10 February 2003 ~ Negliegence, anger, and vengeance...

Focussing my attention elsewhere... There's really too much worrying, and fear, and sadness in my life; I really cannot deal with it at all. It's another month before school starts again, and meanwhile, I need something else -- ANYTHING else -- to think about...

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I made a pie yesterday afternoon. It sucked, and I'm terribly ashamed. Jake liked it. But Jake has been known to eat shit out of the refrigerator that has become mummified (and he's thoroughly enjoyed it...), so you'll have to take my word for it: the pie sucked ass. And not in a nice, wholesome way.

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So, I don't think I've mentioned any of this stuff before, but I'm caught up in a bit of legal trouble...

Yes, AGAIN...

When my midwife put me on bedrest, I had to quit my jobs, move in with Jake's family (so that somebody could assist me with basic functions of living), and give up my apartment.

Jake called the landlady and explained things to her. Um, hi; I have a condition that requires lying down 24 hours a day, and somebody's got to help me with things like shopping and eating. Right? Seems pretty basic to me, especially the part about bedrest being imperative. Evidently, the landlord didn't see it that way, and told Jake that if I dared to move out, she'd sue me for two months of rent. Uh... Right, and how am I going to pay two months of rent without a job? Hey, I did everything I could, you know? There simply wasn't any other option...

Now, let me tell you a little bit about this landlady, before we go any further...

Flash back to when I met Jake, approximately Labor Day weekend, this past year. I'd set my alarm for seven or eight or something the previous day. But Nancy, the landlady, woke me up earlier than that, because she was screeching her bloody head off out in the courtyard. She sounds exactly like Fran Drescher, NO exaggeration. I HATE that accent. Anyway, as it turned out, it was a good thing she woke me up, because I'd accidentally set the alarm for PM, instead of AM.

Fine. So, that evening, the alarm apparently went off at eight, as it had been erroneously instructed. My alarm isn't TOO loud; just loud enough to wake me up and to annoy the next-door neighbor, supposing I had one, which I did not. And everybody's awake at eight o'clock in the evening, so who gives a shit about an alarm that's going off? Please! The Long Island accent and the bridge construction woke EVERYBODY up by eight in the morning, EVERY day, and nobody complained about those things.

I got home late that night. The next day was Saturday. I bummed around all day, and went to the Spar. I met Jake. We flirted. It was great. I came home to my apartment, tired and drunk, and checked the time, to see just how much of my giddiness was to be blamed on drink and flirting, and how much was just fatigue. But... the alarm clock was unplugged. The cord was not only NOT IN the socket, but had been forcibly yanked out of the socket and tossed as far as it would reach away from the wall. My door had been locked. The ONLY person who could have unplugged that alarm clock, would have been the landlady, or somebody to whom she'd given her key, because NOBODY else had a copy of that key.

I checked the lease. The ONLY time the landlady, or any agent of hers, could enter my apartment without permission, is in the event of an emergency, or after they've given me ten days written notice. Or something to that effect. To the best of my knowledge, a ringing alarm clock is NOT an emergency. The thing goes off by itself after an hour anyway....

It's a little thing, but I felt sick to my stomach -- and not just from the booze. Dude, that's a HUGE invasion of privacy, when somebody can just walk into my apartment, and fuck with MY stuff any old time they want to. What if Nancy got it into her head that there was an emergency in my apartment, and that she absolutely had to enter the apartment immediately in order to read my big blue diary? I started locking the big blue diary up with a combination lock.

Okay, flash forward a couple of weeks. It's a Sunday: the day after Jake got arrested. I'm coming home from work. I've barely made it through work without losing it. I've managed to keep my sanity right up until I got off the bus. In the two and a half blocks between the bus stop and my building, I've begun to weep again. I'm quite obviously a wreck. I try to clean myself up a little bit, but I'm still quite obviously a wreck. Nancy sees me walking through the courtyard, stops me with a "HEY..." (really, imagine the Fran Drescher voice..), and tells me she's writing me up for misconduct.

Now, there are parties in that building every weekend. There's drugs, wild sex, domestic violence, graffiti, petit larceny (a LOT of that...), vandalism, screaming in the hallways, screaming in the courtyard, illegal pets, probably prostitution rings... who the fuck knows what all... But she's going to write ME up, "because I heard ya boyfriend come ovah last night drunk, and I could hear him yellin'... I had to call the police, so now, I'm sorry, but I've gotta write ya up..." She didn't look sorry at ALL. She looked like she was going to have a happy little landlady picnic writing me up.

