Tumbled Words

This is a rant, overreaction? Maybe.

If this place is indicative of most condos, I’ll live in a tent and I don’t do tents. I don’t mind being quiet, I really don’t. I have headphones if I get the urge to rock out to music. I understand they don’t want anyone to move in on a Sunday, so we didn’t. The tile floors are the comfortable ones, so I walk barefoot most of the day, I don’t wear spike heels. Though Leon has never understood how I could belly dance with light foot and walk with such thundering steps; neither have I.

We were told one specific person beneath us complained about the woman that lived here before. We were also told that he wanted to date her and she wouldn’t and it was insinuated that was why he complained about her so often: took too many showers and vacuumed too late at night. An alert went up in my little head, but the lease had been signed and he had been “made to seem an old man who wanted to date a 30 something and was spurned - and he didn’t like it.”

Last night we dropped something. Today we got up after 7, turned on TV quietly, put light bulbs in the bathroom (she only left us one that worked out of four), later he unscrewed the grungy shower head and screwed our new one back in. We did not even take a shower because we were going to the old apartment to clean and were taking a shower afterward there. Then we got dressed, grabbed our stuff and left. Tonight we were putting a few things away, knocked something over. Phone rang, the landlord.

She had been told we were hammering at 6:30 this morning. We were still in bed then and no hammering of any kind was going on. We were reminded we can “do what we want” during the week, but not on the weekend. (*That is only partially true, rules say this is a quiet place, so anything we want would NOT fly.)

Leon is the more temperamental of us under normal circumstances, though I am catching up, and this is one time I am the angry one. I sincerely would prefer to just get out of the lease and move now — before we get our love seat and dining stuff, before we get things put away, before the man really makes me mad and I say something ruder than I intended (or really meant, but another person would have left unsaid).

Poor Leon did not want to hear me say that. He can only see having to move this stuff again, plus the desks, bookcase, and filing drawers we had delivered that still have to be assembled. He sees that and dollar signs and hunting for another place to live.

I see a year of pure unadulterated misery if we stay and have to watch our every move twenty-four hours a day. I may love the beach, but since I can’t take the heat out there except for daybreak on the cooler days of summer, I am more than willing to give it up, it is not like it is my primary dream, not like it is the only choice we have — but how do you get out of a lease…

Maybe we will go downstairs and introduce ourselves, but I would want unbiased witnesses present since I heard he used to come up and bug the woman repeatedly to go out with him; who knows what he would accuse us of saying.

Cynical? Me? Yes. I suppose many condos and apartments and housing associations have their resident complainer, but did we have to move above one?

Yes, I am ranting and perhaps overreacting, but we really don’t need what this other woman went through on top of the stress of the house not selling. And even as I write that, I feel guilty for saying it. At least we have the money to pay the house payment… I know how lucky we are in so many ways. I know that we may actually eventually be able to put some money away for real retirement. I know that I have many dreams and am content with just a few of them. I know that above all I am so lucky to have the relationship I do with Leon. So, I’m going to TRY to deal with this without constant ranting, but tonight, I just haven’t got it in me. I’ve heard too many stories about condos…

And once we buy lamps so we can actually see in this room, is he going to complain I am lighting up his window too much at 8:00 p.m. — from the light spilling out our window above?

And just for the record, we won’t go out of our way to frustrate him, so he should count himself lucky some of the people I’ve met over the years aren’t living here, because they would.

Tags: condo living

in South Florida, but I am so grateful it has happened so much less than before. We ran to a Target tonight to grab a few things. The young man at the cash register never said a word to Leon or I. So, I figured he was just bored or possibly rude. Leon’s new pin number wouldn’t work, so he had to rerun it as a credit card, still no words. I said, (OK, so I am a bit daft at times.) “I hope the rest of your night is not so boring.” I was thinking maybe at his age he was just bored beyond belief on a Saturday night. NOPE.

