I'm back... As you might imagine the holidays this year were pretty hard and depressing for me, but I'm not done yet - so let's get the show back on the road.
2006:
Early in the year, my sweeties sister had stopped over for a visit and I was annoyed. She was expecting her first child and was chattering on about how excited she was. Sweetie and I were decidedly less excited about it than she was. He was outwardly polite but of the opinion that she was only wanting a kid because several of her friends had kids and she was feeling left out. I was irritated by the whole situation for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on at the time. Years later I finally figured out why I was bothered. The whole time I had known her, she was married to a guy who was adamant about not wanting to raise a family. And all that time she claimed to be on board with that, saying she didn't want kids herself. Apparently she lied about that though, and had started pressuring her husband in the hopes he would change his mind. When he didn't, their marriage began to crumble and she began seeing a different guy on the side - one who was willing to oblige her. So here she was, still married to her husband and several months pregnant by another dude. At the time they were separated but still living together, her husband knew the kid wasn't his but they hadn't filed for divorce yet because he was having medical issues and he was on her health insurance policy. According to her she still 'cared' about him and didn't want to screw him over by cutting off his health insurance. I figured out much later that I was bothered by it because I was sympathetic to her husband. Like him, I had always been adamant about not wanting to have kids of my own - and like him I had also found myself being dumped when I refused to change my mind about it. I felt bad for the guy. He'd been upfront with her from the get go that he wasn't into the kid thing, and she claimed to be of the same mindset and married him anyway. Inwardly I was worried. I had also been upfront about the subject with my sweetie... what if he was just paying me lip service as well? Was I going to get dumped again? Shit. I can not tell you how much anxiety that caused me. After she left, he reassured me that he wasn't going to ditch me because I didn't want kids, but I was still offended on behalf of my brother-in-law. I thought he was a good guy and he didn't deserve this. Fortunately she didn't visit our house very often so I was able to distance myself a bit.
It had been an unseasonably warm winter, and one 'nice' day in February I decided I wanted to go take some pictures of the Rockman statues by Tom Otterness in front of the Minneapolis courthouse. I had been there with my mom the previous fall when she had to file bankruptcy and thought the statues were pretty cool. I told my sweetie I was going to park out at the Mall of America and take the light rail downtown to take some pictures of them. My sweetie decided to come with, he was never one to pass up a chance to ride a train - any train, any distance. And I was always glad to have the company. We had a good time. It felt like a bit of an adventure and when the train picked up speed in the airport tunnel it was thrilling! The courthouse was only a block away from the train stop and I buzzed from one statue to the next taking pictures of all of them. When I was satisfied that I had taken enough pictures we hopped back on the train and returned to MoA to get something to eat before heading home to upload them to my computer.
My timing on that trip couldn't have been better. In March, we got hit with a massive snowstorm - the type they refer to as a widow maker. Around here that means the snow is so wet and heavy that people can die of a heart attack trying to shovel the sidewalks. And that's exactly what happened. The day after the snow storm, the owner of our apartment building knocked on the door and told me that my boss - the guy who ran our management company - had been found dead of a heart attack on the sidewalk in front of his house. I had worked for him for years and I was saddened by this news. My sweetie had worked for him too, and said that's how he was probably going to go out himself - shoveling snow after a blizzard. Since he was basically a one man show, the management company no longer existed and we would be getting a different one to handle the property. The landlord to me not to worry, I would still be the building caretaker and things wouldn't change much. Since he co-owned this building with his sister, she decided that we were now going to be managed by the company that took care of her other buildings. The landlord didn't much like this particular company, but she left him little choice. It was going to be her way or the highway.
It didn't take me long to figure out that I didn't care for the new management either. They were completely up their own ass with regulations and mandatory meetings about tenant rights. The old boss was decidedly more casual about his operation. I had never had to attend any meetings while he was in charge and if we ever had a problem in our building it was quickly solved with one phone call to him. But not any more... The first meeting I had to attend was an orientation for all of us who had been managed by the old company. The new company was so afraid of their tenants suing them for discrimination that they had reams of paperwork to discuss what we could and couldn't do. All I can say is it went on entirely too long and when it was over I, and the other caretakers, couldn't get out of there fast enough.
