Meet The Neighbors

One of the (many) drawbacks to condo living is that oftentimes you don't just share a wall with you neighbors, you also end up sharing their musical tastes.  Whether you want to or not.  I suppose it could  be worse. We could have been subjected to rap or hip hop.  Or yodeling.  Instead, all we have to deal with is...

Barbershop Quartet.

Honestly, I didn't know this existed outside of Disneyland.  Our neighbor on one side is a member of one such group and they practice.  Infrequently, mercifully.  And luckily this building is well built enough that you can't hear it through the walls, so you only have to deal with it when the windows are open, which is rarely.  They don't sound half bad, as far as these things go, not that I'm in any position to judge.  And it's certainly better than what's happening on the other side.  Because on the other side we have... Hector.

Hector and his wife moved in in August, buying the condo next door right out from under the elderly hoarder who was renting it.  Any way you slice it Hector is just odd.  He's probably in his early 30's and is what we used to call "husky".  I'm not sure he has a job because I run into at all hours when I'm walking the dogs.  Hector has a uniform of sorts, wearing the same ensemble every time I see him:  black button down long sleeve shirt, black poly-blend slacks, black wingtips.  Rain or shine, even when it was 105 degrees, he's the man in black, like a pudgy Johnny Cash.  I even saw him out gardening one day in that outfit.

I ran into him the first time shortly after they had moved in.  He seemed a little anxious and amped, which I've come to learn is just normal.  For him.  He introduced himself and then blurted out "just let me know is the music bothers you."

What music, I thought?

I hadn't heard a peep out of them.

"The music.  Just let me know if we're too loud.  We sing.  My wife and I like to sing.  Just let me know if we're too loud.  We sing a lot."

Got it.  Singers.  Good to know.

I never heard any singing, but it was late August or September and we had the windows closed and the AC running most of the time.

A couple of days later I ran into him again.

"I hope I didn't scare you last night" he said.

Huh?

"I was crawling under your living room window".

WTF?

Before I could say anything, Hector explained.

"We have bunnies.  My wife and I.  We have bunnies.  We keep them on the patio and one of them escaped.  I found it under your window.  That's why I was crawling under your window.  Didn't mean to scare you."

Got it.  Bunnies.  Good to know.

Hector was officially creeping me out now.

Sometime in mid-September I ran into Hector again.  I was setting off on a walk with the dogs mid afternoon and I could see Hector walking towards us.  Dressed all in black, as usual.  And carrying a full blown Santa suit.  As he got closer I could see he had a demonic grin on his face, ear to ear.

"I can't believe I'm already getting calls!" he exclaimed.

You're a Santa? I regretfully asked.

"You bet!  And I'm already getting bookings!"

Yikes.

The next time I ran into him, he was apologetic again.


"Hope we didn't disturb you guys last night.  My wife and I really got into it.  The singing.  We were really into it last night and we got a little loud.  Singing."

What the fuck is with the singing???  I still hadn't heard anything and didn't know what the hell he was talking about.  By then I had learned to just smile, nod and jerk the dogs in another direction.

Then the hot summer weather started turning fall-ish, the AC was turned off and we would open the windows.  And then that's when I heard it.

The singing.

What to say.  I wouldn't call it classical voice, exactly.  It kinda sounds like he's aiming at opera.  More than anything else it reminds me of a trash compactor we once had.  Screeching, that the word.  Dear god, and loud.  Hector evidently fancies himself the Fourth Tenor, but seriously, that voice could etch glass.  And the poor dogs.  That just might qualify for animal abuse.

They were just getting around to butchering the holiday classics when the weather turned again and we were able to close the windows.  Hopefully, forever.  With a little luck, we'll be long gone from here before the weather warms up.

Size Matters

The boyfriend is a little slow.

Not lick the windows, short bus slow, but slow in the sense that it sometimes takes him forever to see the bleeding obvious.  So, after living here for nine months, it has occurred to him that this condo is too small.  I could have told him that the first day I walked in here, but this isn't about me.

