Still crazy after all these years

This year I'm celebrating seven years of crazy upstairs neighbor stories.

This special anniversary edition is brought to you by the latest tenants. For about a year I've suspected they were throwing cigarettes off their back porch and into the back yard, although they denied it.

I picked them up, threw them away, and told myself that maybe the squirrels were smoking in the trees. (I like to give people the benefit of the doubt--which my mom has recently informed me is my worst quality.)

When the snow melted, the sheer number of butts on the ground made it clear that if the squirrels were indeed smoking they would be dead from cancer by now:

Fun with Photoshop. Sadie is not amused.

The arrow points to a tree that blocks this area from the other yards.  The only way these got here was if saomeone walked into our back yard and deposited them there ... or if someone threw them off the back porch. As the woman next door said while we were chatting the other day, "It's not exactly a mystery."

Anyhoo ... I finally managed to catch the upstairs neighbor in the act--watched the lit cigarette sail off the upstairs porch and into the dry leaves and mulch in the ground. Freaking awesome.

I am such a good photographer! I managed to catch the burning cigarette and the inch-long ash and if you look closely you can actually see the smoke wafting off of it (to the left). The dry leaves on the right-hand side make the photo, though. Fine art!  

Seriously, WTF.

Ah, but apparently I am the liar. Even though I saw him do it, the faux-hawked asshat upstairs told the unit owners he is absolutely positively 100% innocent.

And so it continues.

I was going to make a list of all the previous installments of my upstairs neighbor stories, but there are way more than I even remembered--and I even skipped most of the stories from when the three boys lived upstairs--they were also big fans of flicking cigarettes all over the back lawn and had really classy girlfriends, such as the one who challenged me to a fight.

A search of "upstairs neighbor" on Gienna Writes returns a lot of horror stories. So here are some of the best of the worst:

In which my upstairs neighbor dies.
In which my upstairs neighbor comes back from the dead.
In which the bank spends all my money and I still don't get the gay boyfriends of my dreams (long).
In which I am scolded by the Keyspan lady.

Looking back at them, I realize that I've never had it so good.

And finally ... Famous last words from "Auntie A" in this comment on on of my earliest crazy upstairs neighbor posts from 2006.

Happy anniversary!

What do you see when you turn out the lights?

I phrase I honestly thought I'd never have to utter and a conversation I definitely never wanted to have:

Me: Do you think it's possible that there is poo on the back hallway?

Upstairs neighbor (who is watching his mom's dog): I hope not.

Me: The lightbulb is out so it's dark, but I'm pretty sure it's poo.

Lameness update, part two

I haven't posted any pics here in a while and, since KK asked about it yesterday, here are the two that were accepted into the show in Salem:



I think they look better printed and framed than they do online.

I was happy with the way the next one came out, I've been wanting to take it for about four years... it's a long story, which I've already written once. No energy to write again and too lazy to cut and paste so click on the picture if you care to read it, plus some reactions to the photograph and opinions about whether it was worth the wait.



And, finally, my war against whatever neighbor happens to be living above me at any given time continues. The boys currently living in the upstairs unit are not very good at policing their cigarette butts. So I pick them up and leave them on their doorstep:



So far it is not working. My friend vrai suggests several ways that I could get my point across, including this one, my favorite:

"put on your best Betty Paige red and white apron and whip up a nice bowl of red jello with little juicy chunks of cigarette butts. wear your biggest smile as you offer your neighbors the desert you've just made them."

There are others, including one that invovles cat poop. C'mon, who doesn't think cat poop is funny?

Again, click on the picture to get the deets.

New tricks

Just got back from three days in Nashville, TN, with some folks from work. One of my co-workers expressed some concern that I might quote her on my blog. I didn't tell her that until she is as cute as the dog or as crazy as the crazy dead upstairs neighbor, she's not likely to be immortalized here.

Does she dance like a ballerina on command? I don't think so.

