It�s seven a.m. and already I�ve been washing clothes for an hour, in preparation for my class which starts at six-thirty this evening. If you�re now envisioning me putting armloads of dirty clothes into the washing machine and then putting a clean, spin-dried load into the dryer 15 minutes or so later, we need to adjust your picture.

An hour ago I put into the washer one pair of stretchy pants, one t-shirt, a soft fuzzy stretch-knit button-up shirt, one pair of socks, one bra and one pair of panties. Which I only washed once, but had to put through the spin cycle a total of four times just to get them dry enough not to be dripping when I take them out of the washer. This is getting old, seeing as how we�ve been doing a version of this routine for weeks now because the apartment was too filthy to call in a maintenance guy.

But the weekend before last we finally got the place cleaned up and so on the following Monday (now over a week ago) I put in a request for service on our washer when I went up to the office to request new keys for our apartment building. Which is a whole �nother rant all its own.

See, here�s how stupid and incompetent our apartment management is. We live in a �secure� building, meaning that when you come through the front door you encounter a second, locked door and an intercom with a button for each apartment; and if you don�t have a key you have to buzz someone to let you in. From the inside coming out, the door simply unlocks by turning a handle. In theory, anyway.

Months ago, like back in the early summer of 2003, we started having problems with the lock on the door. It would jam and nobody in the building could get out by turning the handle. And I mean it would jam good... you could stand there and beat on it and struggle with it with all your strength to no avail whatsoever. It could still be opened by key or by being buzzed from an apartment, but being that both the keyhole for the lock and the intercom to the apartments are on the other side of the door, the only way out from the inside was by the back door, which is way down the hall and on the back side of the building, meaning a fairly lengthy walk around to the parking lot.

As you might imagine, this was just a tad inconvenient, particularly when running late for work. Not to mention dangerous... can you imagine the carnage that would ensue in case of a fire? I called the apartment managers to inform them of the problem, and I�m sure many other people did too because it was such a pain in the ass. A couple of days later they�d send a maintenance-idiot over to �fix� it... meaning that he un-jammed it somehow so it would open again, but you could tell it was still fucked up because the handle was loose and wiggly. Sure enough, a few days later it would jam again and it would be days before the same flunky would mosey on over here to un-jam it again. I called several times after that to let them know it needed to be REPLACED, and after about the third call I got a little heated and made dire predictions about the lawsuit that was just waiting to happen and suggested that it might be a good financial move to just go ahead part with whatever money a replacement lock costs because it�s bound to be significantly less than millions of dollars in lawsuits should an entire building full of people be trapped in a fire! (I was attempting to speak to them in the native language of Landlords, which is called Greed; because you know they wouldn�t have any problem with the idea of piles of dead bodies in their buildings if that happened to be the cheapest option they could get away with. You have to remind them that piles of dead bodies might actually cost them money in terms of lost rent and potential lawsuits before you even begin to pique their interest.)

Even so, for months they never did replace the door lock and I finally got tired of calling. Hell, I live on the ground floor and there is a window to the outside from every room in the apartment. If we ever have to evacuate, I�m not even attempting the front door.... we�ll just head right on out the window. I figured I�d leave the badgering to those poor shmucks on the fourth floor.

But about two weeks ago, my kid came home from school and had to buzz our apartment to be let in. She told me they�d finally changed the front door lock and her key didn�t work any more. I went out and tried the Prince�s key and mine and they didn�t work either. So naturally I thought management would be bringing new keys around within a day. But no new keys were forthcoming, and by the second day someone (not us) had mutilated the new lock with a screwdriver.

So the kid finally got smarter than us and went up and told them her key didn�t work and they gave her a shiny new one. She also told them her parents� keys weren�t working, but they wanted one of us to come up personally to get new ones. So apparently the plan was: instead of giving out expensive new keys to EVERYONE, let�s just wait and see who comes up and complains, and then just give new keys to them.

Now, wouldn�t the smart thing to do be to send around a memo saying something like �Try your key and if it doesn�t work, call the office and we�ll give you a new one?� instead of leaving people to grow frustrated wondering when the hell they were going to be receiving their new key? Their bad, in my opinion, yet you just know they�re sitting up there in the �clubhouse� (which is really just a big fancy office with couches and a kitchenette for the use of management, it�s not like any of the tenants actually get together up there for parties or anything) speaking bitterly about evil destructive tenants who destroy brand-new locks and then have the gall to complain because management doesn�t keep up the property.

