My new apartment and I have gotten off to something of a rocky start. If this were a romantic comedy, you'd think we were destined to fall in love, given the amount of yelling I've been doing in the last couple of days.
First off, there was a dead mouse in my storage unit. (Not my apartment's fault.) The mover came downstairs with a strange look on his face: "Just so you know," he said, "there's a ... smell. The other guys say it smells like something dead."
Me: "Oh no -- is it a mouse? I hope it's not a mouse. If it is, I don't want to see it. At all."
He comes back down a little while later. Starts to walk right by me until I call out, "So was it ...?"
"Yep," he said. "We found it. It's dead."
True to his promise to me, he fetched a woman who works at the storage facility, and she headed upstairs with a broom and a dustbin. "Is it in your way?" she asked one of the movers who was exiting the elevator. "Yeah, it's ... yeah. It's in the way," he said, with a look at me.
I later asked a guy if everything smelled like dead mouse now. "Well, this rug is kind of ... retaining the smell," he said. (Also: "You may want to vacuum the bottom of this bookcase.") Once we got to the apartment, we had a lengthy discussion about whether I wanted them to move the rug into my new place. We decided to leave it on the curb, see if the smell got any better, and then potentially just ditch it. Ended up ditching it. After all, that's how I got it in the first place, off the street. It's the cycle of life! Or, erm, disposal.
Naturally the rug had disappeared by morning, as a big rug like that is quite a find. It amuses me to picture the face of whoever it was that picked it up, his experession changing from glee to horror: "What is that SMELL?!"
I'll have to skip over the details of moving day, because I don't have Internet access at home yet (and can't even make an appointment until the previous tenant cancels his service) so am camping out in a career services office, and have just been informed that I have ten more minutes.* But suffice it to say that I have learned how lucky I've been, only to move into places that were vacant before my arrival. Until now. Not only did I not get to pick up the keys until the morning of my move -- which meant that no one got to inspect the apartment after the previous tenant left and before I moved in -- but he left the place ... hmm, how shall I put this? Gross? Disgusting? A shitshow?
*Tomorrow, seeking wifi, I will be one of those obnoxious people who hogs a table at a cafe for four hours, and only orders a single cup of coffee.
To be fair, he told the realtor and the super he would clean, and I suppose he did. He swept, anyway. But in my mind, leaving a place "clean" does not entail leaving the refrigerator full of food (he seems to have had a taste for McDonald's McNuggets if the dairy tray full of sauces is any indication), and the freezer full of frozen dinners and ice cream. The refrigerator and freezer are also badly in need of defrosting. I kept telling the movers to open the refrigerator and look at this mess. "Hey, Twix! I'll take that!" one guy said.
He also left stuff everywhere: crappy Ikea furniture, boxes, Kleenex strewn on the ground, plants, some kind of cover for something, plunger, toilet bowl cleaner, holes from various nails, foam sealant everywhere that apparently was applied during some water bug infestation... and worst of all, a recently used towel hanging in the bathroom, plus his grody shower curtain that looks like someone's been shot through it. (If it isn't blood, it's mildew. But it could be blood.)
And worst WORST of all, last night I cleaned the shower drain. I'd been avoiding it, but I had to take a shower sometime. Words cannot describe how grossed out I am by the sheer amount of hair (his girlfriend's, I take it -- they were living together and split up, and that's why they moved out) I pulled out of the drain, along with some paper and some kind of bottle cap.
The hair ... the hair. It was endless. I used gloves, but I may be scarred for life. I would say that no amount of showering can wash away the horror, but I'm so traumatized that I don't even want to take a shower there right now. Fortunately, the landlord is letting me hire a cleaning service. They can't come soon enough.
I know you don't believe me about the hair, so I am including a picture, which I will include only after the jump just in case you've eaten recently. And it didn't end there. It just kept going and going and going, like some human hair centipede.
WARNING: Not safe for children, those who are pregnant or may become pregnant. Consult your doctor before viewing. Side effects include nausea, dizziness, vomiting and the desire never to move again.
Update: My friend Tom came over last night and helped me clear some of the stuff the tenant had left behind in a high storage space I couldn't reach. Among the items: an inflatable air mattress, an inflatable love seat-shaped thing, some wardrobe boxes, and ... a pizza box. A pizza box. WHY GOD WHY??!!