Nashville was a lot of fun. Next time I'd save more energy for the honky-tonk bars and the live music, though. We went to the world famous Tootsies the first night, but by the time we got there (via a series of local eateries and drinkeries) I was wiped out. I would have also liked to see the Frist, but our schedule didn't accommodate. The truth is that when you're traveling for business you often don't have as much time and energy to be a tourist as you'd like.

I will tell you one story (it's a very safe one, I promise). At supper on the second night someone asked the table, "If you could be in any band in history, which would it be?" I knew my answer right away. But can you believe that someone I had just met the night before guessed which band I was going to choose before I even said it? I mean, that's a little spooky, right?

Katie: I am back and want to hear all about the passing of the papers -- Woo hoos all around -- and I like the new design on your site, too. I still want to help you learn how to upload photos ... I really do. Then I can say "You should put that on your blog" to you!

One more cute picture of the dog's new trick here.

More crazy-ness upstairs

You would think that I'd be fresh out of stories about my crazy upstairs neighbor. Especially since, you know, she's dead.

But you would be wrong.

The bank, which bought the upstairs unit, has been renovating since November. At the time, they promised they would be done by Christmas. Though they're up there almost every day starting around 7:30 a.m., making enough of a racket to put cracks in my walls and send all my little curios flying off their shelves, almost five months later there's still no end in sight. Every time they fix one thing, another thing breaks. Carlos the genius electrician rewired the old asbestos-covered boiler, but then they couldn't get it working again, so they had to replace it. They went to fix a leak in the plumbing and discovered a million code violations and had to rip it all out and start over again. In other words, every time they open up a can, it's full of worms.

Randy is the handyman who has been doing or overseeing the bulk of the work upstairs. He's one of those olde New England types, wears the requisite rumpled and paint-stained work clothes, has a face with lots of wrinkles, gray stubble, and character, speaks in very plain, short sentences. Scowls a lot. Not incredibly friendly, but he's a nice enough guy. And he's got a great work ethic, likes to do things right. He helped me fix the sump pump when the hose came loose and started spraying water all over the basement. He doesn't leave too much construction crap all over the yard. He even put up some insulation on the basement ceiling for me after he installed an exhaust pipe on the boiler that sounded like there was a bus idling underneath my bedroom. It didn't help with the noise. But at least he tried.

As nice as Randy is, as handy and as hard-working, I recently asked him when the hell he would be out of my life once and for all.

His answer threw me for a little loop.

"Well, from the beginning, we were never able to work much past noon," Randy says.

"Oh?" I ask. "How come?"

"She wouldn't let us."

"Who's 'she'?"

"The lady that used to own the apartment."

"Paula?" I say. I'm surprised, because as far as I knew, he didn't start working upstairs until after she died. "Did you work for her before the bank bought the place?"

"Nope," he says.

"Huh? So how would she ..."

"She's still here," he says. "And she doesn't like us working in her place."

So. The reason the construction upstairs has dragged on for so long now is that my crazy (dead) upstairs neighbor is haunting the workers. That's great. That's really perfect. It's just exactly what you'd expect.

Here's my question: Do you think, considering all the madness that has ensued since I bought my little slice of the American dream, there is any chance whatsoever that the next owner of the upstairs unit will be normal? Seriously, what are the chances?

Previously:
I disparage gypsies.
At least the old real estate listing can be updated now.
The first installment of the crazy upstairs neighbor chronicles.

From bad to not quite as bad but not exactly good

Let's face it: Not much is going to happen with the condo upstairs from mine that's going to top what happened during the reign of terror that was the former owner, aka the crazy upstairs neighbor. She's dead now, and the bank that held the mortgage bought the unit from itself at a secret auction. I won't say which bank it was, except to say that it is based in Somerville. And that it offers savings accounts. And that it has the word "bank" in its name. Anyway, having a bank as an upstairs neighbor is not nearly as bad as having a crazy alcoholic up there.

But there are a couple of things.

For starters, the bank bought the place back in early November and the bank president said he planned to have it all fixed up and on the market by Christmas. As of this morning (and it must be January in New England, because it's f-f-f-f-f-freezing) they were still at it. (Now, what does that remind me of? Oh, yeah, this.) It seems like they're mostly doing the work on the weekends. And mostly starting at ungodly hours (which, on the weekends, to my mind, means before 8 a.m.).