I discovered early on that if there was a problem, they weren't going to do anything if they could help it. I was informed by the Dungeon Master and the Purple haired girl one evening that the tenants in the apartment next to his were always fighting loudly. This was upsetting to the Purple haired girl, she'd been a victim of domestic violence in the past. I asked them to let me know if it happened again since I couldn't hear any of it from my apartment downstairs and I informed the management company of the situation. Their response was pretty apathetic, and they told me to call the police if I thought the woman was in danger. Ok then... So that's what I did. The next time I was informed they were fighting, I called the cops. The cops took half an hour to come over and by then the fight was over. The woman insisted that everything was just fine thank you and refused to say anything against her abusive boyfriend. The cops left without doing a thing. Ugh. As time wore on, these two would become a major thorn in my side and the new management refused to do anything.
My sweeties sister has a lot of tattoos. She had become friends with the artist who did my sweeties armband a few years earlier and as a result she had acquired a lot of really nice ink. One day in April she called my sweetie and told him the artist had an apprentice at her shop who needed to do some work to fill out his hours for his apprenticeship. Since she was pregnant she couldn't help out but she thought her brother might be willing. He was. She said she'd foot the bill for it, and we drove over to Minneapolis to discuss what he wanted to get done and set up the appointment. After thinking about it a bit, my sweetie decided to get a Walleye skeleton on his forearm. He had an old tat recolored. He also got two cuffs made of musical symbols - a G clef, F clef, natural, rest. I was jealous and told him so - I had a bunch of youthful stupidity on my bicep that I was wanting to vanish. "No fair! You're getting all this new ink and I've been waiting forever to get the cash together just to get my cover up done" I said. He nodded sympathetically and said he'd give up some of his chair time so I could get mine done too. Me: "Really?" Him: "Yes." Me: "Sweet!! Thank you sweetie!" Him: *grinning* "I love my sweetie!" When we went in for his next appointment, he told the apprentice our plan and the guy said 'Sure, no problem!' The next appointment was mine and I had him cover up the stuff on my bicep with a customized Celtic knot work Yin Yang symbol I had commissioned from the Dungeon Master years earlier. I also had an old tat recolored as well. I was grateful to my sweetie for giving up some of his ink so I could have some too and I couldn't have been happier with them. Sweeties sister got into a bit of a twist over it though. She was willing to foot the bill for his ink, but was not happy about paying for mine even though he told her he had given up some of his chair time so I could have some. The way he saw it, the bill was going to be the same whether it was him getting inked or me. That was the end of that though - she put the kabosh on it and there weren't any more appointments after that. D'oh! Sorry sweetie...but thank you! I love my tats!
In May the Purple haired girl began having a problem with her mailbox. The door was warped somehow and impossible to close. In the course of trying to repair it for her, I opened the box right next to hers and was nearly knocked over by the explosion of mail that flew out of it. For some reason the guy in apartment 1 hadn't been collecting his mail and the postman just kept stuffing the box instead of saying something about it. His car was in the lot but I knew he'd had a heart problem and thought maybe he was in the hospital again. I gathered it all up and figured I'd put it in his apartment for him. I grabbed the key for his place, knocked loudly on the door, opened it a crack and announced myself - "Management!" I didn't get an answer so I swung the door open and entered, planning to leave the mail on his table. The tenant was laying face down on the floor and I knew as soon as I saw him that he was dead. Oh shit. I set the mail on the floor and quickly left the apartment to call the police. I asked the people in the apartment next to him when they'd seen him last, and could use their phone. They said it had been a few days... I called 911 and told them I had just discovered one of our tenants dead in his apartment. 911 operator says "Are you sure he's dead?" I said "Oh yeah...I'm pretty sure he's dead." 911 asks "How do you know?" I said "His eyes are cloudy and his hands and feet are black, also he's not breathing." With that, the neighbors immediately ran to the apartment next door to gawk at him. Really you guys?! Are you fucking kidding me?! 911 said they'd send a paramedic. I said they needed to send a coroner. Then I hung up and shooed the neighbors out of his apartment, locked the door and went to sit on the front step and wait for the paramedics to arrive. They got there with some cops in tow and while they were hauling in bags of equipment I told them they weren't going to need any of it. They took one look at him and agreed. I had to answer a bunch of questions for the cops who told me I had done the right thing by checking the apartment when I discovered the mail situation. The new management disagreed and told me I had violated that tenants right to privacy by entering his apartment the way I did. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!! You have GOT to be kidding me! I guess I was supposed to have let the guy lay there until he started to smell before notifying anyone. I was pretty creeped out. He'd been gone for a few days at least and after they took him out you could still see the imprint of him in the carpet.
Fortunately, the landlord was sympathetic. He said he'd have handled it the same way and we had a good laugh talking about the idiots at the management company.