And really, it is.  The kitchen is about the same size as one you'd find on an RV.  To get to the downstairs bathroom you have to turn sideways and shimmy past the washer and dryer.  We have a dining room table we've never used here because there isn't enough space to pull out the chairs and sit at it.  And then there are the closets, or lack thereof.  The "master" closet can barely fit a laundry hamper.  Which has led to another unfortunate situation... the "sunroom".

We chose this particular unit as opposed to other similarly doll-house sized units because it had a small enclosed patio off of the living room that we wistfully dubbed the "sunroom".  It eats up half of the space of the tiny backyard, which isn't such a loss because three other units look down on it and any time spent outside makes you feel as if you're in an prison exercise yard.  Plus, this time of year, with the sun low in the sky and blocked by the hills, the back yard receives exactly zero sun and after last week's rains, it's turned into a mold factory.

We imagined that the sunroom would give us a little more elbow room and allow us to hang onto more of our furniture.  What it has turned into is what this unit is sorely lacking... a walk-in closet.  Did I mention that it is technically outside?

It started with the boyfriend throwing up the ironing board since that was the only space in the house large enough to extend it.  With the ironing board there, the laundry soon followed and now it's a forest of clothes with shirts and slacks hanging off all the beams.  Absolutely all our clothes are now down there forming a hanging gauntlet you have to navigate to get to the garage or yard.  And then last week we unfortunately discovered... the roof leaks.  Badly.

So that seems to have been the final straw for the boyfriend.  Our lease here runs until the end of February and we've made the decision to move on to something more spacious.  Which brings up the perennial problem... money.

If our exile in Hooterville accomplished anything, it was to mask the severity of our drastically diminished circumstances.  Housing costs there were so low we were able to live substantially as we had before, paying $900 for a three bedroom house.  Our hovel here in Tinytown costs more than twice as much, and someplace larger will no doubt cost substantially more.

So the time has come to make some hard choices.

I wonder what a kidney goes for these days?

Dames des Chats

This place definitely gives off the vibe of "The Land of Misfit Toys".

Nearly everyone here rents and most seem displaced.  The condo complex seems less like a little community and more like a refugee camp.  Everyone just seems so... downsized.  Downsized by age or circumstance or the recession.  Or relationships gone bad; there is an inordinate number of single women of a certain age here. And quite a few of those appear to have taken the next logical step... Cat Lady.

I see them, peaking warily out the windows as I walk the dogs.  The cats, not the women.  And the phenomena isn't evidently limited to this complex.

I had to run to CVS to pick up a prescription and decided to pick up a few sundries while I was there.  As I approached the register I was bummed to see a line.  It was only three people, but this was CVS, a company that apparently only hires people who find the Walmart application process too rigorous.  Worse still, I hadn't bothered to wear my glasses, so I couldn't even peruse the tabloids while I waited.  So to pass the time, I turned the attention to the woman in front of me.

She was probably late 40's and careworn.  My guess was she was quite the looker back in the day, but she'd let herself go and now shuffled along in a velour track suit that had seen better days.  And then I saw her cart.:

Two boxes of wine and ten pounds of cat litter and too many tins of Fancy Feast to count.

And that was it.

My heart went out to her, and then I glanced at the woman in front of her.

Same thing.

And the woman in front of her, too.

All three... Cat Women.

The quantities and brands differed, but all three had carts chock full of cheap booze, litter and cat food. And nothing else.

My first thought was absolute sadness.  Actually, my first thought was... "are they having some sort of sale?  On dog food too??"  But my SECOND thought was absolute sadness.

We worked through the line and the woman in front of me finally reached the counter.  "And gimme a carton of Virginia Slims" she growled, sounding like Brenda Vaccaro on a bad day.  Well, there's that.

As she trundled out the door I thought to myself "there but for the Grace of God go I..."

But with dogs.

Hoard For The Holidays

Saturday we witnessed the rarest of things, a success story on "Hoarders".

Or maybe it was "Hoarding: Buried Alive".  Either or.

Now, I love me some "Hoarders" (who doesn't) but I have to admit it had gotten increasingly difficult to watch because there were never any winners.  Each episode seemed to end exactly where it started and over time the whole enterprise was becoming depressing and dispiriting.  Oh sure, occasionally they'd make a house kinda sorta livable, but when they'd return for a visit weeks later, more often than not it was even worse than before.  Usually, after days of shoveling, the best you could hope for was maybe a glimpse of a long unseen floor or forgotten bathroom.  Just once I wanted to see someone overcome the compulsion, to kick the habit, to break free of that monkey on their back.  The crocheted monkey cozy they'd found at a garage sale.