Among the other couple of things is the fact that they haven't turned on the heat in the unit all winter. When I ask the bank guy or his contractor about it, they say they have it set at 55, but I suspect that's not true, because the pipes of the upstairs unit run right through my walls and, in fact, one of them is exposed in my front hall, and they have been cold to the touch for months. Also, I used the spare key to let myself in one night and I found the heat was turned OFF and the needle on the register was below the lowest number on the dial.

Liars.

The bank guy calls me all the time now. Honestly, I talk to him more than I talk to my mother. And every time he gets me on the line, it seems there's another check to write or form to fill out.

First, it was the master insurance. The crazy upstairs neighbor let our insurance lapse. So the bank guy goes ahead and buys a policy that costs nearly $5,000 to insure the two units. This seems like a lot to me. Like a really f-ing lot. He says that because of Hurricane Katrina and because we let the insurance lapse we have to be assigned to a risk pool. When I suggest we shop around for a better rate, he says it's too late. He already bought the policy and could I write a check for my half? I ask my next door neighbor what she's paying for her two family and she tells me $750 a year for the whole house.

Next it was the condo fees. Truth be told one of the nice things about having a dysfunctional alcoholic for an upstairs neighbor was that she didn't really care whether or not I paid my monthly condo fee. She never did. We didn't pay the water bills, either. But the bank guy isn't cool with that. He paid three year's worth of water bills and sent me a note asking for my half. As for the condo fees, we're putting aside enough this year to pay the water bills, get screwed on next year's master insurance, and build up a contingency fund to boot. I gather that's in case we get screwed on something else. Maybe we could hire gypsies to pave the driveway for us.

The bank guy must be an optimist. I love that he thinks that I may have some money left over after the insurance and the water bill and the condo fees. He actually tried to talk to me about landscaping. (I put my foot down there, and told him that if he wanted to fix the yard up to help sell his unit, he was welcome to do so, but that my contribution would be limited to picking up the dog's poops from the yard.) And when he got a quote to add insulation to his unit, he very generously also got a quote for what it would cost to insulate the whole house (my half would have come to $1,700). You know why he did that? Because when they blow the insulation into the walls it's going to get blown down into my walls anyway--it's not like there's a dividing line in between the first and second floor that magically stops the material. So he figured he might as well see if I'd help him to pay for it.

Anyway, it's not all bad news. I have hope that someday soon jackhammers will stop shaking me awake at 7:30 a.m. and that whatever the hell they are doing under the front porch will be cleaned up and that they will sell the unit to a nice (fingers crossed) gay couple who will love to garden and will have a little dog that barks, too. And they will invite me upstairs for dinner and a glass of wine and give me advice about my clothes and my hair and introduce me to their single straight friends.

I can't wait to tell them all about the crazy upstairs neighbors in the dark days before they moved in.

(Previously.)
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Non-sequit ...Hey, did you see Lost last night?

Yesterday I called the gas company because I know that my upstairs neighbor, who was murdered earlier this week, owes them about $4,000 and that they recently sent her a shutoff notice. And, despite the fact that it was about 80 degrees out yesterday, I was worried that her heat would get shut off and that her pipes would freeze and burst and flood my unit. I thought maybe if they knew that she had died suddenly they would put a note on her account not to shut off the heat right away, until it could be determined who owns the property and who is responsible for the bill.

Yeah, in retrospect, it sounds pretty stupid to me, too.

So I called the gas company and explained to a woman in customer service about how I own the downstairs unit and someone else owns the upstairs unit and how I know the woman who owns (owned) the upstairs unit owes them a lot of money because I saw the bill and the shutoff notice and how I was worried that, with winter coming, the pipes might freeze and burst if the heat got shut off and how the truth was they probably weren't going to get paid in the short term because the woman who owed them the money had died and that, in fact, she was murdered. And the more I talked the more I realized how crazy I sounded and so finally I just said, "Listen, I know this all sounds really crazy but is there any way you could just put a note on her account saying that there's, you know, extenuating circumstances?"

