Insomniac Nightmares

Venting a little.

In my apartment complex, it’s not okay to smoke. Not in the buildings, not in the parking lot, not even on the sidewalk. You have to go completely out to the street and completely off the property.

By “smoke,” I include all actions involving imbibing substances by breathing through the mouth and exhaling the remaining product. That includes vape, weed, cigarettes, hookah, etc, etc, etc.

My neighbor spends all day toking up, to the extent where it seeps under my door, floods the stairwell and drifts out his window on warm days when he has it cracked. Everyone knows about this. No one does anything.

I received a “warning” because I was vaping while sitting inside my truck and waiting for my Maps app to tell me where I was headed.

Makes sense.

In my apartment complex, it’s explicitly forbidden to work on cars in the lot, and also forbidden to park backwards. As I look out my window right now, I see two vehicles, both parked backwards, with a crowd of young men surrounding them. Tools are scattered nearby, the hoods are up, and jacks are present.

Yet I receive a “warning” for popping my hood and calling for a jump start, because I hadn’t driven my truck in more than a month and the rain killed the battery. Because that somehow constitutes “working” on my car.

The complex has expressly forbidden throwing away furniture, mattresses and the like. We found a nastygram stapled to the door reminding us of this fact. Ours was the only apartment with such a notice.

We have never thrown away furniture in the two years we’ve lived here. We don’t have any to throw away. But every time I head to the trash compactor, I see at least two mattresses and/or boxsprings, a dresser, an ancient television or two and the like.

We’ve received nastygrams about animal poop in the parking lot. Our downstairs neighbor has a pair of minpins, and a person across the way has some bizarre pomeranian mix, all of whom run in and out of their apartments all day with no supervision – the tenants just leave the doors open, and the animals do as they will. These individuals have not received any nastygrams. We have a single, indoor only, well trained cat.

We have been told not to call the police after a hit and run, while at the same time getting no assistance from the apartment complex. They wouldn’t even pull up the cameras of the lot; it’d be “invasion of privacy.” They further did nothing when it was determined that the perpetrator was squatting.

They send in the exterminators for roaches (that we don’t have), which necessitates completely emptying the kitchen and all cabinets. We comply, which is no small feat with such short notice. This means there are dishes, spice racks, kitchen supplies and the like stacked a mile high in the living room (because where the hell else are you going to put it, if you can’t use any of the cabinets or surfaces?)

Now they’re saying we need to have an “inspection” because the apartment is “unlivable,” based on their observation at the time of the extermination. They specifically cite the “piles of items on the floor, preventing movement” and that “the unit is not intended to be a storage facility.”

That’s on top of how they promised to refund assorted fees that were assessed incorrectly – they didn’t – how they’ve consistently ignored any complaint – such as Captain Smokey across the way aggravating my asthma, that the phone/cable wiring in the walls is not set up correctly, the bedbug infestation that appeared immediately after we got a new neighbor, the consistently broken washing machines and dryers, the frequent water cutoffs and substandard water quality, moving from having three dumpsters scattered around the complex to a single trash compactor on the other side of the complex, which is great fun for Gimpy McCripples like me to lug shit to, is frequently overstuffed (with furniture, cough cough) and that they only run once every other week or so, so it’s a gamble if, once you get there, you can actually unload your trash.

Fuck this place. And fuck people’s goddamn rules. People accuse me of being fascist and authoritarian. They’re 100% correct; I firmly believe in rules and laws, and that they should be enforced across the board, no exceptions.

If there’s a problem with the rules, then look at changing the rules, not selective enforcement or elective application. Doing that just means there’s no point in having the rules in the first place, except making more hoops for law-abiding and rules-minded folks to jump through while holding no actual threat to people who don’t give a damn in the first place, which is far too many folks these days.

Anyway. Just ranting. Have fun, folks.