Unless it’s the grammar police knocking. In which case, let them right in.
22 January 2008My apartment building appears to be going through puberty right now– every day we come home, and something has changed completely and occasionally without reason. After many months of dodging drop cloths in the hallway, our stairwells now sport that classy faux-marble look that you can usually only find in a pediatrician’s office, and today I came home to find that they had ripped up all of the carpeting from the stairs. This is bad news because it means the lunatics that live upstairs no longer have even a slight cushion to muffle their morning cascade from the 5th floor down to ground level, and I’m going to have to make the effort to put shoes on before I go across the hall to visit W&M/ Book Club Friends Tammi and Lindsay. On the upside, they also gave us video intercoms so that the next time you buzz to be let up, I’ll be able to see you check to make sure there’s nothing in your teeth first. On the downside, our mailboxes are inexplicably located in the building next door. On the other upside, I think the end product will be something that doesn’t inspire nearly as much fear in my parents (I told my mom about the construction and she went “Why? Your building is beautiful!” and I had to think for a second before clarifying “No– not my office, my apartment,” because I know no one would make the mistake and apply such a kind adjective to this place, as much as I love it). On the other downside, it is probably about to become way too expensive for me, and I am so convinced that the construction is driving bugs into our apartment via the water pipes that I recently bought one of those hair catching drain covers for the shower– not so the super would have to snake the pipes any less frequently, but because I’m positive the bugs will crawl up the pipe, see the drain cover, and go “Well, looks like she’s got us beat. Let’s head on over to her exboyfriend’s place instead!”
On the ultimate upside, however, it means that people have gotten pretty lazy about things like, oh, I don’t know, making sure the two front doors stay locked. (Breathe, mom. I promise it will be fine. Please don’t yank me out of here by my hair and slap one of those house arrest anklets on me that acts as an electric fence when I try to leave jersey. It took me forever to deactivate the one you guys implanted in my neck when I was born). A few weeks ago, as I was heading to Queens for a rousing book club discussion on Zombies and a healthy dose of apartment envy over Book Club Whitney’s new place, I noticed this sign had popped up in our lobby. I am nearly positive that the super didn’t post it, and that it’s the work of some concerned apartment citizen who thinks I can look beyond this sentence structure and grasp her larger point. Well, I can’t. I might make mistakes all over this page that would make an ESL teacher consider early retirement, but if I were going to start posting my theses downstairs I’d probably ask someone to give it a quick once-over to make sure I didn’t wind up on the internet.
For the record, I make it a point to always know the person I’m buzzing in the building. How else am I going to ask them what they want for breakfast the next morning?
At least now I have my first passive aggressive notes submission!
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