Which, in a roundabout way brings me back to my original point about my broken washer. I went up and complained on Monday, and finally late Wednesday afternoon a flunky arrived at our door. We just went on the assumption that he wasn�t very bright, because we�ve dealt with quite a few of their guys in the past and rarely have they had much on the stick. And so I slowly and carefully explained to this guy that, while the washer DOES fill up and makes motions like it�s washing and spinning clothes, he must not be deceived into believing this means that it is working properly. The problem is... hello, are you listening? Pay attention, boy... the problem is, that it LEAKS if you fill it more than halfway full; and while it later does APPEAR to be spinning the clothes dry during the relevant portion of the cycle, in reality it�s only giving them a little kiddie-carnival ride utterly devoid of the thrills and chills of any actual centrifugal force. He looked at me blankly while I carefully explained all of this, and so the Prince went over it all again just to make sure he�d gotten it; and so I was kind of embarrassed a few minutes later when he turned around and said in perfect college-professor English, �Your washer is leaking because the water continues running during the cycle long after it should be shutting off; and it�s not spinning fast enough for the clothes to dry.� I was so overjoyed that he�d actually GOTTEN it, that I didn�t even think to get all aggravated when he said he�d have to go get his supervisor to come up and take a look. Silly me, I assumed they�d be right back. This was on Wednesday, and as of yesterday I hadn�t seen or heard another peep out of them. I finally called management to find out if we�d been forgotten or what, because quite frankly, we�re running out of clothes. For a week I haven�t been able to do any laundry during the day because I don�t want the washer full of wet drippy clothes should the maintenance guys ever decide to show up to fix it. And seeing as how I can only do one tiny load at a time which I then have to spin it at least THREE times, I�m not getting a whole lot done in the evenings, either.

Not to mention that the cats are getting stir-crazy... we�ve had to shove them in our bedroom every morning by eight or so, and keep them there until after six at night when all danger of a visit by the landlords� evil minions has passed. They hate the bedroom now, and so do we because it has begun to smell like a football team set up their locker room in the monkey house at the zoo in there. There is cat hair all over the bed and cat food and cat puke all over the floor and cat litter all over the closet and baskets of dirty laundry piled up to the fucking ceiling. We now sleep in the living room every night, and the cats crouch in wait behind the bedroom door all day so as not to miss an opportunity to hurl themselves through the opening and into the promised land of the living room any time the door opens up a tiny crack .

Thoroughly sick of the situation, I called the office yesterday to find out if our washer was ever going to be serviced. Several hours later the girl called back to tell me that they are going to be bringing me a new washer today. Now I know that what I�m getting is likely to be �new� in the same sense of a �new used car�... new to me, and hopefully better than what I had before. But part of me can�t help fantasizing that it will be a shiny brand-new machine whose spin cycle will slurp the water out of my clothes until they�re practically bone dry and ready to fold and put away; but I guess at this point I�ll be reasonably happy to settle for not having them be drippy-wet after the first go-round. I was foolish enough to ask what time she thought they�d be coming to hook it up. �Um... looks like they have you down for some time between morning and afternoon.� Which narrows it down considerably, since we�ve eliminated the between midnight and six option that had been such a real possibility.

I could probably narrow it down further by taking advantage of my alone time in the house, surfing porn and getting myself excrutiatingly horny and preparing to perform an elaborate masturbation scene on the couch. You know, kind of a version of that thing where you can make a red light turn green immediately by desperately needing a minute to dig in the glove compartment for something? This would guarantee they�d show up sometime pre-orgasm and not leave until sometime after the Prince or the Evil Childe had arrived back home.

But setting the stage for that just sounds like too much work, and I�ve already got about 17 things on my To Do list anyway, not counting the loathesome homework project I�ve been putting off until the last possible minute. I think I�m just going to go turn on the heat, light some candles and put on some Foo Fighters and maybe work up a little bit of energy to accomplish something.

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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