Sunday, September 16, 2012

Where have I been?

It has been a long time since my last post. I have missed my blog, missed writing... A lot has been going on with my family and frankly the last few months have sucked. So, what is going on with Okc Mommy? 

Lets start at the beginning.. 

In May my husband, son and I moved in to what we thought was an amazing duplex. The duplex was in a great neighborhood, on the right side of town, spacious and the landlord seemed great. 

Fast forward to July. I woke up one morning and went out to water my plants just like every other morning and found some flower pots had been broken sometime during the night. I figured it was just some teenagers acting stupid, cleaned up the pieces and went on with my day. Later the same day I found out from a neighbor that MY landlord, Radu, (who happened to occupy the other half of the duplex) had gotten drunk, flashed another neighbor then proceeded to go around vandalizing property in the neighborhood. That's when everything changed. Within days the landlord we had once thought to be amazing turned into the landlord and neighbor from hell. He started putting notes in our mailbox, not just one every now and then.. no, we where getting upwards of ten notes a day. Most of the notes made no since, some where vulgar and some where completely normal, but still unwelcome. 

Sometime in the middle of the month I woke up to find our car vandalized. We called the cops and when cop #1 showed up my husband was standing outside looking at the car. The cop asked him what was going on and my husband told him obviously someone had vandalized our car, the cop said "No, what is going on with you?" we where confused at that moment but came to find out during cop #1's visit he was not the cop sent on the call we made, he had been coming to talk to us after another neighbor had called and complained that we were seen throwing "objects" over their fence, and one of the "objects" was our lease with our address. Of course we did nothing of the sort and found it rather strange that someone would call the police for a piece of paper in their backyard.  My husband took the cop into the backyard, where more vandalism had occurred.  He asked my husband who we thought was doing this, and he pointed next door.  The cop went to Radu's side of the duplex to get his side of the story.  In a very short amount of time he came back and told us that he believed us, that he had dealt with Radu before, and we needed to get our family out "now."  "Break the lease, stay with friends, family, in a hotel, it doesn't matter.  Leave your belongings.  Come back for them later, but you are not safe.  This guy is a nut job, and you need to leave now!"  He then informed us that it wasn't just our lease that was thrown over the fence.  The "objects" were "sexual objects". Our landlord admitted to everything including putting a potato in our cars tailpipe, something we had not yet noticed.  The cop told us that he said he had called us and left a voicemail offering a coupon to get a car wash.  "That's not the voicemail he left" I said.  I pulled out my phone, put it on speaker and played the message for the cop.  He had called, but in the message he referred to himself as "Maggie," and then strung together a handful of words that made no sense.  We where asked if we wanted to press charges, we decided not to fearing things would become worse. Around that time Cop #2 (the one sent for our vandalism call) finally showed up and proceed to get into our landlords face screaming at him to leave us alone and if he had to come out here for any more of this "bull shit" he would arrest him even if we didn't press charges. I left a little while later with my son because I was too afraid to stay there alone after my husband went to work. When we got home we found broken glass, nails and random stuff thrown into our backyard along with some things we had thrown in our trash. Besides the constant notes things where somewhat quiet for about 2 weeks until one day I walked outside to find a huge pile of furniture on fire. Another neighbor had recently moved out and left the furniture for large trash collection. When I went outside those items and a tree next to the pile where ablaze. The fire department had already put most of the fire out before I walked outside and I text another neighbor to tell her about it, she came outside and went to tell the fire fighters we where almost 100% sure it was set by my landlord, they said they already suspected him and would put it in their report. Nothing was ever done about it to my knowledge. Fast forward another week or so, I wake up my husband yelling "There are cops outside, I think they are about to arrest Radu". We go outside (because we are nosy as hell) and he is yelling "what, are you going to arrest me for indecent exposure?" and a few minutes later they did, he was placed in the back of a cop car still ranting and raving. 

NEWS STORY ABOUT THE LANDLORD


We decided that day that we needed to move, at the time we had no idea how long he would be jail and we did not want to be there when he got out. I started searching Craigslist for rent houses and finally found one offering a military discount and other perks that would come in handy for our no-notice move. We moved in on the 16th of August. On the 17th of August the city inspector came to do the standard rental inspection and made a list of items for the landlord to repair. Well, the landlord has decided that he doesn't want to repair anything and would rather sell the property then repair it. So here it is, September 14th and we are looking for our third rental in five months. 

Right now it would be an understatement to say I hate my life. If and when this house sells we will have 30 days to move, if it doesn't sell before November 17th we will still have to move because the list of repairs grants 90 days to take care of them, if they are not fixed our utilities will be cut off no questions asked. 

1 comment:

  1. Hello from another Oklahoma mom-blogger! I read your most recent post and believe me, I understand your quandary. Figuring out what to blog about isn't always simple when you have a lot of interests. However, I want to encourage you to keep writing!

    Your story about your (ex?) landlord is really good - I mean from a writing perspective. It's quite readable and frankly, very entertaining.

    My blog is www.familyfieldguide.com. I started it in Feb. 2011 and I post about once a week. My hits just passed 100,000 yesterday. I'm on Facebook at www.facebook.com/familyfieldguide.

    I decided to write about parenting and family issues, and I usually do write with a slant to parenting. Sometimes my posts are based on own experience, or something in the news that I have an opinion on; people I've met and conversations I've had, or from research I've done on attachment issues, breastfeeding, and other things. I also include recipes (often gluten-free) from time to time - the Hungry Mom Kitchen.

    I found your blog while searching for possible places to promote my infant massage classes, which start this Thursday at The Changing Table, a new cloth diapering story off Hwy. 240. So I was really surprised at what I found here! (There's some other OKC Mommy blog that's all coupons and stuff. Not interesting at all.)

    Anyway, I have been a writer for most of my life and also write features for a newspaper in Colorado Springs, where we used to live. If I can help you in any way - encouraging you with your blog, let me know. If you want to develop your landlord story - and I think you should - you could even submit it to NPR's This American Life or Snap Judgment: Stories with a Beat - or a magazine. My email is www.patricia.eharvey@yahoo.com. I would love to hear from you.

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