Just got a phone call from Tweedledumb, our apartment manager, who had some news to share.

Ahem.

The Cake Eater Duplex will be going up on the market after the first of the year.

Oh, Joy!

Apparently, the Great White Hunter landlord has had it with renting properties out and wants done with all of this nonsense of pesky tenants asking him to do stuff. All of his properties are going up for sale, and I think he has five or six in the nearby vicinity.

Sigh.

Tweedledumb told me not to worry; that whomever buys this place has to honor our lease. Well, I'm not in full-on fret mode...yet. The problem is, if the house sells quickly, we're screwed because our lease is up at the end of February. Which would be a perfect situation for the new owner: they'd either be able to up the rent to an insane level or they'd be able to tell us, hey, we're not going to renew your lease because we want someone new---which is completely within their rights once GWH has sold the place. While I'm not discounting the theory that tenants who are already firmly ensconced and who pay their rent on time have something of value to offer these new potential owners, you just never know what people want to do. Never mind that a new landlord adds all sorts of potentially uncomfortable new variables we've never had to deal with in the past simply because our landlord ignores us (except on the first of the month). That is absolutely the least of our problems right now.

All, however is not lost. We have a few items in our favor:

1. GWH is asking an extorbitant sum for the building. And when I mean extorbitant, I mean obscenely extorbitant. As in, I think a snowball has a better chance of surviving hell than he has of getting his asking price. And knowing the man and his money habits, he's not going to settle for what I think someone would be willing pay for this place, which is about half of what he's asking. He may want out of the slumloard racket, but he's not going to take less than he thinks this place is worth and if that means keeping it on the market for years, he'll do it.

Mr. H., who is now Mr. Real Estate, has said that the market in town has gone from being a seller's market to a buyer's. Let's hope he's right and that GWH has put the building up for sale at the wrong time.

2. The place is a wreck. And I mean that. A wreck. There is mold in the basement. (Our former neighbors from downstairs were, at one time, considering suing GWH because their son's doctor swore the mold was the reason their son contracted Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.) The sewer line to the street needs to be completely redone because it's tangled in tree roots. (If I really wanted to screw GWH over, well, I could also tell the new owner that the sewer line backed up in the basement a few years ago and GWH wouldn't pay to have the place cleaned professionally. Because he didn't. A mop and a bucket was adequate enough for his purposes.) The building is not plumb, meaning the foundation is shoddy. Tweedledumb, when tearing out the old concrete in our little parking spot, hit the garage with the Bobcat he was driving and tore out a good chunk of the garage foundation. How the garage is still standing, I don't know. Have no clue, but that thing is going to fall down sooner rather than later, because there also happens to be a leak in the garage roof (which used to double as our deck) and it's rotting from the inside out.

If this place passes inspection, I'll be really surprised.

But the place has a new roof. It also has a fresh coat of insulation in the attic. And two years ago GWH spent a boatload of cash putting in new furnaces, new windows and new carpeting, but these were completely superficial repairs. (He would have left the old boiler in if he hadn't been mandated by law to replace it. We have laws here in Minnesota about working furnaces.) He hasn't been forced to upgrade the place seriously because he's owned this building for thirty some odd years. Meaning, he's grandfathered in on certain codes. This is the reason he hasn't authorized Tweedledumb to fix the garage. It would have to be torn down and started over from scratch. This would be a problem for the new onwer because garages have to be bigger nowadays and there's no way they could put a new garage, with lots of space, on the current lot because it's too small for it to fit.

This could be good for us. The building would have to be brought up to code, which would be pricey for whomever bought it. On top of the purchase price, I don't think there would be many takers.

Of course, all of this is moot if someone just decides they want to buy the lot because of the established trees, raze the house and start over. Which is a popular option around here. There was some sort of Cake Eater City legislation pending about our neighborhood in particular where they were trying to outlaw that sort of behavior, but I don't know if it went through or not. I suppose I'll have to go and find out.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for us, kids. All I want right now is to make it through to the end of January without an offer on this place. I just need the new lease to make its way here from GWH so we can sign it and Fed Ex it back. Because...