And Saturday was the day!  I can't remember his name...  George?  They always seem to be named George.  Or Debbie.  At the start, George seemed to be a particularly hopeless case.  His home was so full of crap that the back rooms had been sealed off for years and the the only way you could traverse the rest of it was by crawling on your belly atop six feet of God-knows-what with your ass scraping the ceiling.  I almost turned it off.  Almost.

But damned if George didn't do it!  It took three massive trucks to haul away his shit, but by the end of the episode his house looked great.  OK, maybe not "great", but still.  There were still a lot of boxes but  now you could at least make out discernible rooms.

We went to commercial break and when we returned the words "TWO MONTHS LATER" flashed on the screen and I thought to myself "This too shall end in tears..." but miracle of miracles, the house looked even better than before.  All the boxes were now gone and it seems our George has quite the knack for interior decorating.  One man's garbage is another man's ironically hip collectable.

Originally I watched "Hoarders" strictly for the entertainment value, but since we moved here I also watch to try and get some insight into my neighbors.  This condo complex is a huge nest of Hoarders.  They should rename it "Rancho de Firetrap".  Almost everyone parks on the street because all of their garages are filled to the rafters with junk.

Our original next door neighbor was a kindly older lady who grew considerably less kindly when the owner of the unit she rented sold it out from under her. She had so much crap it took her weeks to move it all out, and even then she appears to have just thrown in the towel and left a ton of junk in her open garage and on her patio.  The other residents swooped in like a swarm of locusts and picked it clean in minutes, ferreting it all back to their own little hidey holes.

Our lease is up in a few months.  Here's to hoping we can make it out before this place burns to the ground.  It's just a matter of time.

The Sound of Silence

The first time I saw this apartment was the day we moved in.  Circumstances were such that once the boyfriend found it, there wasn't time for me to drive down from Bumfuck to check it out, so I had to give my blessing based only on the images online.  I didn't know at the time about the dollhouse proportions, but there was one thing that gave me pause... It was located across the street from a high school.

It wasn't so much the traffic and noise I was concerned about.  It was...

Band.

More specifically, Marching Band.

I know of what I speak having spent fours years blaring a trumpet in one myself.  I remember the early morning practices, and evenings and weekends too.  I remember the constant repetition of badly arranged pop tunes, over and over and over again.  I had visions of being blasted awake by "Call Me Maybe" all in brass.

We moved here in March, well past the football season.  Last month as I saw the high school gearing up for the new year I girded for the worst.

And then... nothing.

School has been in session for weeks now, and yet, no band.

I know they have one.  There's a ginormous fifth wheel trailer emblazoned with the band insignia parked across the street.

Maybe they practice elsewhere?  That would explain the trailer but seems like a logistical nightmare.  Not to mention a not particularly wise use of tax dollars.

And then, yesterday morning, I was walking the dogs.  We were taking our time since I had nowhere to be and nothing to do, other than look for work.  And as we descended down the hill towards the street and school, I saw a half dozen golden Sousaphone bells gliding silently over the fence of the athletic field.  Looking closer, through an open gate, I could see the entire band, instruments raised, flanked by flag girls and rifle twirlers, all performing  intricate looking formations.

In silence.

I strained to hear and could just barely make out the sound of one snare drum, quietly banging out a staccato cadence, marking time.

WTF?

"Silent Marching Band"?  How the hell does that work?  I wouldn't think that would make for a memorable half-time show.

Do they just lip-synch?  Maybe the times have changes and they just march around with prop instruments to pre-recorded tracks?  If so, then I think we owe a collective apology to the surviving half of Milli Vanilli.

On further reflection it occurred to me that this has got to be one of the quietest high schools in the world.  You never hear anything.  No bells, no announcements, no pep rallies, no nothing.

If I had to guess I'd probably blame it on the neighbors.  I think it's a case of NIMBY-ism run amuck.  They move right next door to a high school and them raise a stink about the noise... of a high school.  Probably threaten to sue every time they hear a glockenspiel.