Life goes on. Sweetie was having trouble with his old motorcycle - something was always breaking on it, shit he couldn't fix, and it had been in and out of the shop. His mom decided that in honor of his continued sobriety, he should have something more reliable. She offered to buy him a new (used) bike and they found a nice Harley in her price range. And man, he rode the shit out of that bike! Suddenly he was jumping at any chance to go for a ride - if I needed something from the store, "I'll get it!" and he was gone in a flash. Lol, even if it was tampons! He didn't care, he just wanted an excuse to ride somewhere. His friend the Greasemonkey acquired an old chopper with plans to get it running and ride with my sweetie...
Around this time, sweeties sister had her baby. I expressed disinterest and my sweetie was happy for the excuse to ride his motorcycle over to her house to see him. She was still married to her husband but had moved in with the new guy. Meanwhile on the home front, the feuding couple (who I'm going to call Punch and Judy) were at it again. This time they had a screaming match that I could actually hear down in my place. Then I saw Judy go out to the parking lot and get in a car that arrived during the fight. At first I thought she was finally leaving him and had called for a ride - but no. They sat in the car for a few minutes and then her head disappeared into the guys lap. Eww. Really? Five minutes later she was trotting back upstairs and they were yelling at each other again. So I put in another call to the cops. This time when they arrived I told them about the fight, her visit to the car in the lot and that she was unlikely to say anything was wrong when they went upstairs. I told them the only reason I called them was to generate a paper trail so management could evict them. They were always noisy, slamming doors and fighting - and Judy was in the habit of going to the grocery store, hauling the shopping carts all the way home and abandoning them in the backyard of the building. This had happened three or four times before I caught her in the act. When I asked her to stop she got pissy with me and told me to mind my own business. Since keeping the building and the yard clean was my job, I figured it was in fact my business. All I could do was call the store to fetch their carts and report the shenanigans to management (who refused to do anything).
My one moment of triumph that month came when the Freak Show's dog managed to get out of his yard (chicken wire is ineffective at containing a pit bull - who knew?) and came down into our yard again. Me and my sweetie were sitting in the house watching TV when we suddenly heard a commotion outside followed by the sound of the dog squealing and yelping in pain. We ran to the window just in time to see our resident groundhog attacking the dog and practically pissed ourselves laughing. (The groundhog had made a burrow in our yard a few years earlier and the
nice old man across the hall from me was always feeding her. She'd had
several litters of babies there, and was so used to the old man that he
was able to hand feed her.) The dog had tried to attack her and she fought back. Freak Show ran out of his house, saw the dog in our yard and noticed it was bleeding pretty good when he hopped the fence to get it. He was pissed off and demanding to know what happened to his dog. We explained that the dog had escaped his yard and gotten into a fight with our groundhog, and the groundhog won. Now he was really pissed and wanting to know where the groundhog was - threatening to kill it. We told him that was a bad idea and convinced him that groundhogs are protected (no, they're not really) and he'd face jail time if he hurt it. We must have been convincing because he decided against it and fixed the fence instead.
Around June, my sweeties friend the Greasemonkey came over one day and told my sweetie that the transportation museum was going to be running one of their old steam trains through town the next day on an excursion. Sweetie was so excited you'd have thought he was five years old and the next day was Christmas. We worked fast trying to find out which track it was going to be on and where we should be so we could see it when it went by. I grabbed my camera and we hopped in the Greasemonkey's van to go scout our location. We were looking for a place where we could have a good view and checked a few locations and I took test pictures. One spot was a park by the river that was right next to the tracks. It started to get dark out while we were there and I went back to the van to wait while the fellas weighed our options. I was sitting in the van reviewing pictures and waiting for them when a squad pulled up and two cops got out and asked me what I was doing there. I told them I was waiting for my sweetie and his friend to come back, and that we were looking for a place to watch the 261 come through the next day. They wanted to know what that was and I explained that it was an old steam train and that I intended to take pictures of it. They looked at me like I had spiders coming out of my ears. "Why would you want to take pictures of a train?" they asked. "It's an antique steam engine! It's gonna be puffing smoke and they just look cool!" I replied. "Why wouldn't I want to take pictures of it?" They looked confused. "Okaaay...well the park is closed for the night - you have to leave." "Yep. I see them coming back now, we'll be going." The cops asked and got the same story from them so we were allowed to get back in the van and leave. The next morning me, my sweetie and the Dungeon Master raced to the location we decided to watch from. Sweetie was grumpy and certain we were late and there was a fair amount of squabbling between us as I fractured some traffic laws getting us there. We arrived and waited...and waited... Now I was starting to get grumpy. I'm not a morning person and if we missed it I was never gonna hear the end of it. Then suddenly I saw a puff of smoke over the trees in the distance. "I think it's coming" I said. Sweetie looked where I was pointing and agreed. We got our cameras ready - and there it was! It was moving pretty fast for a steam train and it was wicked cool with its big plume of smoke trailing behind. I snapped as many pictures as I could of the engine, and we waved at all the passengers who were smiling and waving back at us. And then it was gone. Time to race back home and upload the pictures! They were some of the coolest photos I've ever taken, I had the best one blown up to poster size and framed. It's still hanging on my wall right now.