I really don't want to move!

Posted by: Kathy at 12:38 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 990 words, total size 5 kb.

1 Yuch! Hope things work out for you. I was in a similar situation a few years ago. My original landlord, who was a wonderfull and kind man, sold the duplex I was renting to a complete nutcase who refused to honor things explicitly in my rental aggreement: like mowing the grass. His equally loony wife would call at 2 am to inquire if the water was running since they had to pay the water bill. Finally, they refused to renew my lease and kicked me out with a 10 day notice so they could move a cousin in! On the upside, I found a MUCH nicer house to rent and have lived here very happily for several years. In retrospect, it was actually a positive thing, although it would have been nice to have gotten my deposit back........ Best of luck to you!

Posted by: George at December 30, 2004 01:22 PM (IZNUO)

2 Thanks The husband just looked up the county's assessment of the property online and it's valued at $120K less than the asking price. Keep your fingers crossed. And on a side note---how'd the turkey turn out on Christmas?

Posted by: Kathy at December 30, 2004 01:40 PM (E0v6D)

3 I hope that all will work out best for you. But I must admit I am concerned. Mold in the basement? That is not a good thing. I've personally known three people who have had their houses condemned by the EPA for mold. (It was a scary thing for them to have to get into a space suit and go in - with supervision - to get personal effects.) Now I know not all mold is the bad kind, but if GWH isn't anxious to address the problem now it will just get worse.

Posted by: The Maximum Leader at December 30, 2004 02:10 PM (jmfvP)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Men, you can skip on by---unless you're looking for a present for the wife or girlfriend and would like a suggestion.

For my birthday last month, a friend gave me a girly-girl gift---bath salts in assorted flavors.

Now, I've always been more of a bubble girl, rather than a "Calgon, take me away!" sort. (Calgon made bath salts, in case you didn't want to touch that box in your mom's bathroom in case you thought it was tampons or something equally repulsive.) Bubbles keep certain body female body parts warm during the course of a bath, but also---and more importantly---keep the tub from getting grimy, too. I had a hard time seeing the purpose of bath salts other than to come out of the tub smelling like something that would probably make the husband gag. But, being the sort who will sit in a tub whenever she gets the chance, I gave them a whirl.

And you know what? I loved them. Mainly because they all lived up to their advertisements for softer, more moisturized skin, which is very important to me. (I'm a skin care junkie.) I particularly loved this one. While I felt ridiculous as I sat in a tub of milky water, I nonethless came to realize why Cleopatra bathed in asses milk: IT WORKS! Milk, for whatever reason, actually does condition your skin. I thought it was an old-wives tale, but I swear it works.

Give it a whirl if you're so inclined. It's a bit pricey---$6 for single bath. (I was checking to see if they sold it by the jar as the husband hasn't bought my Christmas present yet.) But it's so worth it.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 284 words, total size 2 kb.

Joints suck.

Particularly those of the overly bendable type.

About fifteen years ago, when I was a freshman in college, my roommate and I had a bunk bed in our room in lieu of a loft. Lofts cost money and you had to find someplace to store them over the summer. Hence, being the cheapskates we both were, we opted for the free bunkbed the university provided. Of course, this bunkbed didn't come with a ladder, so everytime I wanted to get into my bed, I had to move my desk chair next to the bed and jump up from there. This involved making a fortunate grab of the mattress so I didn't slide back down again, but could rather pull myself up into bed.

I think you might be getting where I'm going with this. One night I was slightly intoxicated and returned to my room. After preparing myself for bed, I tried to perform this maneuver. Alas, however, the fortunate part of the grab wasn't so fortunate: I missed and landed in a completely wrong manner. After my roommate and her boyfriend expressed how ticked off they were about me waking them up with my fall, they then realized I needed help to get up into bed, and got me there. But not after locating some ice for me. My knee (and this was back in the days when I had really knobby knees) had swelled up to the size of a really oversized grapefruit and I was in pain.