He looked me straight in the face and said nothing… letting me know he knew I was there, and deliberately ignoring me, though he did manage to hand me the receipt. I have seen that look before - and I know what it was. Well, I could be jumping to conclusions, but I know it still exists and have seen the look before. It came from a place I hate to think about, a societal thing that is so unfair - on both sides. I walked toward Leon and said, “What a …..” mostly under my breath, not angry at being ignored but at society in general. Leon went into full alert. “What did he do to you?” I said, “Nothing, I will explain in a minute.” Now, if you knew Leon, you would realize that the strength of his reaction was most likely because he had picked up on the “apparent” undercurrent and was assuming my strong reaction was because the man had said something derogatory to me. But, it was just a very improper reaction of a tired woman who forgot to fix the leak in the air mattress yesterday, so we had to refill it in the middle of the night when we sunk to the center of the bed.

He was not just another disgruntled employee. Employment had nothing to do with it. That said, the look I was given was not to intimidate but to devalue. Shame he wasted the effort, because no one can devalue a person; both value and lack of must come from within.

Someday people on all sides of all fences will realize just how much they damage themselves with all that misplaced anger, but I wonder if by my future 114th birthday, 56 years away, it will be any different? I sure hope so.

Tags: anger, devalued person

Begin Rant.

Don’t bother saying, “Your body will adjust.”

Why? Because I lived in Florida from my 5th birthday until I was 54.5. I never adjusted, or should I say my body never adjusted.

Now, I am a day away from 58. The older you get the harder the heat is on you. Even in my twenties, I would either be in the pool or in the air conditioning for the most part. Just going shopping, I would come home drained and often a step past that. Getting in my car was hell for me. Getting out of my car was hell. Getting back in it was more hell, it heated up even faster. Every day in the mid 80’s definite, some even lower and I was physically unhappy. I am not exaggerating.
Leon didn’t feel good today, ate something this morning that didn’t set well - at all. In fact, he is miserable, and he never complains when he feels bad usually, unlike yours truly.

It is, in theory, only in the low 80’s. The sun is beating down on our car. At 2:00 pm, a horrid time of the day here, I drove literally 2 blocks to the grocery and back to get him something. Now, in fairness to Florida, we do not have a garage, that would have helped the trip there, but not really the trip back, cars heat up down here in no time. I felt crummy in that short time by the time I got home. My candy bar, that I bought and was up front in the two little bags on the passenger seat in front of the A/C vents that were pointing down - As soon as I put three things in the fridge, I ripped it open - and had chocolate all over my hands. Granted a baby would have looked cute with chocolate all over their face… but my computer, not so cute.

This is not a whine, it is pure fact. I flashed back to years working in Tampa and getting in my car at 4:30 or five and not being able to touch the steering wheel without burning my hands… the covers do help a bit, though. By the time the car cooled off, I was miles down the road and drenched. I don’t know how ya’ll do it.

And it isn’t just summer here, that is what is so awful… The last four years we were here I paid to have my groceries delivered. They stopped the service. As soon as we find a new apartment or condo, I am seriously buying tons of nonperishables and more frozen than I like to have on hand so we only have to get the non-perishables during the summer… and I will do without all those except my favored lemons as much as possible. If I am smart, I will just squeeze the lemons and make ice cubes out of them, too.

Moving to Washington, other than seeing our son only once a year, was the best thing we ever did. Coming back to Florida for winter only would have worked, I could deal with the occasional 80’s, but living here all summer this year, I’m honestly not sure I am willing to do it, but I have to back Leon on this - and this is our last ditch effort to earn enough to eat during our 70’s and 80’s - and have a roof over our head. So, suck it up, Marcia, and find a grocery delivery just in case - and an apartment with a garage.

I wish I could solve the heat for the millions of people it bothers, but I wasn’t given that job…. so for now, “Look at the deep blue sky and those few white clouds and those lovely palm trees and that TINY spot of shade they provide.”

End rant.

Now to treat you to a Rave, look at this scanned in photo from one of our trips years ago to Discovery Cove. You can’t come to Florida in the summer without snorkeling at Discovery Cove - if you want to see sharks as if they were swimming next to you but behind thick glass you can’t even see in a “wrecked ship” beneath the surface. And the thousands of schools of fish that you swim through, it is so cool. We went the last two years we were in Florida - and we will go again. More to it than that, and they limit the number of guests per day so you have a little room! Check out their website here. It is one of our three favorite Florida attractions! Someday I will find our other photos and scan them in…

Tags: Attractions, Discovery Cove, Florida, heat, Washington