I have fucking TEARS running down my face, you know? My boyfriend was just arrested, he probably hates me, I barely made it through work, I'm pissed off, and I have a sneaking suspicion I might be pregnant. And this bitch starts giving me MORE shit??? That's Nancy for you. I hate her. I managed to talk her out of writing me up. I don't know what all is involved in getting written up, but I knew I didn't WANT it... I told her EXACTLY what had happened. Only I told the "feel-sorry-for-sweet-Jakeypoo" version, instead of the "fuck-I-hate-my-life" version, because Nancy liked Jake a lot better than she ever liked me. Amazingly, she was convinced.

Rumor had it, she was sleeping with the nasty, creepy, early-20-something gay guy down the hall. Nancy's got to be at LEAST fifty. I'm pretty sure she's a grandmother of a baby, or a toddler or something. But that part is just rumor. I decided I couldn't dislike her on the basis of a rumor.

Flash forward a few weeks. A kid who lived in my building, and, whoop-dee-doo, an Evergreen student, is accused of driving down to California, shooting an off-duty DARE officer in the head at a gas station, bragging about it online, and flying to New Hampshire, where he allegedly stated he'd done it to protest police brutality and corporate somethingbad. Real fucking lunatic of a guy, although we had some decently cool mutual friends, and I held the door for him a time or two. Two police squad cars showed up in the courtyard. Then three police squad cars. Then a special "investigation" van, a kind I'd never seen before.

I hadn't heard about the shooting in California, although it was ALL over the newspaper that day. The newspaper headline read something like, "Evergreen Student Kills Cop." Olympia's local newspaper despises 'Greeners. It also decided to plaster photos of MY apartment building ALL over the front page. Luckily or unluckily, I hadn't seen the papers that day. I did, however, notice the SIX police vehicles in the courtyard. It made my head spin. I don't like cops. Especially not near my building. I'd had the sneaking suspicion that cops had been following me since Jake's arrest, and whether or not they had been, I just DON'T LIKE cops around me if they don't have to be around me. They just yield too much power; there's just too much room for error on my part...

Nervously, I asked Nancy about the SIX police cars in the courtyard. I said -- and these are pretty close to my exact words -- "Listen, you don't have to tell me what's going on if you don't want to, or if you can't, but I just wanted to ask you if everything is okay..." She looked confused. I said: "The police cars? The SIX police cars in the courtyard? Is everybody in the building okay?" I didn't exactly know what to make of it; I'd never seen six cop cars in one place except for bad accidents, a stabbing one time, and fires. I figured that maybe oneof the old people in the building had knocked off in the night, and they were investigating... Or something...? Maybe...?

Nancy replied: "Oh, they just needed a place to pawk (park) their caws (cars). There's noplace downtown for them to pawk, because of awl (all) the construction, so I awfuhed (offered) them to use (sic) the cowtyahd (courtyard)."

Hey, all I'd asked was, is everybody okay. And she made up this grandiose lie about construction downtown and cops not having a place to pawk (er... park...) their cars? What the fuck???

Flash forward...

Since I moved in, the recreation room was intended for anybody who wanted to hang out there. When Nancy became the new landlady, you had to ask her to unlock the door. And she'd snidely say, "An' ya can't have the 9television) remote; it's too much of a theft risk." Bitch. As if I, buck-fifteen me, REALLY had the ability to steal a seven-hundred-pound television? Uh... and even if I DID steal it, where would I put it? My apartment upstairs? And dude, you can steal a television without stealing the remote, if you've really got a mind to do such a thing. They DO sell new remotes for people who have lost or broken them... Duh. Anyway, the stupid bitch told me straight to my face that I was a theft risk... Ah, but then...

