And that’s when my sweet little girl, back leg bandaged from the blood draw and wobbly from receiving a dose of toxic chemicals, dives right in.
It is awesome.
Loki splashes in after her and starts swimming laps and biting at the water. As we watch them paddle around the pool, my heart bubbles over with joy and I’m overcome by the sense of having made the right decision.
This would be a lovely place to end this missive with the reluctant adult lesson that even if you’re scared, you should do it anyway.
Of course, this is us we’re talking about.
We move out of Dick’s place a week later and for the first time, we don’t scour the stove or wipe cabinets ourselves. Instead, we hire a crew to do so. We also have the carpets professionally cleaned and we leave the house in better shape than when we moved in. Because we’ve learned not to trust Dick, we have the photos to prove it, too. We even paid for a home inspection in case we ever had to go to court and needed an impartial third party’s report.
Of course Dick keeps our entire security deposit, claiming he had to replace all the carpeting and repair all the imaginary holes we knocked in the walls.
Of course he does.
He even sends us receipts for alleged damage… from the construction company he just so happens to own. The thing is, once a Dick, always a Dick. So I send Gina and her boyfriend Lee in for a covert operation posing as potential tenants. They schedule an appointment with an apartment broker and they go over the place with a fine-tooth comb. They return with photographic evidence that he did none of the work for which he submitted receipts. Gina even has the broker send her e-mail confirmation that the landlord states the carpet is just fine and there’s no need to replace it.
I not only want to go all HULK SMASH and bash in Dick’s face with my good whacking shovel but I’d also like to engage in a war of social media.
Our real estate attorney advises against both courses of action.
Instead, she sends him what she calls a “liar, liar, pants on fire” letter but ultimately nothing happens because (if my Google stalking is to be trusted, and I think it is) he’s in a world of financial trouble and his last priority is writing us a check. She says we could sue, but it would cost far more in terms of dollars spent and aggravation and that our best revenge is living well here in our nineteenth, permanent home.
But for me?
I think the best revenge is writing a shaming essay about the situation that will live on in the Library of Congress forever.
Reluctant Adult Lesson Learned:
Don’t be a Dick… because you never know who might be documenting your bad behavior.
C·H·A·P·T·E·R F·I·V·E
The Queen of Kings
I’m holed up in my office when I hear their rising voices.
I don’t speak Polish, but I do speak panic, and from the tone of what they’re saying, there’s trouble afoot.
As I hear the slap of flip-flops barreling down the hallway, I think to myself, This can’t be good.
To backtrack, I spend every Friday from eleven to two hiding in my office when our cleaning ladies come. Mind you, this is the new maid service, as we fired the old team for pinching a bunch of stuff, including a video camera. I don’t know if they thought we were famous because of all my framed posters from Barnes & Noble book signing appearances, but if they were looking to cash in on a celebrity sex tape, I’m afraid they were going to be sorely disappointed with all the kitten footage. [How many times do I have to say this, people? The Internet is FOREVER.]
Yes, cleaning ladies are an extravagance, but Fletch and I made a deal—as long as I’m working on a project, I’m allowed to outsource our housekeeping. At the moment, my “project” is watching TiVoed episodes of The Real Housewives of New York, but that’s on a need-to-know basis.
One of the ladies is calling, “Excuse! Excuse!” which generally means they’re finished, but it’s only eleven fifteen and the house is disgusting. At this point, it occurs to me that neither of the ladies has ever actually said anything to me except for “excuse,” no matter how much I try to engage them in conversation. Fletch told me that once when he was here alone with them, one of the gals held a cell phone to his head and demanded he, “Ask boss,” when he inquired if they could fold a couple of baskets of laundry.
I hate that I missed it because I’m crazy in love with an Eastern European accent. Some people dig the melodious tones of French or Italian, but me, I’m all about a language that comes out somewhere between spitting and barking. There’s something so refreshingly direct about the Slavic way of speaking; it’s all “it MUST” and “you WILL,” as opposed to our very American “if it’s not too much trouble” and “as long as that’s okay.” When no one’s around, I make Maisy talk in an East German accent. Maisy need. Maisy need NOW.
I open my office door and find one of the ladies in what can best be described as a state. “Is something wrong? Can I help?” I ask. Whatever the problem is, I can fix it. If someone hurt herself, I can grab our first aid kit, call 911, or do an ER run. If something broke, I can glue it back together. If they simply want to express their disgust at how dirty the floors got while I was away at SxSW and Fletch was in charge of the house, I can invite them to join the club.
Seriously, WTF? Was he hosting a rodeo in here?
The cleaning lady replies to my offer of assistance by saying the one thing without a readily apparent solution.
“The
