ok, here's the scoop
10:04 p.m. x February 05, 2004
So, I was going to write about the guy that almost died in the house I lived in before moving out here.
For those that have been reading for a few months or have read enough of my diary, you'll remember the black gunk. For those that don't know or forgot, I'll remind you. It all started here.
That black gunk wasn't iron deposits. It wasn't old body dirt (at least for the most part). It got better, then worse, and this guy kept coming out and claiming he fixed it. He said there was a clog in the drain and he took it out. That didn't work. They had the people that come with the little tanker pump truck to pump out your septic tank, and they pumped it out but it only helped for about a day.
I wasn't going to admit this then because I actually lived there, but the house stunk. At first it was like mildew, then it got to be like shit. I couldn't have anyone over unless I used a whole can of carpet freshener and lots of lysol on the house daily.
Well, it was the sewer backing up because the tree in my front yard was driving roots through the sewer line and it was causing stuff to back up. Not just into my tub, but into the basement of the apartment building across the road and into the toilet in one of the apartments in the duplex that was across from that. (You'd have to see the street to understand the set-up but that's not important.)
Now, granted, my rent was very cheap. I paid $375 for a 3 bedroom house that, without the tub problem, would have been a nice place. It wasn't that cheap because of the sewer. It had always been cheap there. I suppose it's possible that the landlord got some kind of kickback from renting so cheaply. He's a greedy fucker so I don't see why else he would.
Anyway, when I moved out here, I told her (the manager) that day that I was moving and I'd only be renting for two more weeks.
Nothing was mentioned about how I had to go 2 weeks with sponge baths and trips to my moms to bathe, or how I had to fit all 3 kids in the sink (one at a time, of course) to wash them before I moved. The manager was only worried about the coloring on Brittany's bedroom wall and a window that got busted by a neighbor kid. The window wasn't really my fault but I took resposibility for it since I said the kid could come over. Well, That was her only concern. Not the sewer or anything else. Both of the kids' rooms (Kimberley and I shared a room) got painted, and so did the living room and hallway. The window got fixed. The house was left spotless. I was denied my deposit because I only gave half the required notice that I was moving. I never signed a lease and never said how long I'd stay. I signed some little non-legal paper that said I'd give 30 days notice, if possible.
It wasn't worth fighting it though, because I probably would have only been entitled to half and $187.50 wasn't worth my trouble.
Now let's not forget that I was never more than 3 days late on my rent. That was only one time, and I borrowed money from my mom to get it paid before it was late enough to get charged fees for. Every other month, it was paid before it was due. I kept my yard clean, my house clean, and even planted flowers out front. My children, unlike other children, didn't destroy things. They said a few potty-mouthed things to other kids that they got in trouble for, but they probably got those things from these kids. Nobody in my house has ever said anything about sucking a dick in front of the kids or told any other member of my family to go fuck themselves. Therefore, I know they didn't learn it at home.
I was accused of running over some kid's bike, when I didn't. Even if I had, he was like 3, and he had no business parking his bike, let alone himself in my driveway. In the however many months I lived there, I never once backed out of my driveway, so that's quite an amazing feat I supposedly pulled.
Anyway, now that you have some background on it, you know that house wouldn't have possibly been rented out again, right?
Wrong!
Either they lit lots of candles or the man had a bad cold and couldn't smell anything, but a man moved in after I moved out. He was a single man from what I heard, and he had to move out for his own health because the smell of the sewer made him deathly ill.
Now, this goes back to the entry before my last one, where I said children can sometimes bounce back but in other ways, something that an adult can handle, a kid can't. Had I stayed longer, someone would have gotten deathly ill. All of us, probably. That's one form of illness a child can't handle, and one, a few, or all of us would be dead right now. Kimberley wasn't even 2 years old. There's no way she could have lived. Not to mention, remember how I said that I ws having weird allergy symptoms last spring? Like, I'd cough this dry cough and I know I was always complaining about feeling sick. Well, I think that's why. I think that's why I felt so much better when I came out here for Spring Break. It wasn't the climate. It was the house, itself, making me ill.
Yet that miserly fucker with all of his undeserved rent and the money from the insurance money that he collects at his regular job, couldn't afford to give me back $375 and not rent out that house again before he fixed the sewer? Give me a break!
This is the same fucker that wouldn't fix the roof that was caving in on my mom's house, or put new siding on, or put in the new windows that he promised her when she first moved in, til she moved out 13 years later. The only reason I rented that house was well, desperation because I needed to get out of the apartment building I was in, and because at first glance/smell, it looked like a sound house that just needed some air freshener from the stale smell that it had from sitting empty for a while. Not only that, when I looked at the house, I had brochitis. My nose wasn't exactly clear for a while.
My current landlord might be a fucker, but if I truly wanted his repairmen here, he'd send them to fix anything I asked. He wouldn't allow his property, not to mention his tenant, to have to be polluted by sewer gas, and if I struck a deal with him, he'd give me half my deposit if I was only able to give 2 weeks notice for a damn good reason. Plus, this house doesn't stink and it never has. If it did, it would be my fault, not his, and I wouldn't let that happen.
I hear the trailer park (I lived in a house but it was in a trailer park) is going to get closed down by the health department. Pearl says that every year, but if it doesn't, I'm calling, myself, to lodge a complaint before that cheap, nasty fucker really does kill someone.