One evening, I was in the rec room with a bad case of morning sickness. I was watching shitty movies. And these two little brats, of about seven, began running around, trying to use the lamps, etc., as machine guns. So I was like, "listen, guys, if you're gonna be running around and breaking shit--" (I have no problem cursing at other people's children; especially other people's bratty children...) "--then you're gonna have to leave... Where's your mother, anyway?" The two brats threw a tantrum and said they could be in the rec room, because they were best friends with Nancy's son. Now, this was weird, because Nancy's son is about sixteen, give or take, and these kids were like, six or seven. I just told them to quit making so much noise, be respectful, and not try to break shit, and if they couldn't do that, then they should get the fuck out. They went downstairs and got Nancy's son, who said: "They pay just as much rent as you do, and anybody who pays rent has equal rights to this room." How VERY democratic. I asked if I would be allowed in the room if I was playing machine-gun games with the lamps, but the kid didn't answer. I don't think he understood; he doesn't seem to be the brightest crayon in the box. Anything more intense than monosyllabic words confuse him. And anyway, the kids were SEVEN! They don't pay rent; their mom and/or dad does. I say, if the mom and dad aren't with them, the brats had no right at all to be in the room, especially not if they were going to be nasty little pieces of crap.

But bear those words in mind: Anyone who pays rent has equal rights to the rec room. Right? Okay, so a week after THAT, Nancy decides that nobody's allowed in the rec room anymore, because she's decided to RENT IT OUT for special occasions. So, if part of my $600 a month rent was going for the privilege of using the rec room, and now Nancy's making EXTRA money by renting it out to OTHER PEOPLE, during which time I am not allowed IN the room, then I expect some of my $600 back. If that woman made ten bucks off renting that room to someone else, then she ought to have divided the ten bucks among all 130 tenants, and written every one of us a check. RIGHT??? Nope. I just got scolded for entering the room during some sort of private movie-showing.

I was so tempted to call the Thurston County Tenants Union and complain. But I was stupid, and didn't...

Flash forward... My last full day in the building...

I wake up mad early, bum around until nine-thirty or ten, decided I have to go somewhere, and leave my apartment for a little while. There's a delicious-looking tray of cookies on the table in the hallway. I think: Ew, they're probably stale or something, and I ignore them. I do my thing, then bum around my apartment a bit more. Around noon or one, I check my mail, and those cookies are still there... Around three, I decide to take a bus to campus, but I check the mail again, because there hadn't been any... Sure's hell, I got a package, so I went back to the apartment and opened it. When I FINALLY decided I was going to leave the building, I was really eying those cookies. I hadn't eaten anything all day, because the dude next door was baking something that smelled atrocious. I picked one up, and set it back down, and was still staring at it when the elevator opened, and two of my neighbors stepped out...

"You know, I've been looking at these cookies for awhile, but they're probably stale, or there's something in them, you know?" My neighbor friends assured me that "what could POSSIBLY be wrong with them...?" So I picked one up, and ate it as I flew off down the street to the bus stop...

At approximately four-fifteen, I was seeing stuff that wasn't there. At approximately five-fifteen, I was in a squad car on the way to the emergency room. At sixish, I was frantically trying to tell Jake's dad where I was and what had happened, via the telephone, while various doctors and nurses ignored me. Sometime during the evening, I may have spoken with the police, but I don't know. I remember sobbing and telling EVERYONE that I hadn't done it on purpose, because I would NEVER EVER hurt my baby... I remember begging people to tell me that my baby would be okay... I remember being terrified of some nameless horror, some faceless beast... I remember having NO idea what the hell was happening to my body or my brain. During the course of the experience, I'd freaked out a bunch of people in the health center on campus, a campus police officer, Jake's entire family, and who knows who else... Pardon me, but I DON'T DEAL WELL WITH WEED.

It took them until seven or seven-thirty to determine that I'd ingested THC, and probably nothing else. They gave me a urine test and I got lost in a drawer in the bathroom. I've since been back to that hospital, to visit a friend of Jake's across the street, and the exterior of the hospital, and everything around it, was as unfamiliar as if I'd never seen it. I lost an entire night of my life to waking nightmares. I might have harmed my baby -- I'll never know what sort of damage that cookie caused for her. I got everybody else freaked out. I missed my final appointment of the quarter with my professor, and then had to explain that I was too stoned to get to the meeting.

And I'm asking you, don't you think it's a bit irresponsible of a landlady to leave possibly-suspicious (and she's a New Yorker, for gahd's sake! EVERYTHING is suspicious!) home-baked cookies out in the hallway? So sue me; I'm naive, and I had no willpower. A landlady should fucking know better.

