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Sometimes some deals are a little too good to be true.
So, it was a little questionable when I found a skeleton in my closet (mind you a plastic toy one) and the summons and warrants left on the door by the police still didn’t completely tip me off. Nor did the voicemail messages left by doctors for positive test results for someone else. I just thought my apartments had quarks.
I mean I got a good deal on my rent for the area and the space, and they put in new carpeting (I was told they accidentally replace the carpeting in my apartment). Why, I wondered, is my neighbor, who lives in the same size apartment, paying hundreds of dollars more for her rent.
Why, she told me this evening, because months before I moved in a woman was murdered here.
Maybe she’s making it all up, I told my mom and best friend later that night after relaying the story I was told. “Why would she make something like that up?” they both responded.
She told me that she thought I knew. Wasn’t that something they legally would have to tell me when I moved in? I don’t know because no one had said a word to me.
Just when I finally decided that I was content with living here…come July, when I come back from Nevada, I’ll be looking for someplace else. Not as much because I’m scared or anything, but because if it’s all true, I don’t appreciate not being told up front and being lied to about the carpeting. Hmm. Now I wonder why most of my neighbors don’t speak too much to me.
***Update*** Oh my gosh, it’s all totally true. Leave it to a journalist. I went online and did some sleuthing. Turns out it happen a little more than a month before I moved in.
So, months ago, I wrote about being approached by the owner of an escort service and how my curiosity almost allowed me to entertain him much longer than need be. Well, last week I learned more about the business than I ever wanted to know. Here’s an article from The Virginian-Pilot I had to edit for our newspaper. Very interesting. Check it out.
I know I’m supposed to be blogging all about my Beach adventures, but it’s cold and rainy out and these days I’ve been living inside of my little noggin. While part of me keeps nudging me to get out there and make life happen, the other part is coddling me, saying it’s OK for now. The big adventures will start come Sunday.
Come Sunday I will be taking my first transcontinental (well, Reno’s practically on the other coast) flight. I’ve never been in a plane for this long and remained in the country. For six weeks I will be living out of a suitcase (OK, so I’ve done this before, but this time I’m excited because I’ll be better prepared), meeting new people, exploring new places, and feeding my love affair with words and grammar. I am so excited.
But for now, I must dwell in the dark recesses of my mind as I prepare. I’m about to embark on quite an adventure, and I refuse to take any of the negativity that sometimes haunts me along for the ride.
So at five o’clock this morning, I began to write. As I scribbled words into my notebook—a few pages away from the essay notes I wrote as I was applying for this program and the corrections made to my last short story—I thought a lot about the book I just finished editing.
In the book, the author wrote about how he was unexpectedly fired from his job. He felt upset, mistreated, and a bit “woe is me” (but rightfully so, he had an entire family to worry about). For weeks, he’d wake up in the wee hours of the morning, consumed by this thoughts. So, he began to write them out. He wrote away the bitterness. He turned his negative experience into a 170-page bundle of positivity that’s going to touch someone else’s life. That’s what I’ve gotta do.
Look at Alanis Morissette.
When I was a child, I somehow got this weird idea of what was behind that “little voice inside” of us. I was under the impression that inside of me dwelled some little man (and for some reason he always looked like Mario from Super Mario Brothers). It was his voice I heard telling me not to torment my little brother or hide the mess in my room under the bed. So what happened to this little man when I swallowed apple seeds? Since apple trees grew from ingested seeds, as I was told, this little fellow must not have had too much room to move around inside my tiny body. As I got older, the orchard in there must have forced him to relocate. I wonder where he went.
Now, all grown up, I no longer associate that voice with a short, animated Italian guy. Now it sounds like my own voice. And it fills the quietness of late nights.
As I toss and turn in my bed, she reminds me of all of the things I need to accomplish in the coming day. She evaluates my daily productivity, and she scolds me for not checking off everything on the to-do list.
She predicts the future: I’ll soon encounter my future mate. He’ll be tall and handsome with kind eyes (Dr. McDreamy’ll have nothing on him). He’ll be a God-fearing, God-loving man who sings. I’ll be smart and calm, capable of taming my overly passionate, melodramatic personality. He’ll love children—our twenty or so adopted children and litter of adorable puppies. He’ll be handy and resourceful. He’ll be supportive in all I do.
And I’ll do much, she continues to whisper in my ear. I’ll write pages and pages of great novels. Sometimes she gives me the stories I’ll one day pen. I’ll make tons of movies. She sets the scenes in the back of my mind. I’ll win shelves of awards and accepted them wearing the most elegant gowns. But first, she tells me, I must still shed those thirty pounds.
You can do it, she encourages, by eating right and getting up early to exercise. You can do it all if you just got moving.
Yet, I can’t get moving because I can’t shut her up long enough to get some peace and quiet and a good night’s sleep.
I know how I’m going to die. It will be slow and more annoying than painful. It will be self-inflicted, unfortunately. No, I don’t want to kill myself, but I’m afraid it will be all I can do to escape the constant crunching, gum popping, burping, sniffling, and everything else that’s plagued me since I’ve back to my Home by the Sea (or at least a lot closer to it).
I’m a quite thinker—my college roommate can attest to that. Anytime I had a major paper or anything to tackle I need complete silence for at least the first few minutes so that I could gather my thoughts and start to get them down on paper. Then I’d be pretty good to go, not needing total silence, but still rock-concert-level noise might be pushing it.
I think I’m pretty easygoing. I don’t think it was irrational of me the other day to jokingly, yet with a serious undertone, indicate to my co-worker that her insistent bouncing of a rubber ball against her desk was going to drive me crazy. Am I wrong? Even after I put on earphones to block out the noise the vibrations could still be felt across my desk. Thank goodness she stopped eventually because I’m pretty sure, if it had continued for too much longer, someone would have turned up lifeless.
Speaking of which, the rhythmic plops of water droplets hitting the bottom of my kitchen sink is killing me. And in the bathroom there’s a drip coming from somewhere around the tub. The apartment maintenance man keeps coming in claiming there’s nothing wrong. Is it really all in my head? Then how does he explain the full glass of water that keeps materializing under the kitchen faucet and the puddles of water I keep splashing in in the bathroom? Am I really insane? Are these really the types of hallucinations you have right before you drift toward the light?
In all seriousness, I am counting down the days before I get to enjoy a change of scenery—hopefully one that is much more quiet and peaceful.
Yes, this beach bum is temporarily moving West. Instead of lazy days at the beach, I’ll be encountering mountainous treks and lakeside strolls (I hope). No worries, though. I’ll be back in time to still catch plenty of rays and waves.
I’ll keep you posted.
