i'm taking advice from a great friend who told me (something along these lines), "we all knew you were going to be happy in san francisco, we want to hear all the bad stuff. it makes for better stories. write!".
this move has been a little backwards. we had a great trip out, no problems, but as soon as we got to sf, it became apparent that san francisco had it's own initiation in mind. at least, i'm telling myself it's an initiation and not karmic retribution because i cannot think of anything we have done to deserve this welcoming treatment. the past three weeks have been disheartening to say the least. i'll throw myself a little pity party and say that i have worked so incredibly hard the last year to get all my affairs in order before leaving the east coast. i'm proud of myself, sure, but SFO pretty much bitch slapped me and said "ha! not good enough!". i have had a few defeating moments where i could not bite my lip any longer and i let the flood gates open. rather than 'look back and laugh someday', i'll start laughing now...at least try to.
so here it is, the last three weeks in an overstuffed nutshell:
*poor kristin received this enraged email from me*
"oh my god.. it was terrible!!! i think i went into shock when i walked in.. we got to SF on monday (09.28.09), so we immediately drove to where the apartment is located.. most beautiful neighborhood! best views! we were SO excited. i just wanted to move in right away. we told them we wouldn't be there til the 30th or the 1st.. i was so anxious to settle down that i called them on tuesday telling them we were here a couple days early and if they needed help with anything to let us know..
they emailed us before we left and we emailed back and forth while we were driving out. they said that they were cleaning the space out and couldn't wait for us to arrive. we figured they had a few boxes laying around as well as some random furniture. the husband said he some papers and a desk he needed to go through. when i talked to the wife on the phone tuesday night, she said she had papers to go through as well. i'm picturing a big ol' desk filled with receipts and stuff like that. mind you.. they had sent us a picture of the basement back in MAY and it looked fine.. just had some crap down there like most uninhabited basements do. anyways, we're so stoked we get up at 7 am yesterday ( we weren't meeting them til 9 ) and drove around trying to figure out different ways to get to our new neighborhood.
we've always found the husband pretty creepy.. on the phone, emails, pictures whatever. but i was giving him the benefit of the doubt and just thinking he was weird on the phone (some people are).. and we were even discussing this as we were driving up the main road to the house. we pull up, knock on the door... the door opens..
and his naked TWO YEAR OLD daughter is standing there. SHE answered the door. he's standing next to her holding their newborn looking like a total cult leader and is like "heyyy guysss".. i'm very anxious (i was before we even arrived) and i'm semi-thrown off by his daughter standing buck naked in front of us but i just kind of shrugged it off thinking "oh maybe she was swimming" or who knows.. i think i was quickly justifying the situation.
we walk inside into a small hallway with granite looking floors and three steps up into the main part of the house.. i immediately noticed a strange smell.. a super earthy smell.. but i mean my brain was going a thousand miles a minute trying to process ANYTHING..we meet the wife, who is super sweet and i immediately felt okay with her (hubby went from being creepy to SUPER creepy). we walk up the 3 little steps and they say "this is the kitchen"..
HOLY @#$%! i can't even describe what my eyes saw. all i know is that i lost my breath. it felt like two hands wrapped themselves around my throat and showed no mercy whatsoever. i almost fainted. there was a huge cage right next to the "dining room table" that housed about 20 parakeets (that they said they JUST rounded up and put away - we gave them 30 minutes notice before we arrived. you can't round up your flock in 30 mins!?), about 3 doves, some other birds and there is a dove flying all over the kitchen that they can't catch. now they told us they had a "compost pile, a garden, etc.." which is totally cool.. groovy man, ugh.. but they completely failed to tell us their ENTIRE KITCHEN IS A @#$% COMPOST PILE!!! i could see a cabinet like structure that split the dining room from the kitchen, but i could not SEE any counter tops.. i did not see a stove.. i did not see a fridge.. all i saw were these mutating piles of waste and used dishes taking over what was once probably a kitchen.
so i'm barely breathing and my first thought is "get me the HELL out of here NOW" but i am holding it together as best as possible, being as polite as possible and hoping that we get downstairs to our apartment stat. we walked into the living room and wifey is sitting on what they must think is a couch but its just a pile of clothes that i could not say if they were clean, dirty, or ever cleaned at all! she's talking to me and i'm nervously laughing and being as polite as humanly possible but honestly, i am mentally escaping and fast. we look to the left and there's an atrium outside.. mike pointed out later that's where the hot tub was.. i never saw a friggin' hot tub! all i saw was trash and more compost and art supplies (when i say art supplies i mean feathers, bones, paint brushes,.. i dont even know what else because i wouldn't let myself look long enough for details).. they had rusty nitrogen bottles hooked up as a "wind chime". WHAT! OH and at this point the husband comes over and in his totally tripped out hippie voice says "this is a no-shoe house"...
