. My car was not in my parents’ driveway when they showed up. This meant this neighbor identified my parents’ house based on the ONE TIME she saw my father’s truck. Which is really stupid because my landlord, the man whom I had signed the lease with, has my father’s phone number. Let me repeat: his phone number written is on the lease. There was no need for them to show up like that at all. None. Am I the only one here that feels this stalker like behavior is completely inappropriate and unprofessional?

The other thing I didn’t get into with the Facebook post is the internal chain of events this activity generated and the shit I had to deal with for the rest of the day. It started with me sitting on the couch, reading a book, and then suddenly hearing my brother and my son talking to someone at the kitchen door about the whereabouts on my children. It’s a woman and she’s sounding accusatory. So I fly to the door and I quickly stated that I put my two youngest sons on the bus that morning from this house and that Scholar Owl is homeschooled before it even registered that it was the landlady. I was fully prepared to whip out the copy of the letter of intent and the receipts I have as proof that they had been sent to the State Dept. of Ed and the School District Office at the beginning of the school year. So far not one child has missed a day. I’ll be damned if ANYONE is going to accuse me of truancy this year. That’s when the neighbor started yelling from the car about her daughter hearing stomping all night and the crying for their mother all morning even though she saw us leave last night. I told them my boys weren’t even there last night. They spent the night at my parents’ house. So now they are making all kinds of apologies and being creepy kind of weird about it. This is when the landlady started asking me about the apartment being haunted. I told her I hadn’t seen or heard anything to indicate that. I have had a cousin ask me about it. Little Bear has said something a few times. But me, nothing. But like I’ve said in my Facebook post, IT’S AN OLD HOUSE. Far as I know it’s about as old as my parents’ house. This is a fairly normal thing.

So they leave with more weird, awkward apologies and I’m left to struggle with refusing to call the schools to make sure that my children are in fact present in class. I refused. I didn’t call. Both schools know about my diagnosis. Last year I had problems with the new school nurse and her bullshit with me not possibly being a good parent without help. Fuck her. The last thing I need to do is let my paranoia win and make myself look like an idiot with phone calls like this. If for some reason my child ran away from school the staff would – and should – call me to notify me that it happened and the hunt in on. And yes, it is highly plausible for one of my children to make such an attempt. However, I know all the exits are locked once those bells ring. All exits are monitored while school is in session – or supposed to be. It depresses me to know that the schools feel the need to do this, but thanks to the public fear of terrorism this is their answer. So the likelihood of my flight risk child of getting out and running away from school is pretty low. Especially when they know he is a flight risk. He has already complained to me that he has been caught twice now on the playground. So no, I’m not calling. I’m going to hold the schools accountable and allow them to do their jobs. I will not helicopter my children. I will not helicopter these teachers. I will let this go. I refuse to give into this shit. For the record, I never received a phone call from either school and I was rewarded with great joy in seeing both my sons safely come off the bus yesterday at my parents’ house.

And then comes the remembrance this landlady has already proven that she has at least once been willing to enter my apartment without the legally required 24 hour notice to “inspect” my apartment without me there. She gave me a nasty, written report of that inspection. She called me a liar about the leaky toilet among other things. Apparently somehow the mold in the walls, the leaking ceiling and plumbing is due to my negligence and therefore my fault. Oh and she didn’t like how I cleaned the apartment and tried to tell me it was against the law. Which it isn’t true. As a tenant at will they can evict me for no reason so yes they can evict me for that but don’t tell me that laundry piled up on my bed, spilled cereal on the table, and dishes piled in the sink is against the law. Moreover at that time I still had a case manager and in-home services coming into my home trying to help us get our shit together. These people are obligated reporters. If it was against the law I would have been in jail already. I called the landlord up and told him that too. And then she signed the letter with the landlord’s name. He told me to disregard the letter, that it was nothing and no big deal. I took the letter to a lawyer and asked him about it and he said it was a legal document. He told me to keep the letter just in case and start looking for a new place to live. The only time in our state you can go into a tenant’s apartment without notice is if there is an emergency. Her letter never states an emergency or a reason for entering other than for an inspection, but there was no notice.

And since then this lady tries to come up with whatever excuse she can to get me to give her an invitation into my home. It’s part of the reason I took the window fan out of my window, because the whole time it was in there she always wanted to inspect it claiming she had been trapped in a house fire once. I believe her. Her personal bubble and comfort zone is bigger than mine. For some reason I get the impression I intimidate her when she speaks to me face to face. I think this is part of the reason she brought the neighbor with her even though she stayed in the car. I never intend to do that. Ever. I don’t want to be invading people’s space. I don’t desire to frighten people. But maybe this is why she keeps pushing.

I’ve already had things disappear from my apartment once prior to this particular event, but I can’t prove who did it and because of the nature of my children it was too easy for people to blame it on them. But the items that disappeared were just their favorite games. This was a little over a year ago and they still haven’t turned up. I would think if it had been one of my sons it wouldn’t have been items belonging to all three of them. The perpetrator wouldn’t have harmed, hidden, or thrown away his own things. What child does that? Particularly of note, all three of them had the exact same copy of Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS. ALL THREE COPIES DISAPPEARED from the apartment. Cases and all. Now if a child gets mad at another it makes sense to wreck the other child’s copy of the game and then flaunt how they still have their copy. But none of my boys were able to do that. At the time, this was a hot ticket newly released game in the area and Daddy made a point to get them each a copy. (And yes, Daddy made a point to make sure they all got new copies six months after this happened.) This happened during a spell when we had spent a great deal of time at my parents’ house. I came home one day to collect some things and found a bunch of unusual shit dumped on the floor. I found my middle son’s room, which up to that point was the only one kept orderly, wrecked. Scholarly Owl found stuff taken off his desk in his room. The stuff on the floor I discovered was what I normally keep in my desk in the living room. But there was no sign of forced entry and it was my children that were blamed and I was told that I must not have noticed due to my illness and poor housekeeping skills. So nothing was done about it. Not even a report was filled out.

So yea I was left all day yesterday stuck with worrying about that, babysitting my brother’s son. Waiting for my car to be fixed that should be ready for pick up any time. Meanwhile knowing that this woman could arguably used this ridiculous story as an excuse to enter my home. And once inside, all bets are off. She can look at everything. Inside all the rooms. Inside cupboards. Inside the fridge. Inside my desk. Everything. Which is fucking bullshit. I’m still debating whether I should give into this compulsion to investigate my home this morning.

This is the emotional and logical spiral chain of bullshit this singular event has put me in.

What I really would like to do is before school gets out is go over to my apartment and have my boys spend the night at my parents. Take a camera and prove I am the only one in the apartment, and then have the camera set on me staying on the couch the entire night displaying a time date stamp. I’m pretty certain that just seeing my car in the parking lot that this daughter of hers will make a complaint again about stomping and whatever else for noise pollution. But you can hear them below walking around and shutting doors. I wouldn’t even call it slamming. That’s how old this house is and how easy sound travels through the floor and walls. But I still say this complaint is made up and bullshit.

I would also like to prank a subsonic haunting on them but I don’t have the funds to buy the required equipment nor am I entirely sure I have the skill to properly pull it off. But it would be perfect for Halloween. Just knowing that it can be done is somewhat satisfying at least.