My moving plan: get up in the morning, pack up the 14 ' U-Haul, and drive from Toronto to Montreal. If you've read my previous blog posts you would know that I am by no means a seasoned driver. This being the case, it actually took 9 hours for me to get to Montreal, pit stops for eating and for walking the animals included.
When I was looking for a place to live in Montreal after having accepted my new job offer, I found a delightful ad on Craigslist for a 1 bedroom apartment up on the mountain. I couldn't get to Montreal to see it so I sent a friend in my stead and voila. I rented the apartment from a distance without having seen it. So...after a 9 hour drive in a U-Haul, I got to my street and started driving up the hill to my new place. Who knew it was on a damn cliff. The gas pedal was to the floor, I was sure we weren't going to make it to the top. The U-Haul was so heavy, jam packed with all my crap, and I was trying to conquer a ski slope. It was 11pm by the time we unloaded, safe and sound in my new place.
After getting settled in, I started to observe the stuff going on in my building on a cliff, listening to what people talked about, watched the way people acted and reacted, and tried to figure out what was going down in my new community. Well, it turns out there are some real crazies in my building, and it also turns out I live in the middle of nowhere...on a cliff in the forest.
These are the characters that I face on a daily basis:
We have the kindest soul who just wants to be loved and showered with recognition. She's in her 40's and she's a free spirit with nothing but good intentions, except I think she's bipolar. The first time I met her was at 6:00am when I was taking Swagger out for his morning walk. As I was going down to the lobby I could hear someone crying, and I mean pillow crying, bawling, crying her face off kind of crying. Lo and behold the lovely free spirit was leaning up against the wall with a party dress on. I slowly walked by and asked if she was okay, and she just looked at me and bawled even more and sobbed an inaudible 'yes'. I walked on. Next time I saw her was in the backyard, and she was probably the happiest person I have ever met. I'm a little afraid of her.
Then we have the grumpiest bugger you could ever imagine, who tries to recruit you to be on his side when you first move into the building. Oh yes, there are alliances in my building. This guy is probably in his 50's, and he HATES dogs. I feel it's important to mention that apartments on my street are sought after by people who own dogs. Every building on the street is dog friendly, and people move there so that they can have access to the mountain where off-leash dog walking is permitted. So this man hates dogs, and if he catches your dog off-leash in the massive backyard he calls the police. I've seen the cops at our building 3 times thus far, and I've been living there for a month and a half. So I'm falling asleep one fine summer evening, and my bedroom faces the backyard. I sleep with the windows opened for the summer breeze and for the peaceful sound of the leaves in the wind. I literally have a forest in my backyard. I was right on the point of being completely asleep when I heard a booming male voice yelling at the top of his lungs "I'll call the police if you let your damn dog off the leash! I'm calling the police!" The guy was sitting out in the backyard on his lawn chair, facing the apartment building, at 11:45pm, waiting for people to come outside with their dogs so that he could yell at them and call the police. Forget about the weirdness of that, what about the fact that he was sitting in the backyard in the pitch black facing the building? I now turn out my lights before getting into bed, that wasn't the last time I've seen him in the backyard after 11:00pm. The next time I saw him was at the BBQ in my backyard when I ran into the free spirit. He was sitting by himself across the yard, taking pictures of us with his phone. Oh, and he also takes pictures of dog poop. He's building a pretty strong case for the police.
After the weirdo jerk that sits in the backyard at night we have the old crotchety lady...the one that looks like she's going to break in half. This special lady walks through the backyard smoking a pack of cigarettes in an hour. She is thin and haggard, and tries to be super friendly. So friendly in fact that she came to my apartment door, knocked on it, and asked if I could give her some dog food. Lucky for me I had been warned by my normal neighbours about her habits as they had all been asked for dog food by her before. So, when she came to my door, I gave her some dog food (at least she actually has a dog, although I wouldn't have been surprised if she didn't) and I promptly told her it was the first and last time I would be giving her dog food as I couldn't afford to feed two dogs. She hasn't been back since, nor is she friendly with me anymore. I hope her dog is okay.
Last but not least we have the lovely elderly lady who has been in the building for many many years. She's so sweet and she calls me "the very nice girl". She shuffles along the hall in her knitted slippers, fully depending on her cane to get around. I just love her, but unfortunately I've started to avoid her because every time I see her she asks to use my phone. Apparently her Videotron isn't working and she has to call her nephew before he goes on vacation. She has said this line to me at least 4 times now, and it's always followed by "oh! You're the very nice girl down the hall!" When she uses my phone, she always calls a different person, a person that is not her nephew. I've inquired about the phone thing, and it has been confirmed to me that she does indeed have a functional phone of her own.
So this is what sometimes happens to me on an unlucky day, or as I now call it, an "entertaining day". I get up and sit on my balcony with Swagger for a morning coffee and I have a stare-off with the bastard dog-hater sitting in the backyard. Then I get ready and take Swagger for a walk only to be given the stink-eye by the old dog food lady who sits on the couch in the lobby early in the morning. She really doesn't like me anymore because I don't feed her dog. When I get outside, I'm greeted by the free spirit standing on the lawn in her bathrobe and head scarf admiring the morning sunrise and the amazingness of the moon that's still out from the night before. "Chelsea! Look at the moon and the sun! It's all so beautiful! I bet we were created by aliens, and I'm sure there's a portal nearby! It's so beautiful!". Okay...walk on, enjoy my time with Swagger, get home and make a quick dash upstairs so I don't bump into the old lady that eats up my phone minutes.
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| Can't we all just get along? |
Seems a little strange, right? These people are NOT fictional, and I have not exaggerated any part of this. I moved in on July 8th, and I'm moving out on September 1st. Weird people and the fact that I live on a cliff have convinced me to move...again. 7 moves in 5 years, that has to be some kind of record. And you want to hear something really crazy? Yesterday my current landlord told me that there's a production company that wants to pay me $500 a day for two weeks to use my apartment to film a movie. They will pay to move all my stuff into storage, and they will also pay for a hotel for me for two weeks on top of the $500 a day. Unfortunately I had to remind my landlord that I am moving out in 6 days. There goes $7000. Lucky bugger that's moving into my place; he's delaying his move by 2 weeks, and he's getting the $7000. Little does he know that not one, but many nut cases live in the building!
Life. And so it goes.