I AM NOT WEARING SOCKS!!! and he wanted me to walk barefoot through that cesspool!! we go and take off our shoes and i am FREAKING out. (oh and emby is in the car.. he didn't want her to come in through the main entrance because "patches was flying around") we are now walking to our apartment and i am already saying to myself "no way, this is NOT going to work" but i want to see the place regardless. we're walking on carpet to the stairs and its just spotted with so much dirt from god knows effing what. for all i know the kids shit on the carpet. the adults probably shit on the carpet.
we walk downstairs into the basement.. and it is full of clutter and FILTH! there is dirt all over the floor which i can't figure out because they don't even have a @#$% backyard to track dirt in from.. there isn't any dirt around their damn house!
at this point i REALLY can't breathe. they have known for FOUR months that we were coming out and the basement looked more cluttered and full of crap than it did in the pictures taken SIX MONTHS AGO! there is NO WAY IN HELL this place would have been cleaned out in a day or two. NO WAY. you need home makeover DELUXE edition to clean that place out!!!! and the thing that is making my head spin is that they are showing this off like its a gem of the canyon they live in!
he opens the sliding doors and shows us the pool (another area that they emailed us saying how CLEAN it is now!!) it's not CLEAN! well, i didn't see the water. there was a cover on the pool, but the surrounding area was FILTHY.
i am beyond myself right now and just want to get out as quickly as possible. i tell mike that we need to get ember. the husband says "go around the back so you can see your private walkway".. we go get ember and walk down a little walkway into a BUSH.. a bush that is completely obstructing the stairs.. we push through the bush and get downstairs. now HE is sitting on some lawn chair type deal by the pool.. and it smells so bad.. and he's talking to us about god knows what.. ember's sniffing around all over the place and he says "oh whatcha smell girl? a rat??" all excited like. A RAT!? now that we're down there i'm looking around and my gag reflex is quickly making its way to the tip of my tongue. there is a dirty diaper and little girls underwear chillin' on another lawnchair right outside OUR door.. next to the pool. there's a pile of cow skulls and all sorts of weird animal boneage at the far end of the pool as if the it's a shrine. for all i know the pool was a sacrificial tub. the little (two year old) girl is knocking on the door that enters the basement. the wife and 2 y.o. come in and ember goes to meet them. the lil' girl is scared of ember at first because emb's sniffing her. the wife says "oh no it's okay. she probably smells you just peed".. the girl is still naked and embers nose went..... you know where... UGHHHHHHH!!!!!
i'm mentally scrambling to get out of there. i'm sending thoughts to mike as rapidly as possible hoping he catches on. then i say "emb needs to pee".. we walk up that "walkway" and there's a woman watering her garden. she starts saying " you can't walk here! you can't walk here!"... our "walkway" wasn't even their PROPERTY!!!
creepy husband directs us another way, another walkway that IS on his property but he can't open it because he "doesn't have keys for those doors". WTF!? we get up the stairs eventually and oh.. more compost.. "but dont worry this will be out of here on tuesday"... BAGS AND BAGS AND BAGS of ROT. how much compost can a family create in ONE WEEK! not ELEVEN bags full!!!! we get out onto the street, start walking and i am physically shaking.. hyperventilating and i can't stop my eyes from welling up.. i am panicking beyond belief..
we were only in there for about 20 minutes.. it sounds a lot longer but it was 20 minutes.. a LONG 20 minutes.. the worst 20 minutes i have experienced in a long time.
we walked a good way up and started looking on craigslist immediately. on the way back i was shaking so badly and mumbling incoherently, that i had to sit in the car while mike went in to tell them that there was so NOOOO way we would live there..
he did it as politely as possible.. telling them that's their lifestyle but we cannot live there.
they later emailed us later saying they wouldn't give our deposit back because we never moved in.. now we're going to the state with a suit. we told them yesterday that we were going to file a suit if they don't give us our deposit back. we haven't heard back. we're sending them an ultimatum today saying if we don't have our $1,000 back by tomorrow, we will file.
they have a 2 year old, 9 year old and a ONE MONTH OLD living among all that waste!!! the husband said he had a sinus infection and wifey had a breast infection and the oldest daughter had a cold of some sort.. YA THINK!? you live in a festering mess of bacteria and viral SHIT!!!!"