The next day, at student health, they told me that I'd dislocated my kneecap, gave me a brace, a refreezable ice pack, and that I had to stay off of it for the next ten days and was to take lots of aspirin. It would heal up on its own, they said, it just took time. Ok. I did what they told me and I was fine.

Fast forward six years later: I'm trying to learn how to play tennis, am taking lessons at our health club and---again---land wrongly after volleying the ball back. (It was a great hit, too!) The knee swells again, I think it's a dislocation, again, and I'm right, but this time it's worse. The doctor confirms my impression, a week before I'm to be a bridesmaid in the sister-in-law's wedding---where I have to wear a floaty dress and high heels for hours on end. She puts me in an immobilizer, signs me up for physical therapy, and gives me a prescription for 800mg of Advil, four times a day. The immobilizer sucks, but it does work. I just have to make some adjustments. I have to learn how to operate the pedals of the car with my left foot. We live in a second floor apartment and stairs are a bitch when you cannot bend your knee, not to mention, I have my then-business to run and this involves many daily trips through the metal detector of the courthouse. The metal rods in the immobilizer set that fucker off more times than I can count.

After two months of physical therapy and then being bitched out by a succession of orthopedists who tell me that I haven't been doing my therapy (I DID!), it finally heals up. I'm done with it. Or so I think.

The husband still worries about me blowing it out again. He's afraid that one of these times I'm actually going to go where I haven't gone before and will shred the dreaded ACL. This is a valid concern of his: since the last time, I've had a couple of near misses, where I will land wrongly or slide on ice and I will feel the kneecap actually lift and slide off whatever is supposed to be holding it down. While this is disconcerting and painful, I haven't torqued my knee as badly as I did back then.

Why am I talking about all this? Well, I'm currently sitting at the dining room table, my right leg propped up with an ice pack on top of my right knee, and I'm praying for everything to go back to normal. Yep. That's right. I might have done it again. This is one of those things where it's not apparent right off the bat that I've goofed it good.

Yesterday, we had an extended period of freezing rain which left everything as slick as snot. Steps, sidewalks, entryways...you name it, they're all covered in a particularly consistent coat of ice. Yesterday, I was very, very careful of walking around and was fine. Today, however, we got a light dusting of snow on top of the ice. This is when I get in trouble: the snow provides traction---most of the time. Then there's always the odd moment of slipping, where my heart will jump in my chest because I'm afraid I've torqued the knee again, and the happy moment after I realize I haven't done it. This morning, I was going over to the Doctor's and ML's residence, for my pooch-attendance shift. While they're slurping the fruit of the grape at lots of different locations across Northern California, all of their friends are pitching in to take care of Nessie. I'm bundled up, I manage to negotiate the steps and sidewalk and, feeling fairly confident about my walking abilities, step off the curb to cross the street and...whoops! There it went. The kneecap slid in that disconcerting, heart stopping manner. I walked forward, hopeful, and then breathed a sigh of relief...it was fine. I walk the dog, and as she needs some exercise we make our way around the neighborhood, despite the fact it's about ten degrees outside. I make it through unscathed, my knee throbbing slightly. But I'm fine.

Until I go to Target, and not five steps from the damn car, I slide and there it goes again.

Am not happy about this and am saying Hail Marys every other minute so that I'm not completely out of it for Christmas, because I have a shitload left to do. It's really achy, although it hasn't swollen up too badly...so far. So, I might just be in luck. So, if you've got an extra holiday prayer in your heart, offer it up for my knee, would ya? I'm thinking I should be ok if I watch it over the next couple of days. But if I slide again, well...thar she blows.

Another dislocated kneecap and months of muy painful physical therapy is not what I want for Christmas.

Posted by: Kathy at 04:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 1095 words, total size 6 kb.

Yesterday, my neighbor put me to shame.