That summer I also planned my first large planter garden. I pitched the idea to my sweetie and he thought it was a cool idea. I found the logs we used to build it at a free trade site online and with the help of the Greasemonkey, me and my sweetie went to fetch them. We arrived at the house getting rid of them and discovered that they were currently being a retaining wall - we'd have to disassemble it to get the logs we wanted. It was back breaking work but we somehow pulled it off and loaded Greasemonkey's van full. Back at home though, all I had to do was stand and point. I felt guilty about that, but they assured me that they could handle it. Once it was assembled, we brought in a truckload of dirt and filled it. When it was done it looked like it had been professionally built.
July we made our annual pilgrimage to Harriet Island for the Taste of Minnesota to see the bands play. Alice Cooper came that year and later that month Ribfest had Ted Nugent. Alas, I missed Uncle Ted - It was so hot outside I couldn't function, so I told my sweetie to go without me. He also saw Robin Trower at the Fitzgerald and waited in line to get an autograph after the show. Trower was one of the artists on my sweeties 'must see' list. He never missed a Trower show. We went to Pine city to visit our friends, have some barbeque and sit around the bonfire. We also went to my dad's place in Moose Lake and had fun driving around on his atv's. When we got back home, the Dungeon Master went upstairs to his apartment and then came right back down to inform me that it looked like someone had tried to break into Punch and Judy's place. I went upstairs and looked - it appeared that someone had tried to rip the door off it's hinges. The molding was hanging off and there was a bag of random crap sitting on the floor next to the door. I went outside to see if either of them were around and discovered our tall ladder was leaning up against the building at their window. While I was looking at that, Judy arrived home and I discovered that she had been locked out of her apartment. Apparently she went to the store or something and didn't take her keys. While she was gone, Punch took off and locked the place up. Instead of waiting for him to come back or calling management to send someone to unlock it, she decided to try and bust her own door down. When that failed she tried to break in through her window (hence the ladder). *sigh* The landlord was annoyed and management didn't care.
August was my sweeties birthday and for the first time I decided not to go with to his mom's house for his birthday party. It was just too hot and she always invited too many people. They always wanted to chat me up and I just wanted to be left alone. I didn't feel like socializing with his mom's friends and I didn't want to be rude to them, so I just didn't go. Later in the month I was over to her house by myself - I don't remember why I was there - but I remember that when I was helping her haul her trash can out she made some offhand comment about how it must be hard to put up with my sweetie since he wasn't very physically affectionate (or something along those lines). Wait, what?! What the hell is she talking about?! I assured her that not only was he affectionate but I was very happy with him. I was creeped out though - it sounded like she was implying something. I did not want to be talking to his mom about my sex life, and quite frankly it was none of her business if I was getting laid regularly or not. Why would she even bring it up? After that my attitude toward her began to sour.
September the four of us (me, sweetie, Dungeon Master and Purple haired girl) went to the Renaissance festival, and the Dungeon Master proposed to the Purple haired girl. She said yes.
Meanwhile back at home, Punch and Judy were still up to their usual shit and I figured out a way to make their lives miserable for a change. I noticed the tags on Punch's van had expired (it also wasn't running) and when I called management to tell them about the latest disturbances they caused I let that little fact slip. Without missing a beat, the new boss told me to have it towed. I couldn't believe it. After all the crap they had been pulling, it's expired tags that finally gets a response?! Wow. Whatever...I called the tow company and vanished his van on him. Finally some payback. The dirtbag was always trying to intimidate me when I had to deal with him, but unlike his old lady I wasn't scared of him and that really pissed him off. When the van disappeared he sent Judy down to ask me why it was towed. I told her it was towed because all the vehicles in the lot had to be running, insured and the tags current - his had been broke down for several months, and it had expired tags on out of state plates. She said ok and left. Five minutes later she's back and he's with her. He's holding a running tape recorder in his hand and immediately starts berating me about towing his van and how he's going to get me fired. I calmly (yes really) told him his vehicle was violating the lots rules and that management told me to tow it. If he had a problem he should call them. He hollered about how he was going to go to Wisconsin to get new tags next week and I had no right, etc.. I pointed out that since he lives in Minnesota he was breaking the rules by keeping his van registered in Wisconsin (he was doing it because Wisconsin doesn't require insurance - Minnesota does) to try and get around the lots 'must be insured' rule. So I had it towed. Then he got all excited thinking he had somehow caught me admitting to doing something wrong on tape and said I was going to get fired. I told him all he had on tape was me admitting that I had done what my boss told me to do, so good luck with that - and shut the door in his face. Hearing him have a hissy fit in the hall after that made it all worth it. Hey, normally I'm reasonable but this jackass and his old lady had pushed me to the edge a long time ago. Call me a bitch - I don't care.