"Ma'am," the Keyspan woman says to me, "You really shouldn't be reading other people's mail."

And by the way can someone PLEASE explain to me what the hell that opening scene on Lost was all about last night? Like, where do they get a dozen copies of a Stephen King book on a desert island? Or a stove to bake muffins in? Seriously, WTF?

Well, at least now we know the story behind the polar bears and the shark with the Dharma Initiative logo on it. Thank God they cleared all that up.
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Suddenly, the stories about the crazy upstairs neighbor aren't so funny anymore

The woman who owns the unit upstairs from me is dead.

You remember her, right? The one who started her renovations last February, in the dark, using electricity from an extension cord plugged into the outlet in my kitchen? The one who, during a particularly rainy spring, unplugged the sump pump in the cellar to plug in a microwave oven?

In May, she told me she was renovating a house in Medford and that she'd been sleeping there. At the end of that visit, I had a definite sense of foreboding -- When you read that post you have to think that nothing good can come of this.

So yesterday, when I heard a woman in her 40s was found murdered in the Medford house she was renovating, heard the neighbors talking about the noise and the drunkeness, the hammers flying through windows, the people banging on doors at all hours of the night ... I knew it was her. And, sure enough, this morning they released her name showed a picture of her on the news.

It was shocking.

But then again not really.

So apparently the bank foreclosed on the Medford house, but she was still living there. And yesterday they found her body inside the house, on a mattress on the floor of a makeshift bedroom, beaten to death. They haven't caught the person who did it, though they supect it was someone she knew.

This morning, telling the story at work, I probably sounded a little cavalier. I was laughing, although it was nervous, freaked-out laughter. But as crazy and dysfunctional as she was, and as strange and sometimes scary as the experience of knowing her has been, and even though, now that it's played out, the ending seems all but inevitable ... I really do feel bad for her. It was a horrible end to a difficult life -- nothing you would ever wish on anyone.

I think it'll be interesting to see what the news does with this, if the police ever catch the person who did it. If she was a soccer mom it would be the top story on every network and the front page of every newspaper. But she's not, and I'm guessing there won't be another update unless they do catch whoever killed her. And I think the chances of that happening are slim.
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The $309K fixer-upper

The upstairs unit, after months and months and months of fits and starts of activity, long stretches of inactivity, and general mayhem and madness, is officially on the real estate market.

And no, I'm not going to link to the online listing, you stalker.

The crazy upstairs neighbor has it listed for $309,000. This is for a three-bedroom (and it's only a three bedroom by a technicality--there's a closet in the tiny sunroom over the front porch) condominium in a below-average (bordering on sketchy) neighborhood. With a pile of rubble in the middle of the living room floor. And leaky pipes. And outdated wiring. And a yellow- and black-tiled kitchen that hasn't been updated in 50 years. And an asbestos-covered furnace. And a basement that floods any time it rains even one single inch. And, oh by the way, the very exciting prospect of entering into a legal contract with a drunken maniac.

Real estate bubble? What real estate bubble?

By the way, do you have time to read one more quick crazy upstairs neighbor story? Yes? OK, here's the thing. The crazy upstairs neighbor still has no electricity. She is using the common outlet in the basement and a long extension cord to do her so-called renovations. The crazy upstairs neighbor has a microwave oven propped up on a milk crate down in the cellar (naturally). So a craving for a microwave burrito hits and what does she do?

She.

Un.

Plugs.

The.

Sump.

Pump.

You know, the one in the basement that floods any time it rains even one single inch. And then she goes on her merry drunk way. And leaves the miscrowave plugged in and the sump pump unplugged.

Seriously, anyone in the market for a $309,000 fixer-upper?

Please?
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The May visit was kind of depressing

You-know-who's been stumbling around upstairs again. She's going to renovate her unit--it will only take two weeks--and sell it as soon as she can. She's going to be very slective about the buyer, though, because she doesn't want to stick me with a bad neighbor.

Of course, she said the same thing in January. And February. And March.

