Dumpster Diving

In this episode of Courtney's World we find her peering out of her kitchen window to find someone pulling up to the apartment dumpster throwning a bunch of trash into our dumpster.  Ever the  good "Do-Bee," she writes down the license plate number and calles the police.  Yea!  Then she digs around in the newly-delivered trash to find the name and address of the offender.  Yea! 

The cops respond and take Courtney's statement and proceed to contact the offender who says she'd gladly retrieve her trash rather than get a "theft of services" ticket.  However, somewhere along the way Courtney told the woman that was okay for her to leave it there.  WHAT?  The cops trot back to Courtney to verify and, sure enough, Courtney gave her permission to leave the trash.  So, the official disposition of the Police case is "unfounded" and we/they won't prosecute because Courtney gave her consent to leave it.

So if you can figure this one out, call me!  Why did she give permission for the woman to leave her trash and yet still call the cops AND give them a statement?  On what planet does she have authority to tell someone that I'll pay to have their trash hauled off?  Why...I could go on, but ...Why? 

How did Dad do it all those years?

I'm not sure how Dad did it all when he was younger - manage the apartments alone, that is.  Mom helped for a lot of those early years.  Both of them cleaned, painted, collected rents, posted eviction notices.  But in the later years mom couldn't do the physical stuff. 

Clear up until three months before he died he was still responding to calls for plumbing emergencies, no heat, etc.  He poured his heart and soul into those apartments.  I'm not sure if he enjoyed it or just did it because it was his retirement.  He was self employed most of his life and there was no 401k, no defined benefit plans, no PERA.  Just hard work. 

The biggest problem that we face with the apartments now is that Dad didn't really do it for the last 10 or so years. Not for lack of trying, but climbing ladders, painting, and cleaning trashy apartments is really more than should be expected of any 78 year old man.

So the maintenance issues just piled up over the last 10 years and Dad either did things just enough to get by or just ignored problems completely. But it's caught up with us now.  I've thought that I might have grieved more over his death if he hadn't left us such so much work to do.  Sounds kinda heartless, but honest.

So we spent the day getting #8 ready for a new tenant.  We did a walk through first then I scraped tile,  dug the nasty grout out from the bath tub and installed a new smoke detector.  Diego worked on some leaks under the kitchen sink and fixed a leaky bathtub in another unit that we discovered.  We called the glass company to measure windows to replace cracked glass. 

We're hoping to take tomorrow (Sunday) off from the apartments, but stuff just keeps stacking up. While we were working in #8, the gal from #1 said her oven door won't open and the garbage disposal won't work. We found the leak in the bathtub in #4, and Louise in #8 has a broken window.  Yikes!