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OH, THE JOYS OF landlording... I could write a book about my experiences caring for the living spaces of the many, many people who have resided at Fair View Apartments over the past eleven and a half years. Fair View Apartments (named by the previous owner) consists of 17 apartment units, nearly all of them one-bedroom ones, and the average tenant stays about two to three years (actually, I never calculated this, it's totally a number pulled out of my head based on the fact that Dick and Jane have been there in apartment #16 for the whole eleven plus years, and apartment #14 has seen Ted as the tenant for ten of those same years, while countless others have come and gone.)

But what I want to tell you is that there are many moments that would definitely not be described as anything approaching joyful (just in case you had any misconceptions.) And such a moment occurred today when I was all set to go out into the perfectly pleasant sunny afternoon and join other volunteers with the Obama campaign to do some door-to-door canvassing. I was anticipating this experience, looking forward to the one-on-one interaction with the political undecideds I might meet. As it turned out...

I got a frantic call and spent the afternoon interacting with a fire chief (called to the apartment by the distraught tenant who heard water running and discovered it was a broken water pipe under her bathroom vanity); the township water official who was splashing around in the water and searching the apartment for the water shut-off valve when I arrived; a guy from the company that specializes in emergency clean-up, who tramped around over the soggy carpets and looked under and around and up and down and assessed the situation; the plumber...oh, thank God for plumbers; and the man and woman who arrived (hours later) with a truck full of big shop-vac-like equipment and heavy-duty fans. Lastly but surely not least, I spent time with the female half of the couple who call the place home.

She, Maria, had dashed off to an appointment when I arrived and I had gotten the task of unloading the items from the bathroom vanity while the plumber and the "restoration supervisor" stood by watching and waiting. Keep in mind that everything was dripping water--the very soggy roll of t.p., the box of soap bars, the tampons and large assortment of bottles and jars of this and that, three (count them) toilet bowl brushes, (though the toilet looked as though not a one had been in use for quite some time). I certainly wouldn't have chosen to clean out my own bathroom cupboard on a day like today, and then to find myself squatting on someone else's dirty, water-covered bathroom floor...well, you've already gotten the idea that I wasn't having fun, haven't you?

If you don't care for details you can just skip those previous paragraphs and read here that a broken water pipe ruined my afternoon plans. I wanted to stick a "for sale" sign in the lawn of the property and sit and wait for someone to drive by and take the whole place off my hands, yard-sale style.