But I'm back! And I'll try to be better this time. We'll see how long I can stick to that when Baby #2 comes along.
Our family will be moving into a new-to-us rental house with room for four in San Luis next month. It will only be the third place Jon and I have lived in together, and second since Kealani was born. This has gotten me all nostalgic... it has also brought up some charming memories of our very first apartment, along with the Moving Out Experience.
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Our first living room... don't worry, we added
in vogue decor later... and yes, that's a bike rack. |
Our first place was a typical young-marrieds' first apartment. Cheap and sketchy. Our actual complex wasn't necessarily sketchy, nor the townhouse-style apartment. But the area, on South El Camino in Atascadero, saw its fair share of nutcases and police cars. We loved it because we lived there together. We hated it because we shared walls with strangers, paid to do our laundry, and had super classy neighbors.
There was the family across the lawn from us: a bilingual young couple with an out-of-control toddler boy who enjoyed playing handball against our wall (the upside to living on the end of the row). These people managed to own three nice cars and park all of them in our parking lot despite the one-space-per-apartment rule. They probably could have lived in a two story house in north A-town if they'd sold a couple of their automobiles. To each their own.
Next, the old man with his mail-order Filipina bride and their much sweeter and quieter toddler boy. The only time I saw her was in the laundry room, and she was pleasant enough. Just too young. For a sixty-five-year-old man.
My personal favorites moved in about six months after we did. This couple was, for lack of a better term... white trash. Friendly as can be, just... well, you know. I would arrive home after long days of substitute teaching, and eventually full-time teaching that included a wonderful commute from King City, to find both of them standing or sitting on my porch drinking matching cans of Bud Light. Now, when I was substituting locally, I got home around 3:30. Every day. I found them on my porch with their brewskies at 3:30 every day. Because they chose to park themselves in my business, I found myself politely nodding with a "hello", entering my home, and keeping my shades drawn. I hate artificial light. But Joe Dirt and his wifey were hanging out right outside my window, so there was only one logical choice. It got even better as we watched Mrs. Dirt during her two, very consecutive pregnancies not only continue her daily Bud Light tradition, but smoke several cigarettes as well. Thank God their two adorable (how did that happen?) little girls turned out okay. I wonder what ADHD medication they'll be on when they're in my dad's 3rd grade class in a couple years.
Our next door neighbors were the most "normal", and relatively friendly. But the teenage girl liked to sing. Loudly. When my brother Jesse lived with me for a couple months before Jon and I got married, he actually yelled one night, "What, are you trying out for American Idol?!" Luckily her karaoke machine was turned up too high to hear him.
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A South El Camino Christmas
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In order to keep an "eye" on things, he employed an eighty-eight-year-old man who lived in the mobile home park next to the complex to "manage" the property. His name was Cap. We saw Cap almost every week. He would come by just to say hi and make sure everything was ok. The problem was that he was eighty-eight. He liked to tell stories. And in typical senior citizen fashion, he told the same ones over and over. We were thankful to have him, considering he responded so quickly to calls regarding our apartment (what else did he have to do besides trying not to die?), but I'd be lying if I said we didn't run and hide when we saw his car in the lot... much like a Jehovah's Witness sighting.
The time came for Jon and I to move out. (The circumstances of which I will write about later.) We were entering a phase that was exciting and full of unknowns, yet I felt a sense of sadness over the task of packing up our first home together.
One afternoon, a week or two away from our Move Out Day, Cap decided to stop by to see how things were going.
There was one small problem. We'd brought home a kitten three months before, and we weren't allowed to have pets. (Okay, Jesse and I brought the kitten home one night after a trip to Video Palace while Jon was busy sleeping off some form of the Man Flu. Tits McGee was in a box with two of his skinny, goopy-eyed siblings, and I fell in love. Jon couldn't very well turn him away once we'd brought him home and bought a litter box and food, right? Right.)
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Resist this? I don't think so.
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So when Cap stopped by, Jon and I were caught off guard. McGee's litter box was in the bathroom, his toys were scattered about the living room, we were moving out in mere days, and hoping to receive ourfull deposit back... not to be fined for having an illegal pet. Here's where it turned to slapstick.
Hearing the knock on the door, and being afraid of... well, sounds... McGee tore up the stairs in order to hide, most likely under our bed. Jon and I stared wide-eyed at each other for what seemed like minutes, the wheels turning in both our heads. Assuming Cap was just there for another senile story hour, Jon opened the front door, just as I was chucking furry cat toys into the bathroom and hastily slamming the door shut. I hope Cap doesn't have to pee. After overhearing Jon and Cap's greetings, and praying that McGee wouldn't choose to bolt down the stairs at any moment, came Cap's question: "Do you mind if I head upstairs and check your curtains? I'm here to see if they'll need replacing."
I wanted to respond, "those curtains look like a Motel 6's and should have been replaced in 1978 when they were first installed" but I had more pressing matters to think about.
Jon turned around and looked at me as if to say, Go upstairs right now and throw the cat out the window.
Tearing through the both of them and sprinting upstairs would look rather suspicious, so I chose to stand, grinning like an idiot, and watch helplessly as Jon led the old man upstairs. I took the opportunity to bust into the bathroom and shove the litter box and previously chucked cat toys under the sink. You can't trust an almost ninety-year-old bladder. I just hoped Cap's sense of smell had disintegrated with his memory, in case he did end up using the facilities.
As I exited the loo and shut the door again, I could hear Jon's heavy footsteps crashing down the top of the stairs. I ran to the staircase, and before I had the chance to question, Jon was shoving a ball of fuzz through the railing at me. Within a second of receiving the bundle, I felt claws piercing through my skin. McGee had decided this was too much action, was trying to permanently attach himself to me, and started hissing at both of us. Jon scampered back up the stairs, just in time to answer a question Cap was in the middle of asking him, while I calmly, yet with purpose retreated to the back sliding door. I opened it, tossed McGee into the air, and watched as his legs spun in the style of Wile E. Coyote's, before he darted around the corner.
Closing the slider, I turned around and saw Jon and Cap coming back down the stairs. Cap was finishing up the 73rd rendition of his story about taking care of his disabled ninety-year-old sister as Jon threw me a look. I smiled pleasantly like a sixties housewife with everything in her home under control.
Later, hearing Jon's version of what went on upstairs made me once again thankful that our property manager was so ancient. It was only due to the fact that Cap could hardly hear that he missed the scuffling, hissing, and meowing that occurred right before Jon whipped McGee through the railing at me. I suppose we're lucky that high-strung feline ever came back... but a cat's gotta eat.
We got our deposit back.
