I had no idea how to light the burners on my gas oven when I moved into this apartment. Wasn't I supposed to, like, turn on the gas and light a match or something? No idea. So a friendly maintenance guy came to make sure the pilot light was on and showed me how to make the fire come out, and now I know.
As I explored my new apartment, I learned that if I opened the back door without being careful, a piece of the blinds over the door would fall on my head. That disturbed me. I told the front office, who said they'd send maintenance the next day.
The next day, I was out doing stuff. Errands and clothes shopping. It was early afternoon by the time I got home, and I was worried that the maintenance guy might have had to reschedule since I hadn't been home all day. But when I got home, I found a note on the kitchen counter saying that he had been in my apartment while I was out and had replaced a part on the blinds.
Initially, I was horrified. I started looking for bloodstains on the carpet and around Jack's muzzle (also checking to see if I'd left any underwear on the living room floor) because I knew Jack's first thought would have been MUST DESTROY INTRUDER. But there was no blood or underwear. So a cautious feeling of delight began to grow. "I can put in a maintenance order and leave the house for as long as I want and not wait around and they'll still come?" I thought to myself. "O happy apartment life day!" But, alas, the blinds were still broken. And the toilet seat was up.
About a week later, I was in a hurry and I forgot about being careful when opening the back door and I ripped the blinds completely off the wall and they REALLY fell on my head that time. So, with the giant set of blinds in the middle of the floor, I thoroughly cleaned the apartment and then called maintenance. The office said they'd send maintenance the next day. The next day, the younger of the two maintenance guys came and started replacing my blinds. I asked him what had happened when he'd intruded into Jack's apartment the day I wasn't home. He said that Jack was nice to him after the initial scary furious barking. I said okay, cool, and then I left to run another errand because I was already on my way out when he arrived and because it was awkward to be there with him. When I got home, the blinds weren't broken anymore. But, naturally, (especially after the toilet seat incident,) I was slightly creeped out by having the guy in my house when I wasn't home, and I checked my bedroom for carpet-footprints which were not my own. I found no conclusive evidence and got bored and made a sandwich.
That brings me to today. Okay, well, first, I'm on the third floor of the apartment building. My downstairs neighbors on the second floor, the ones whose locked door I kept trying to open before I learned where my own door is, I see them on their balcony aaaaaaalllllllll the time and mostly try to pretend they're not there (except for the occasional "hi,") because I think that's proper apartment balcony etiquette. You know, give a false sense of privacy. Anyway, it was evening, and I had been out walking Jack as I do for the better part of an hour every evening. As I approached the building, they were on their balcony, and the man of the apartment said hello, and I said hello, and he asked if anyone had told me about the leak. I knew nothing about a leak. So he told me that there had been water in the carpet of their bedroom floor that morning. I panicked and tried to remember what I had done that morning that could possibly have caused water to go through my floor, but he told me that maintenance discovered that the puddle had actually been caused by leaking from a worn-out copper pipe in the 40-year-old building's wall. (He and the lady of the apartment also told me about the electrical fire that had caused them to be evacuated out of another building in the complex, but of course that's another story.)
But the whole reason he started the conversation with me - best part - was to let me know that while I had been at work earlier that day, maintenance had been in my apartment trying to find the source of the leak.
So it's a good thing I took a nap yesterday instead of cleaning up the place like I'd planned to. And a good thing I went on a cleaning frenzy earlier this afternoon, before I knew that anyone had been here and after they'd already seen what my place looks like when I'm not motivated to keep it clean for Joe. I had had absolutely no chance to check for underwear on the living room floor. Thank goodness there wasn't any.
I just really hope they didn't go into my bedroom.
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