Catching Up

You know I've been bad at posting when Blogger asks me for my password.

To sum up what happened after the events in my last post…the landlord made headway in cleaning up the apartment and the dogs and I lived in the tiny space upstairs.  I used an ex-pen to block off the top of the stairs when I went to work every day and they happily greeted the construction workers when I got home every afternoon…they said the boys were always quiet all day!

After week 1, I had pretty new tile floors installed.  Things appeared to be nearing completion.  I chatted with the workers when I walked my dogs on Monday of week 2 and they said everything looked pretty good for finishing up.  Then I came home from work that day and my downstairs drywall was all ripped out, all of my belongings and food in the kitchen covered in white dust.  Um, OK.  And my router was removed from the wall, along with the plug it goes into…ok so that will make working evenings difficult.  But it has to go up from here right?

Next day I came home and the rest of the wall and insulation was ripped out, you could now see into all of the neighbors' homes.  So much for security!  But still we went on, I assumed it couldn't get any worse!  Day 3 I came home to my kitchen all ripped out again…guess I won't be cooking the food I bought.  Still I had faith it would improve!

Well the shit hit the fan on Thursday of week 2…I got home from work to see my neighbors all loading up cars and leaving…huh.  Walked in my house and HOLY SHIT.  They had essentially poured an industrial-grade germicide everywhere downstairs and my house was a toxic gas cloud.  I could barely breathe and MY DOGS WERE UPSTAIRS.  I got the boys out quickly - thanks to closing them up upstairs, it wasn't AS bad up there.  I could not figure out how to breathe in my house, it was making me ill.  One of the neighbors said the workers had told him to stay somewhere else that night (but what about the rest of us?) - when I called the property management company, they said to just leave the windows open for a few hours.  I was LIVID that my dogs had been subjected to that, when the workers KNEW they were there, and very worried about the health of all of us after the exposure.  In the end, we fled to a hotel, the only one I could find with an open room that night (remember, with half of town evacuated from their homes due to the flooding, hotel space was at a premium).  After many tears on the phone with Jeff that night, we agreed I would not go back to this apartment - I simply could not trust our safety or the landlords.  The boys slept in my car in a parking garage on campus that next day and then we moved to a great hotel room at the Residence Inn where I could leave them there all day.  In the meantime I immediately launched into finding a new place to live.  And set Jeff to work dealing with the old landlords, because I could not even think of speaking to them without killing someone.

Long story short, I was approved for a new, MUCH nicer (and more $$ *sigh*) apartment.  After initial resistance from the property management company, Jeff was able to convince them that it was better to let me go and keep my October rent than face legal action.  I lined up some big burly men to help me move 3/4 mile down the road.  And on October 1st, nearly 3 weeks after the flood, we had a safe and dry home.

Next post, more about our FUN activities here!