we received notice a few days later that the dynamic filth duo does not intend on giving our deposit back and "could sue us for lost rent". basically, we have done our research and the bottom line is that they misrepresented the apartment."misrepresented" hardly does justice for what we were "presented".
while staying with our friend and trying to quickly create a "plan b", we get a phone call that our previous landlord does not want to give our deposit back because of a "painted bedroom". oh wait.. an APPROVED painted bedroom. a painted bedroom with a completely neutral color, "pony tail" was the name. go figure. we decided to really spruce it up and paint the edges of a hanging bookshelf (that our pre-landlord was going to tear down) black. it became a floating bookshelf. very sleek. she didn't feel the same obviously, but let's be real here.. the room was the size of a double closet, a walk-in for some, and you think it's going to cost how much to repaint? oh, but what darlings we are because GASP, there's extra primer downstairs. oh, but lest we forget that no where in our lease did it say "thou shall not paint"... and there is that little word you said when we ASKED to paint the room.... "yes". no, this is not as worrisome as the filthpots because we have legal documentation, but it didn't make the blow hurt any less.
the next day we had to empty the crate that all our belongings were shipped in. since we didn't have an apartment, we had to rent a storage unit. another pretty penny down the drain. before heading to uhaul, we stopped to get coffee. nothing makes me feel better than a ginormous cup of coffee, a security blanket of sorts. the starbucks is packed and everyone is stupid. mean, but TRUE. maybe it's the whole semi-legalization of marijuana out here, but the majority of people i've come across are packing some thin air up in that cranium of theirs. it could be argued that i have the east coast rush in my blood, we'll see.
so, i order my coffee, i tip the barista, comment on the funny "via" hats the store manager made them wear (to mike, not the barista), get my coffee and gah... no soy milk. normally, the put it in for you right away so you don't want to wait among all the foo-foo "coffee" drinkers with their venti-non-fat-250 degree-light foam-carmel-chocolate-frappacinno a.k.a. DESSERT? finally i get someone's attention and they pour me some good ol' soya goodness and i am on my merry way. it's gonna be a good day! yea!
or not. i get in the car and someone went a little heavy on the pouring because coffee is spilling out from under the lid onto my lap. thank gosh for black jeans. it's only 10 AM and already the day is against me. i pour some out onto the concrete (wasting about 30 cents or so) thinking that will do the trick. nope. i continue to leak coffee all over my lap from emeryville to the uhaul in alameda. we get the uhaul and thankfully nothing goes wrong there. i even got some pretty pictures of some hibiscus.
the roads here suck especially for a car with a racing suspension and a little lower than most. it is crevice and pothole city out here. i'm surprised more people aren't waiting on the side lines with flats. i follow mike in the uhaul and we get to ABF crossing our fingers that our crate met the weight limit. HA! bad luck? pfft. we got you this time norcal! we actually weighed in much less than we were thinking. i can't wait to see my stuff. i've missed it so!
we carefully open the doors and oh man, stuff is smooooshed. we packed every little nook and cranny as tightly as possible. things looked a lot worse than they were and thankfully nothing was broken.. although i can't say that for sure. i haven't unpacked anything yet. the only thing that was pretty much ruined was my yoga mat. i wanted a new one anyways. we carefully get everything out of the crate, slowly both getting tired and cranky, and i see something on the floor. a MOUSE. a dead mouse. nope... TWO dead mice! cute little field mice too. initial reaction: squeal, run away, bounce up and down, flail my arms but then cuteness got the better of me and i truly felt sorry for those guys. they were probably living in the shed then took up residence in mike's honda cub during the summer. poor little things. i wish i could have seen the reaction of whoever double checked the crate - empty relo cube, two dead (cute) mice.
after staying with our friend for a week, we found a guy renting his apartment temporarily. we're currently staying in a traditional san francisco flat in the richmond district, about three blocks away from golden gate park. it's a pretty large apartment, much larger than anything we have seen. he lived here for about 15 years, but has been in litigation with his landlord after his previous landlord passed away unexpectedly two years ago. he has shared some great insight into california law. he pretty much spends his nights studying and building his case. he's also a massage therapist and if i weren't so freaked about male masseuses (sorry, dudes), i would hit him up for some deep tissue kneading to expel the large amounts of stress manifesting in my mid-upper back. i'm enjoying the richmond district but i could do without their inconvenient parking situation. we have to circle the block for sometimes 15 minutes before we find anything. the engineer behind driveways and street curbs here needs to have a good talking to. no car can physically park along a 3' curb and yet you plopped a handful of them on every street. why? that's an entirely different entry. i could go on for a while with that one.
