4.19.97

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Here are what I consider to be the good things that have happened to me lately--

I wrote the last rent check a couple of weeks ago that I will ever write to this goddamn landlord. I'm supposed to move at the end of the month. I have nowhere to go yet. In the bottom left hand corner of the check, where you can explain exactly what the check is being written for, I wrote "Slum Housing."
I woke up the other morning to the sound of a chainsaw out my window. My slumlord, who just can't wait to get his cranked up little fingers on the house, has decided to do work on the exterior before we're officially evicted. So, with nothing else to do he began trimming the tree in the back yard. It must have been fun, because he kept at it for days. Less and less of the tree greeted my every waking afternoon. This last day there was little left but a stump about 15 ft high, and that's what he was sawing away at. I crawled out of bed, glared out of the window and then went to take that usual morning piss. I was upset that he'd overtaken the entire backyard, filled it knee level with branches and simply made it unavailable to Rollins for any of the poor dog's usual biological needs. But, I thought, it's O.K. No big deal. I finished my extensive urination, and the toilet wouldn't flush.

Again.

Hm.

I feel a surge of something in the veins of my neck. I don't want to be awake, anyway, and I'm now annoyed. I storm to the back window, right by the tree, and find myself at eye level with the slumlord (that word is actually accepted by my spell check, wonder what that means?) and scream his name. He looks up with his dumb expression and I make slashing motions across my neck so he'll understand to cut off the chain saw. He does.

"You understand the toilet hasn't properly flushed for three months," I say, "but, nah, do the tree. That's fuckin' important Do the tree."

He plays confused. He says he's not a mind reader. I remind him he's been made aware of this problem for several months. I back off the window before I find heavy objects to throw at him. He's looking like a very easy target right about now.

Ten minutes later I'm leaving with Rollins in tow and the slumlord is rounding the corner of the house asking my roommate, who's wasting time in the front yard with his wife and the neighbors, "What's this about the toilet not flushing?" The roommate says yeah, it sticks sometimes (understatement), and his wife reminds the slumlord that she told him about it somewhere around Christmas. That's where I say, "Actually, it flushes fine... with a plunger." I lead Rollins into the back seat of my car and surprise even myself by yelling "Fuckin' slumlord!" just before I slam the car door.

This was two weeks ago. Guess what. We now have a shoelace tied to the valve of the toilet that must be pulled to make the thing flush. Slumlord (name deleted as an afterthought) made such a fuss about the damn thing, but, of course, he still has not bothered to fix it.

Incidentally, after he finished razing the tree, he must have been even more bored and anxious to do something, so he removed the fence, and now all the neighbor's kids and their dogs run rampant in my backyard. Rollins does not get along with any of the above. I no longer have a house I can live in with my dog. Fuckin' drugged-out, loser, motherfucking slumlord.

And, then, earlier this week while I'm out house hunting with Martina, we're driving north on 1300 east and a sweet little Mormon girl who has had her driver's license for three months or so comes barreling out of a driveway and broadsides me. I'm driving, Martina's in the passenger seat, Rollins is in the back. We're knocked ten feet or so. It's no big deal, I tell myself again, the car is still driveable. I walk the little girl through all the motions. She's insured, cool, I'll get a paint job out of it, maybe that fucked up window will be fixed when the door is replaced.
We call the police. A boy in a uniform arrives half an hour later. We talk. Everything seems all right. Then I ask him if I can have a copy of the accident report.

"I'm not making one," he says.

"Um, excuse me?"

"I can't make one in this situation," he says.

"OK. You wanna tell me why the fuck not?" I damn near scream.

"No one was injured."

"And...? Your point is?"

To make a long story short, he would do nothing. He literally refused to physically look at any of the damage to either car. He wanted no part of it. He claimed it was now a "Civil Suit" between our insurance companies. He did not even cite the girl who barreled out of the driveway into the side of my vehicle. Fuck. This shit takes long enough when the faulty party has been cited.

And, yes, I'm writing about this shit because it's the good stuff that happened this week. I'm trying to accentuate the positive (who sang that godawful song?) These were the things I could rightfully bitch about, loudly, and it felt good. That's the kind of week it's been.

I have a regular at the bar who leads a support group for ADD. He tells me that's my problem, I tell him I know, I've been diagnosed that way already but I don't buy it.

"I may have ADD," I tell him, "but my biggest problem is that I'm simply bored by the world and everyone in it Nothing seems worth paying attention to."

wwood