A short time after that, the guy in the apartment across the hall from them moved out and I asked the landlord if I could move to that unit. I pointed out that I had been living in my current apartment for 12 years and it was needing repairs that would be easier to accomplish if it was vacant. I suggested that Punch and Judy might be better behaved if they had the caretaker living across the hall as well. The landlord agreed and gave it the thumbs up.
It took less than two hours for my sweetie and the Greasemonkey to move our stuff up to the new apartment. Punch and Judy noticed right away and their distress was audible across the hall. We were there less than a day and I could hear them planning to move out of the building.
Me and my sweetie squabbled briefly over how to arrange the furniture in the new place - in the end I went with his suggestion and felt stupid for arguing about it in the first place. The new place was awesome - we had a perfect view of the downtown skyline and tons more sunlight than the old place. It was the same size as the old one but it somehow felt bigger. Since we were now on the top floor it also felt less like we were living in a fishbowl, and there was no need for the pervert shield anymore. No one could see into our place without a high powered telescope.
The Dungeon Master ran a D&D campaign with his buddy the Gamer every weekend and the Purple haired girl had joined the campaign. Late one evening in November just as I was getting ready to crash, there was a panicked knock on my door. I opened it and there was the Dungeon Master looking freaked out and telling me the building was on fire. What?! I immediately called the fire department with one hand and started shaking my sweetie awake with the other. He heard me saying fire and was out of bed and dressed in seconds. It turned out the fire was in the Purple haired girls apartment on the first floor. The stoves in the building were from the 1970's and had push buttons instead of dials and her very rambunctious kitties had managed to kick a burner on while hopping on or off the counter. This caught a dish cloth on fire which then caught the microwave on fire which...well you get the idea. With the fire department on the way I raced around the building waking up anyone who was home and getting them outside. My sweetie and the Dungeon Master raced down to the Purple haired girls apartment and ran inside to rescue her kitties. While they were in there my sweetie discovered the hot burner and turned it off. There was no flame happening, it was all just smoldering and producing acrid black smoke. When the fire department got there all they needed to do was make sure nothing else was burning and they set up some giant fans to pump the smoke out. Her apartment was completely trashed. Fortunately, the apartment next to mine and right across the hall from the Dungeon Master had recently been vacated, so the landlord moved her up there. Now that all of us were living on the same floor together it was a lot less running up and down the stairs - that was a bonus.
When December rolled around, Punch and Judy had another knock down drag out fight. They waited until we weren't home to do it, and we returned to find random shit all over the stairwells. A bunch of clothes and personal items...and their cat. It looked like someone had just grabbed armfuls of stuff and flung it over the railing. I took a bunch of pictures to document it and once again called management about them. As usual, management didn't do a damned thing.
I don't know exactly when I noticed it, but during this year my sweetie started losing a lot of weight. He was already a skinny guy, so this wasn't a good thing. He didn't have any extra weight to spare. He was also spending a lot more time in the bathroom all of a sudden. At first I worried that he had fallen off the wagon and was keeping booze stashed in there, but one day while he was out on a bike ride I went over the house with a fine tooth comb and came up empty. I was starting to worry and suggested he get a check up with a doctor. He said he was fine and suggested that I was the one who should see a doctor since I was always getting the hiccups and that 'wasn't normal'. So I let it go. By December though, he was starting to have trouble catching his breath when he'd climb the stairs. We figured it was just that he wasn't used to the two extra flights he had to climb now. His mom had also noticed this shortness of breath and finally talked him into going to see her pulmonologist, Doctor Fail. Doctor Fail said it was probably asthma and prescribed an inhaler - the first of several misdiagnoses she'd give.
Despite all of this, we thought life was good. We were happy, our friends were near and we loved our new apartment.