Somebody (a doctor?) told me that police had responded to my report, even though I don't remember making a report, or seeing a cop. The Olympia Police Department had made a telephone call to the building, and Nancy herself had said that "Security" had taken care of the problem already. Only, the building doesn't HAVE security. Nothing even CLOSE to security. Later, Nancy told me that she knew who had done it, but that she couldn't do anything about it. She also told me that she had quickly thrown the cookies away once the police called. OHHHHH, I was pissed. She lied to me about the six cops in the courtyard, and she lied to COPS about having "security" in the building? And THEN she wouldn't even do anything to punish the offending party who'd left the cookies in the hall? If she knew WHO had done it, why hadn't she removed the cookies before anybody ate them?

What if an old lady had eaten one of those and freaked out? Or a person on anti-depressant medications? -- that can REALLY fuck you up, make you violently sick... Or... a pregnant woman who already had a high-risk pregnancy? If Nancy KNEW about those cookies, and LEFT them there, that's negligence to the nth degree...

The day my baby died, Nanacy slipped eviction papers under the door of my neighbors' apartment. The papers insisted that I hadn't vacated the apartment and was still living there, even though she KNEW I'd had to move out, and even though I'd gotten all my shit out of the apartment on time. Furthermore, she insisted that a sherriff had brought the papers TO the door of my apartment, and that *I* had answered the door and accepted the papers myself. According to Nancy's lawyer, there's a signature testifying this under penalty of perjury. But... on January 20th, when the papers were supposedly delivered, I was recovering from a miscarriage. On the 19th, I was in excrutiating pain and couldn't get out of bed even to go to the bathroom. There's not a chance in the world that I accepted those papers. My NEIGHBOR got them, and had he not known how to reach me, they never would have gotten to me.

She's suing me for just about two thousand dollars. Two months' rent, for months I wasn't living in the apartment (which she damn well knew about), and then legal fees, processing fees, and bitchiness fees.

You know, I really LIKED that building when I moved in. It didn't smell like shit. They didn't paint the same hallway over and over again. I wasn't woken up by a Fran Drescher voice every day. there weren't loud parties every weekend. There weren't any drugs to be found unless you REALLY went hunting. They didn't lock the dumpster so you had to leave your garbage on the sidewalk for everybody to trip over. It had a great view. Anybody could go on the roof or into the rec room. It was a great place to play quiet music, watch the sun go down, make exotic dinners, and invite friends over for visits. By the time I moved out, I was ashamed to be associated with that building, and ALL of the changes for the worse were caused, directly or indirectly, by Nancy becoming landlady.

Oh yeah, and did I mention she had the water turned off four or five times (or was it six?) in like, one month? And refused to tell anybody WHY?

She's suing me.

I've already responded to the suit and said I'm contesting it.

Nobody's bothered me with any papers since. It's been almost two weeks.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I'm bored. I'm frustrated at being bored. I'm lonely and bored and too broke to spend any money on entertainment of any sort. I have no new books to read. I have no homework to do. I have nothing to do with my days except bug the shit out of Jake and think about my dead baby. I've got noplace to go, and nobody to see, and it's another month before school starts. I feel like I'm bothering Jake. I feel like I'm wasting everybody's time and taking up too much space. I just want something to occupy my mind other than these thoughts that I'm a waste of oxygen...

So, fuck it... I'm going to get angry. And I'm going to direct all my anger toward Nancy and that apartment building... I'm going to collect medical records of being in the hospital for accidental THC consumption. I'm going to collect statements about the kind of harm that marijuana can do to a pregnant woman, and especially to her unborn baby. The "discharge slip" I found last night from that night said, right on it, "marijuana is especailly harmful to your unborn baby." Not "can be," but "IS." I'm going to see if I did actually file a police report. I'm going to collect statements from friends and neighbors who saw some or all of the above happening. And if I collect enough of this stuff, and if I can find a semi-decent lawyer (and Jake and I know a couple... *wink*), I'll sue the woman into oblivion for negligence. I probably can't get her for entering my apartment without permission, because there's no evidence. I CAN contest HER lawsuit, and I CAN win it, because she LIED in the papers, and she lied about the way the papers were delivered. I'd like to inflict on her all the shittiness she's inflicted on me over the past four or five months. If that means attempting a lawsuit, then so be it. And yes, I'm aware that I'm highly emotional, which is why I'm going to go step by step and not get whiny about things... I mean, except in this journal.

And anyway, it's better to be angry at a person who happens to be an incredibly shitty excuse for a human being, than to sit around being suicidal and bored.

My anger is very, very good.

~Helena*