Even I have to admit that's kind of sad.

Not that I'm complaining

Park Place

Little did we know when we moved here we'd have to pay for parking.

Not technically.  We have a two car garage.  The only problem is it currently only fits one car.

While we downsized our lives moving here to Tinytown, we weren't able to downsize our stuff.  We tried, selling off whole rooms of furniture before the move.  And yet, it wasn't enough.  As the movers pulled away and we barely had room to move about the condo, the garage was still half full of boxes.  We assumed this would be a temporary situation.

Over the past six months, we've tried to clear out the garage, to the point that every square inch of the condo now resembles a Russian nesting doll, with things within things within things.  Still, not enough.

Initially I parked nearby in "guest parking".  After a few days of that I walked out to my car to find a parking ticket.  Not a real one.  A ticket from the rent-a-cop who patrols the complex after hours, the man who has become my arch-nemesis...

"Officer Jacobson".

After the first ticket I wrote a very nice note, explaining that we had just moved in and were trying to rectify the situation and left it under my windshield wiper.  The next day I walked up to the car and saw another ticket.  Again from Officer Jacobson.  Only this time he had violently circled the portion saying that after three tickets the car would be towed.

And so began a game of cat-and-mouse with me and Officer Jacobson.  I'd park in guest parking for a day or two until I received another ticket and then went and parked my car on the street for a few days.  Which is a pain in the ass.  The nearest street parking is blocks away.  After giving Officer Jacobson a few days to cool off, I'd resume parking in guest parking and we'd start another round.

Until last month.

I had only parked in guest parking for one night when I went out and discovered my car was gone.

Towed.

By Officer Jacobson.

Without even giving me the customary fake ticket.  Asshole.

It cost $286 to get my car back and another $40 for the cab ride to the tow yard.  Cabs in OC are worse than New York!

Since then I've decided not to take any more chances with Officer Jacobson.  I've been parking on the street now for weeks and schlepping everything clear across the complex.  The only problem now is I'm still getting tickets.

And these ones are real!

Really...."street sweeping"?  I got my third one last week.  At $40 a pop.  For some reason I've got a mental block when it comes to Tuesday street sweeping.

I finally figured out a solution.  I usually have lunch at least once a week with my folks so I've just scheduled it now for Tuesdays to make sure I get my car off the street.  The only problem is I need to park the car in guest parking until 5, when "street sweeping" officially ends.  I'm afraid if I forget I'm parked there, I'll walk out the next morning to discover Officer Jacobson has struck again.

At this rate, parking is going to cost me $1000 a year.

You’re Soaking In It

I'm normally not one for communal swimming pools, but I have to admit that during these hot, humid dog days of summer, the condo complex pool sure looks inviting.

Until you see this sign...

 
Allow me to translate and simplify the crypto-medical legalese...

"DON’T LET YOUR KIDS SHIT IN THE POOL."

Obviously this is some sort of ongoing issue otherwise why go to the expense and trouble of manufacturing a sign and bolting it to the gate?  The complex is evidently rife with pool-shitting kids.

So, thanks, but no.

Membership Has Its Privileges

"George's Mancave"

Sounds intriguing, no?

A little mysterious?

Maybe dangerous?

It's just down the street here in the condo complex, a "Gentleman's Club".

Run out of one of the garages by, one would presume, George.  A discreet, hand carved sign by the side door is the only evidence of it's existence...

"George's Mancave"

I caught a glimpse of the inside several months ago when the garage door was up and George was hosing it out; even a Gentleman's Club needs a good Spring Cleaning.  There were a couple of ratty looking couches and even worse looking barcaloungers.  And a giant flat screen.  What little ambiance it has is evidently provided by a wall of neon beer signs.

The dogs and I walk by it all the time and it's apparently where all of the men of the complex congregate, day and night.  Handfuls during the week, but it can get to overflowing on the weekends.  You can always hear the muffled sounds of manly men and televised sports and the occasional "Pffft!" of freshly opened beer cans.  If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say Pabst Blue Ribbon.  With the recent hot weather George has taken to lifting the door a few feet for ventilation so now you can make out a gaggle of hairy man legs.