Her latest renovation fever was sparked by a foreclosure notice. She told me she's renovating another unit in Medford, and that she's been sleeping there. I don't think she has the money to do anything with the upstairs apartment, but she doesn't want to give up and sell it as is, either. I haven't seen her boyfriend around, and she doesn't talk about her son anymore.

She's gone again now, but she did spend a few days in the unit, working into the night even though the apartment is still without electricity. She would leave the kitchen door open, and work in the feeble glow of the single bulb in the back hall 'till all hours, banging things around and throwing crap out of the windows.

Whenever I came home from work or from walking the dog or from running errands she would shout greetings and questions out the windows at me, scaring the hell out of me each and every time and making the dog bark.

"Does your dog always bark like that?" Except it came out Dwash shore dawghgh algrahwsh bruck lach dshaght?

I decide to be honest and say "Yes, she does." I decide not to be foolish and add what I'm thinking: Especially when crazy drunk people are yelling out the window of a dark apartment at us.

On the second night she asked me to come upstairs and look at the yellow tiled walls in the kitchen. She wanted my advice about what color to paint the cabinets. I tried to get out of it by telling her I was tired and going in for the night, but she kept talking to me from the second floor window and the dog kept barking up at her and I knew neither one of them was going to stop unless I came up.

So I picked my way past the plastic red cups filled with thick brown liquid (curdled Kaluha and creams?) that lined the stairs and walked past the growing pile of brown paper bags from the liquor store down the street, into the kitchen where she'd been letting her cigarette butts burn out on the linoleum floors and counters, leaving behind brown streaks that look like cockroaches in the gloomy light.

I stood and listened to her ramble on in her slurred voice. I held the dog in my arms so it wouldn't bark and wouldn't get into god knows whatever the hell might be in that apartment. I told her that the only color that goes with yellow is white, but she didn't believe me. I told her that she shouldn't paint over the old tiles and she changed the subject. She talked about a bird she has or once had and how that particular species of bird was the most intelligent animal in the world. Or something. It was pretty hard to understand her.

I stood in the dark kitchen listening to her slur her stories for a half an hour, maybe an hour. The whole time I stood there, leaning against the counter, my hand kept twitching toward the light switch, wanting to flip on the lights. And then I would remember that there was no electrictity and pull my hand back.

And I would listen to her talk for a while, until I forgot about the electricity. And then I would reach toward the light switch again.

After I left she worked for a while longer, stumbling around in the dark, throwing things out the window, and drinking herself to death. She stayed a couple more days after that. She tried to steal my weed wacker, but was too drunk to actually pull it off (Oh, dosh thish beloghgh to ghou?) so she had to bring it back downstairs again. She fell asleep in her car, which was parked outside the house. She left a bunch of cigarette butts on the walkway. She planted some flowers in the planter on the front porch. She parked in the driveway and blocked my car in. She made my dog bark some more. And then she disappeared again.

I kind of miss her.

OK, not really. But I do think I'm starting to feel bad for her. And I just wonder how long this can possibly go on ...
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Crazy upstairs neighbor update

At the start of February, the woman who owns the unit upstairs from me announced she was going to do a quick renovation job so she could put the condo on the market. The whole thing was going to take her six weeks, she said.

That was five weeks ago.

Here is a list of the annoying and/or dangerous things she has done so far:

• She broke into her unit via the front door, and left for the night without cleaning up the broken glass on the front porch or covering the jagged hole in the window on the door.
• She borrowed a lamp from me and when I tried to plug it back in it blew a fuse. Later I replaced the bulb, but that one burned out as soon as I turned on the lamp, too. The acrid smell of overheated electronics convinced me the lamp was a fire hazzard -- I threw it away.
• She left for the night and left the back door wide open as well as the door leading to the basement. And I do not mean she left the doors unlocked, I mean she left the doors open. In the winter.
• She has twice left for the night with every light in the basement blazing.
  

And here is a list of the renovations she has done so far:

• On the first night, she ripped out the carpets (but did not dispose of them).
  

[sound of crickets chirping]


I get the feeling this is going to be the longest six weeks of my life.

Read the backstory: part one and part two.