......


YESTERDAY, I rented to an eighty-year-old woman.  She signed the lease on a second-floor apartment, no less!  "She's really a young eighty!" her niece had told me, when the niece called to inquire about the place.  Never before have I leased an apartment to anyone over age sixty-five, so this was a land-lording first.  I'm well aware, Dear Reader, that I could have problems with someone so elderly.  But I don't expect to have boyfriend issues.  Or extra vehicles appearing in the parking lot.  I don't suspect there'll be loud parties.   Or smoking.  Or job loss.






Of course, I don't necessarily worry about these concerns with much younger renters, either.  For instance, I had a far younger tenant  who behaved like an angel.  Even more astonishing, she never reported a single complaint about the apartment!  She didn't call me at ten o'clock at night to tell me the spin cycle on her washer wouldn't work. She never had a word to say about any of the appliances, actually.  And nothing about the plumbing, either.  Or her neighbors.  Or the parking lot.  Or the rental increase.  When she vacated a few weeks ago, I was sorry to see her go.  Perhaps she was every bit as sorry to leave the place (Her mom and dad just whisked her away).

I found one of her socks while cleaning the empty apartment, and my expressions of delight at finding a tenant's left-behind underwear were by all means another land-lording first! (Ooooh!  So adorable!!)

......