I've yet to receive an invitation and I doubt I ever will.  And that's OK.  As Groucho Marx famously said, I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.

Plus, I think a working knowledge of sports is required.

Lizardmania

It's not like we didn't have lizards at our house in LA, but back then the dogs paid them no mind.  Things are different here in the OC and I think we can chalk it up to one thing...

Detachable tails.

The dogs discovered that neat little trick on Easter Sunday.  A lizard had unwittingly wandered onto our tiny back patio and caught the attention of the dogs.  It tried to beat a hasty retreat but the dogs nearly caught it and that's when it pulled the rip cord and left it's squirming back end twisting in it's tracks as a diversion.  The dogs found that delightful.

Things haven't been the same ever since, especially with my little girl.  She has lizard on the brain.  They're smart, those dogs.  They seem to instinctively know that the lizards only come out mid-day, so the morning and evening walks are pretty sedate.  The lunchtime walk is another matter entirely.

One o'clock is the lizard witching hour.  If perhaps I'm preoccupied with work and not watching the clock, my little one will let me know it's time by frantically climbing up my leg with a manic look in her eyes.  I saddle them up and then we're off to the races.

I politely refer to my little girl as "big boned."  She's a bit on the husky side and not known for her speed.  On the morning and evening walks, she dawdles, she sniffs, she oftentimes ends up being dragged just to keep the show moving.

On the Lizardwalk, however, she turns into a pit bull.

She moves like a jackrabbit.  She remembers every single spot she has ever encountered a lizard and we visit them all like the Stations of the Cross.  She's discovered the advantage of the element of surprise, so she launches herself into the shrubs without looking.  She knows by now that the lizards like to hang out near the fences and walls, so she pounces around corners in "shock and awe".

Yesterday we hit paydirt.

We hadn't even gone 50 feet and they had already treed two fairly large lizards and now they were possessed.  They looked rabid.  Their leashes were snapped to full length and they were practically pulling my arms our of their sockets.  Now they were dragging me, zigging and zagging through the complex to all the known spots.  And then we got to the pool deck and my little girl took a flying leap at a bush near the gate, a known lizard hangout.  There was immediate pandemonium from inside the bush but I couldn't make out what was going on when suddenly the biggest rat shot out the side and rocketed across the pool deck so fast it almost fell into the pool.

The dogs have never encountered a rat.  And they wanted more.

If I thought the dogs were manic before, I hadn't seen anything yet.  The rest of the walk was a harrowing experience.  The dogs thought they saw rats everywhere and were diving into every random shrub.  Much time was spent untangling leashes from branches and as we mercifully approached the house, my little girl made one last attack, flinging herself into a juniper bush.  Jackpot!  Out flew the most frightened looking squirrel I've ever seen.  My daughter took off after it it, the leash unspooling like the fishing line in "Jaws".  When it reached the end, it snapped.

The squirrel escaped into a tree.  This time.

I picked up a new leash on the way home from school last night.  My daughter is sitting her beside me as I type this.

Watching.

She knows it's almost time.

Where There's Smoke

Our condo here in Tinytown came with one unexpected bonus, the view.

Not of any scenery, but of the hot fireman who lives two doors down.

He appears to be in his early 30's and is built like a Greek god and has a penchant for working on his car with his shirt off.  In short shorts.

So you can imagine my distress when a "For Sale" sign appeared outside his condo yesterday.

That makes four immediate neighbors that have either moved, are moving or have signaled their intentions to move in only four months.

Do they know something we don't know?

Legends Of The Fall

Yesterday morning the alarm went of at 5:30, as it does every morning.

I hit the snooze button for the boyfriend, as I do every morning.

I got up to go downstairs and make coffee, as I do every morning.

And then I fell down the stairs.

Which is not something that happens every morning.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you I'm less than graceful.  On more than one occasion, I've been called a klutz.  But this was decidedly not my fault.  The light in the stairwell doesn't work and the carpet on the stairs is cheap and old.  In the darkness I misplaced my foot and my heel hit the worn edge of the top step and shot out from under me.  My foot skimmed over the next couple of steps, the matted synthetic carpet acting as a greased skid, and down I went.  I'm surprised the horrible carpet didn't catch fire from the friction.  In hindsight, I probably would've been better off if I'd let go of the handrail and let gravity take it's course, but in the split second I first felt myself falling I executed a Vulcan death grip on the rail which accomplished nothing more than snapping my arm back into a direction it was never intended to go.  And ultimately it was for naught, since all it did was delay the inevitable for a nanosecond.