To explain: I like to bake. I really go all out during this time of year, too. The problem with this is that the husband and I can't eat all that I produce, even when I just stick to the basic favorites. Simply. Cannot. Eat. It. All. Or. Hips. Would. Go. Even. Wider. Than. Already. Are. Which would be bad. Neither do I want to listen to the husband complain about his lovehandles expanding. No one needs that. (And I'm positive he doesn't want to listen to my complaints about hip expansion, either, so fair's fair.)

This was a conundrum for a large number of years. We want all the goodies, but don't want fudge sitting around until February, either. When we actually attained neighbors that we liked (well, for the most part) a solution presented itself: I'd bake all the stuff we liked, would box most of it up and give it away as Christmas/Hannukah/Ramadan gifties. (The three major religions---as well as a token agnostic in the form of the husband---are well represented in the Cake Eater Alley.) This worked perfectly: we'd get the stuff we liked, but body parts wouldn't expand, and we'd get in good with the people who lived around us. Perfect, no?

Well, it was until the nasty Cake Eater Neighbor expanded his house, which included another huge kitchen for his (exceedingly lovely and very nice) wife's baking habit. She didn't like to bake in her old kitchen: it was too small. So, while their regular kitchen is now the size of a football field, she has another kitchen in their basement which is specifically set aside for her baking. A problem arose when she appropriated my habit of baking for the neighbors at Christmastime.

The first year she did this, I wasn't worried because everyone told me that my stuff was better. And I knew that they meant it. Great. I was confident in my abilities and everyone still wanted my stuff, and would go so far as to drop veiled requests for a larger share of the lemon bar stash and would wonder aloud about when the box of goodies would arrive. The second year was when the problem appeared: she decided that she was going to go whole hog and produced a huge tin of many varied sorts of cookies for our consumption. And they were good, too: the tin that was delivered to our house was snarfed down in record time. I had gained competition, it seemed, but the outcome of the race was unsure. Her first batch of cookies was nothing to write home about. But the second, well...as noted above, they were good, and the presentation was excellent.

This year, however, she went nuts. The third time round, indeed, appears to be the charm.

Crap.

Yesterday, high on Christmas Cheer, the obnoxious Cake Eater Neighbor delivered a oversized gift bag full of the following, most of it impeccably presented in clear, beribboned bags, replete with printed labels:

1. A huge bag of adulterated Chex party mix (which is really damn good)
2. A huge bag of this caramel coated puffy stuff mixed with cashews (the husband's favorite)
3. An oversized tin of Christmas cookies: macaroons, ginger bread men, coconut balls---and those are just the ones I've eaten. There's lots more in there. All perfectly baked and positively scrumptious.
4. A bag of pan baked chocolate chip cookies
5. An extra bag of those puffy white cookies that are coated with powdered sugar. And there are two chocolate cookies in that bag, too, that are also coated with powdered sugar. (She even thought to put the stuff coated in powdered sugar in a separate bag!)
6. A jar of elderberry jelly (she canned!)
7. And the most clever use of extra homegrown tomatoes that I've seen yet: a bottle of homemade Bloody Mary mix. (Which, I am sad to say, I'm going to regift: I despise Bloody Marys, and as the husband doesn't drink anymore and doesn't see the point in drinking Virgin Marys, well, there's no real use in keeping it around, is there? Besides, we'd have to buy celery. The ickiness of spiced tomato juice aside, it's still pretty darn clever if you ask me.)

How, I ask you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, am I to compete with that?

My little box of extra goodies is going to look like crap when compared to hers. And I have to whine a bit, because she got the friggin' idea from me, and now she's completely outdone me. She's put me in the shade. I can't up or vary my recipes: we just can't eat any more than we already do and I don't want to switch things around just to compete. While I'm sure she's looking forward to my cookies and is completely unaware of the angst she's created in me because she is a really nice person (despite her atrocious taste in husbands) she's nonetheless boxed me in and I don't like it.

Grrrrr.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 848 words, total size 5 kb.