Congrats to my boyfriend , who not only got a raise/promotion last week, but today was also given a well-deserved company-wide ego stroking 🙂 GOOD JOB JICKIE!

Last night my roommate and I finally finished cleaning out the old place on Duboce. We had one more carload of junk to take away, half of which was destined for Goodwill. Painting was done, floors swept and mopped, everything dusted, bathroom cleaned, let’s blow this popsicle stand and get that deposit back.

Many years ago I lived in a big house in Rockridge, a nice section of Oakland. Before moving in, we agreed with the landlord that in lieu of a deposit, we would instead fix up the house. It was a shambles, and needed a lot of work, especially the floors. The beautiful hardwood had been covered with shitty carpeting, which had NEVER been cleaned. It was actually greasy. Disgusting. So we ripped up the carpeting and hand-sanded and finished the hardwood ourselves. We also did some painting and other repairs to the staircase, broken banisters, etc.

The owner of the house was the daughter of the old woman who had died there a couple months earlier. This lady had clearly never been a landlord and did not comprehend tenant’s rights or laws. For example, she would walk into the house without knocking, much less giving notice. We would all be sitting around and she would just suddenly appear in the room. Then she would tell us to do something that legally she could not ask us to do, like put different drapes in the windows. She was a crazy bitch, in other words.

Her sister lived in the in-law behind our house, and the sister’s kids would sometimes come over and ask us if they could borrow a can opener and other weird crap like that. Her brother was over there once and offered to hook us up with pirated cable since he was doing it for the in-law as well. It was just incredibly sketchy. Oh, then the sister told the landlady that we worshiped the devil. Because we had funny hair and liked punk rock.

Anyway, after about three months of living there, the landlady went nuts on us about something and said she was going to “evict” us. Of course, she had absolutely no legal right to do so. It just would never have happened. But we all agreed that having to deal with her insanity would soon grow tiresome, so we began independently looking for new housing. Kind of a “you can’t fire me, I quit” situation.

The best part was the fact that we had put down no deposit. We had redone this lady’s floors and painted the walls, and then been treated like rude (satantic) houseguests. We concocted a rather evil plan for the last day in the house.

The couple upstairs had painted their room red. Now red doesn’t come out easily. They painted one coat of white paint over it, and instead of a second coat, they just painted the words “BE NICE” in white on one wall, in capital letters about three feet tall. We then proceeded to not be very nice at all.

We cracked eggs into the lighting sconces on the walls. They sizzled and fried in there. So evil. The basement was an unfinished dirt hole, and we filled it up with our garbage and cat litter. Then we poured buckets of water over the wood floors in the bedrooms, and superglued the locks shut. I am not kidding, we were like poltergeists. Ha ha ha!

So remember landlords, always get a deposit! And if you don’t, be kind to your tenants, and they will be kind to you.