I tumbled halfway down the stairs.  I would have gone all the way down but the stairs switch back so I ended up in a ball on the landing.  I was stunned, to say the least, and in a lot of pain.  At some point on the way down I had bounced off my left shoulder, elbow and knee.  My right shoulder, on the arm that had held onto the rail, felt like it had been dislocated.

I assumed the noise would have waken everyone up; it sounded as if someone had dumped a bag of bowling balls down the stairs.  And if that didn't do it, surely my moaning and wailing would.  I anxiously looked to the top of the stairs expecting to see the shocked faces of the dogs and the boyfriend.

Nada.

In the silence I could make out my older dog snoring.

I flashed on the "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercial.  I took a moment to collect myself and assess the situation.  Although everything was throbbing nothing appeared to be broken.  I gently got up and slowly made my way down the remainder of the stairs.  I was heading to the kitchen when I started feeling light headed.  I could feel the blood drain out of my face as I broke out in a cold sweat.  I knew this feeling - this is how I felt several years ago when I broke my leg. I detoured to the couch before I passed out.  On second thought, it did now appear that I had actually dislocated my shoulder.  I sat on the couch for a couple of minutes wondering what I should do when suddenly I felt my shoulder snap back into place.  Voila!  Really?  That's how it works?  Within a minute or so, I felt fine.  Banged up, but fine.  I limped to the kitchen and put the coffee on.

As I hobbled back up the stairs, the snooze alarm went off and boyfriend was pulling himself out of bed.

"Everything OK?" he asked, obviously seeing I was still in some distress.

"Everything's fine" I said.  "Coffee's on and I fell down the stairs."

Later that day, In the mail I received my complimentary AARP card.

Is this really how it's going to be?

I have glimpsed the future, and it looks very painful.

Welcome To The Dollhouse

If there was one saving grace of our unfortunate exile in Hooterville (and that's a big “if”), it was that the cost of housing was so cheap we were able to rent a fairly large house.  Not only did it allow us to accommodate all our stuff without the humiliation of having to sell things off or trundle them off into storage, it also allowed us to live in denial about our drastically diminished circumstances.  Since we're basically homebodies anyway, we could blithely go on living our lives as before and ignore the fact we were doing in the middle of fucking nowhere.

That isn't the case here in Orange County.

Here, for twice the price, the best we could do is a condo that's approximately half the size of where we once lived.  Welcome to the dollhouse.

Ironically, now that things are actually looking up, I feel poor.  Two years ago, at the depths of our despair, life still felt kinda roomy.  Not so here.  We were able to fit roughly half our belongings into the condo.  The other half still sits boxed in what is theoretically my parking space in the garage.  We've been here two months and for the first three or four weeks we naively believed that with thoughtful planning and a creative use of space we'd be able to get the bulk of the remaining items into the house.  Turns out... fat chance.  Looks like I'll be parking on the street for the foreseeable future.

Truth be told, I actually like living in a smaller space.  It's certainly much easier to clean.  The dogs, however, hate it.  Where once my older dog had a huge house as a racetrack, he now has to be content with running tight circles around the coffee table.  And the little dog, used to chasing tennis balls down a long hallway, has to settle for having them bounced off a wall. I know they're unhappy because they show me in the way they know best, forgetting they were ever housebroken.

I imagine this is a lot like living on a boat or in an RV except that it never goes anywhere.  If I have any regrets it would probably be for my partner's and my taste in Mid Century Modern furniture.  All those sharp angles and hard edges make for a perilous existence in such a small space.  It's like living in the Cave of Swords.  I've lost track of the number of times I've come close to severing my femoral artery on the glass coffee table.  The easiest solution is just to move very slowly, to make no sudden moves, to move through the house as if you're practicing tai chi.  That's going to have to suffice until we can wither afford softer furniture.  Or move.  Again.