We’ve all heard the saying, ‘moving is hell’. I firmly believe that the person that came up with this must have been moving to Brooklyn. Moving can be a nightmare no matter where you move, but I can promise you that this is worse. Let us rewind to last Thursday when we paid our first month’s rent. The very Jewish man that we signed our lease with told us that they would have the keys to us that night because there were a few things they needed to finish around the apartment. My roomie, Lacee, and I said that was fine. We made our way over to the apartment and began moving her things in.
The building we’re moving into is newly renovated and incredibly nice. We were surprised, to say the least, to find that there was no power or water in the apartment. I got on the phone and called the person I was told was the property manager, he promptly told me he had no idea what I was talking about and I needed to call someone else. I played phone tag for about twenty minutes before I was able to find someone that knew something about our apartment. This is when the tomorrows began.
Friday came and now it was time to move my stuff in. We packed it in the truck and hauled it over. After moving everything in I called the tomorrow man and he said we would have to wait until Monday for power and water, not to mention we still had no keys to the apartment. I called the Jew that had taken our rent money and he said a locksmith would come out to change the locks, but not until Saturday. Dollar was kind enough to take Lacee and myself in for two nights, so that we were able to rinse the sweat off ourselves.
Saturday arrived and we had to return the moving truck to a location in Queens. I haven’t driven in months and Lacee isn’t much of a driver either. I forced her to drive, using my suspended license as an excuse. I have a $750 warrant in Wyoming that we can talk about another day. She drove, while I guided us with my laptop. Oh, the misadventures that we have! We sideswiped a bus, nearly tearing our mirror off. We laughed hysterically, terrified that the bus driver was going to come after us. That little adventure was followed by; hitting one of the cement barriers that support the elevated rail. I can say that if it weren’t for our innate ability to laugh at ourselves, and our situations, we would both probably have been in tears from stress. Somehow we managed to get the truck back to the lot without causing much more harm to the truck or ourselves.
Sunday was a bright and happy day. We awoke at Dollar’s house, hopping on a bus and then on the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station. We needed to find the way for my roomie to get to work. She just moved her for a job in Bay Shore, which is way out in Long Island. It took about two hours on the LIRR to get us to Bay Shore, where we searched for a bus. We stopped in a gas station, where a drink exploded on me, to ask for directions to the mall. I couldn’t understand our Muslim friend behind the counter, but we tried our best to follow his pointing. We ended up walking a half-mile out of the way and two hours later got to the mall. Looking like hell, Lacee snagged the keys to her store and we tried to find out about the bus. We were sad to be informed that the bus only runs Monday-Saturday. Walking through the 90 million degree heat we finally got ourselves back to the train. It took three trains to get us back to Brooklyn, where we were starving and dying of thirst. We stopped in the local store where we bought dinner. Arriving back at our building we were greeted by silence. The security guard who has to let us in and out of our apartment, due to our lack of keys, was gone. We sat on the stairs for about an hour before he arrived to let us into the black hole that we live in. We plopped on the couch, lighting enough candles for us to see our white trash dinner. We ate our cold spaghetti-o’s, warm bottled water and pint of melted ice cream. It’s like we live in a white trash paradise and there just happen to be some brown people there too!
Monday. Oh, Monday. I awoke with such high hopes for the day. I waited until about noon to call the property manager about the water and power. All the tomorrows had been changed to Monday when Saturday had arrived. I was very unhappy to hear that they weren’t going to be able to fix anything until Friday. That’s when it happened, I snapped. This is a direct quote from my conversation with the tomorrow man, “Everyday has been tomorrow, it’s f**king tomorrow! We can’t take a shit in the f**king toilet or make anything to eat. We have no water in the bathroom, but for some reason we have it in the kitchen. We have no power and it’s been four days. You let us move in and it’s a f**king slum. I’m going to report you if it’s not fixed today!” Mind you, that all of this came out in my loud-scary sounding-straight voice. I feel I’ve been jerked around enough and obviously being nice isn’t working with these people. I had to leave so I could find a place to charge my phone and laptop, but unfortunately for me the three Starbucks I visited were full of people in my same sinking boat. Not one of them had a free outlet for me to use. Luckily, I was able to borrow an outlet at Dollar’s office for an hour.
I got myself on the ever-lovely L train and made my way home. I was straddled with a shoulder bag and three heavy shopping bags that were beginning to rip. My phone kept ringing: Mom. Roommate. Roommate. Dollar. Mom. Roommate! There are those moments when you want to pull your hair out, but I have mine cut so short there’s not much to work with. I walked into our darkened apartment, knocking over a tower of DVD’s. It just added to my already over the top frustration. My roomie sat in the dark, ready to give me good news. Our Jew landlords were working to get the power and water working! They claimed to not know anyone was living in our apartment, which I had to do my best not to snap over.
It’s now Tuesday and things are coming together. We have a toilet that can flush, hot water to shower and electricity to see. It just goes to show that you have to yell in a scary straight voice sometimes for people to listen.
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