things were starting to calm down once we "moved into" the two back rooms. we grabbed some things from our storage unit to make the room we're renting a little bit more homey; bed (on slats), pictures, record player, and finally a change of clothes. since we ran out of space in the crate, mike had to ship his road bike and mountain bike via fedex. they finally got here the other day just in time for our first bike ride... to small claims court.
i ride a fixie, not because i'm some posh hipster (i have a front brake = less cool), but i hate gears. i wouldn't know how to fix them if they broke, so i want nothing to do with them. i like my little fixie but after riding these gigantic hills, sharing the road with stupid drivers in a (sometimes) busy area (depending where you are), i may have to invest in a coaster brake/ definitely a rear brake. i am liking the prospect for a super toned butt and thighs. nice.
i survive my first bike ride in a bustling city with little leg power since i haven't really done that much physical exercise since getting here, so i'm feeling on the up. we get to a place called ACCESS where we meet with someone to fill out the forms saying "we are suing your filthy butts". forms filled out, advice given/taken, and now its' time to head over to file the papers and spend $35 to file, $30 for the sheriff to serve the husband, and $30 for the sheriff to serve the wife. $90, great. we're standing in line and everything is starting to sink in. they will probably counter-sue for the max of $7500. what if they win? should we just let the $1000 go? i worked so @#$% hard for this money! oh no, here it comes. lip quivering, eyes welling, hands shaking. my poker face needs some work because mike noticed and suggested we talk about it when we get home. i get to bike still biting my lip, and rather than deal with the emotions as they come, i like to distract myself by.. going to the bookstore. we ride a couple miles to the bookstore in union square but alas, no bike racks and the woman at the bart station advises against us locking them on the street anyways. so, we're back on our bikes and pedaling to weirdfish in the mission to eat our problems away. we lock our bikes up about 8' from the restaurant and gorge ourselves on some buffalo setain strips and vegan apple cheesecake. i'm full and looking forward to burning off the impulsive distraction sitting in my belly. we walk out into the stench of urine and latin food, head for our bikes....
wait...my seat is missing. someone stole my bike seat. who steals a bike seat, really? holy breaking point. i almost kicked over a newspaper stand. i started cursing up a storm, slamming my bike into the ground and giving everyone passing me a total stink eye. i think if i saw the perpetrator holding my bike seat i would have gone lion attack on them and ended up in jail. what the hell are you going to do with a bike seat!? so now i have to catch the muni with a seat-less bike. we finally get off the muni about twenty minutes later and duck into starbucks for another distraction.. coffee. or tea. i had tea instead. great tea. i'm still pissed/enraged, so bad that i walked in front of a car because i just didn't care if the light was green or not. i had enough of people shitting on me. this time car, you're waiting for ME.
as we're walking up to the house mike stops and starts searching his pockets becoming paler by the second. the keys. he must have left the keys in one of the security bins at the courthouse and no one cared to tell him. we walk faster towards the apartment hoping our landlord/roommate (who does not have a cell phone) is inside. nope. but maybe he'll be home soon because he always comes home to study and what not. time goes by, the fog rolls in, the air gets colder, and after three hours of trying to break in without looking totally suspicious, i put my hood up and sit under the garage getting ready to fall asleep on the concrete.
a little asian man comes walking up the sidewalk, to our gate. YES!! finally! mike quickly tries to explain that we are locked out, but he speaks very little english insisting that he lives on the third floor. "we know, we're on the second floor." mike, being a quick thinker, grabs a key and says "look i'll open the upstairs door" (which is never locked anyways) and magically opens the door. i get upstairs to a very anxious ember ("where have you beeeen!?"), but i am so glad to be inside. our ll/roommie didn't come home until this afternoon, so we would have been s.o.l. had our neighbor not come home. it was also mike's first day of work, i'd rather not think of what could have been.
other than writing all of this, i have not done much today. i haven't even left the apartment, so sf has not had the chance to release its wrath upon me. but, i'm venturing out now, so we'll see what it has in store for today.
i'll leave this with some of the GREAT things that have happened thus far:
ate lots of awesome food! it's almost endless.
found an amazing co-op grocery with tons of food and housewares.
went surfing in pacifica - went after a few waves, didn't catch any but had a great time til my hands froze up. i will need a new wetsuit, for sure.
went to a few great shows.
took a bunch of pictures that i have yet to upload! wait for it
xo.
