The Sky Is Falling

Yes, the sky finally fell on us. It was only a matter of time I suppose considering the year we've had.

On Wednesday afternoon, 4 days after Susie and I's first wedding anniversary and 1 day before my very stressful,yearly family event at the school I work within, our upstairs neighbors decided to end the drought in Orlando and called for torential downpours...in our bedroom!!! It went something like this:

I got home at around 3pm to Susie feeding Jack in the living room. Zip, the cat came running down the hall as I said hello to both of them, looking somewhat disheveled. Faintly, I could hear a strange sound coming from the end of the hallway. As I moved closer, I began to think the bathtub or sink was running as the sound resembled water. I said something to Susie like, "do you hear that?" She responded with something like, "What? Oh, yeah. What is it?" As I moved down the hall, I began to anticipate something bad as the sound was too loud to be a little bit of water. I said to Susie, "I don't know, but it isn't good", while turning the corner towards our bedroom. In front of me was our bed, taking a shower. Water poured from the ceiling from one side of the room to the other. Susie and I began grabbing everything and moving it out of the room as Jack layed in his crib.

I ran down to the front office, but noone was to be found. I decided to go to the apartment above us to see if anyone was there, only to find the neighbors hysterically attempting to mop their apartment not knowing where the office staff was either. They indicated that their washer had never shut off leaking all over the apartment and ours.

Like the government responding to a natural disaster, finally the apartment maintenance appeared.

Awhile back we had begun to notice mold in our apartment in the bathroom, around our windows and IN OUR BABIES CRIB! This resulted in a letter to the front office asking for immediate attention to the problem. They caulked the windows but never did any of the other things they had said they were going to do. Meanwhile, we still had mold growing in the bathroom. Needless to say, when water began pouring into our apartment, I was concerned that we may end up living with mold all around. I spoke to the office assistant, Kim, who indicated she couldn't tell me anything regarding timeframes as to when or how the cleanup of the new mess would begin. My blood boiled as I discussed the need for quick action and my need to know the plan as I was trying to plan my life with a baby. Further, I asked if the apartment owners would be putting us up with a place to stay...meanwhile, the water still dripped from the ceiling, bedroom carpets were soaked, water began leaking into the closet and laundry room and our stuff was everywhere.

Kim said she understood, but this was neither here nor there considering she did not have the power to make any decisions. She called, Jennifer, the property manager and daughter of the owner. Jennifer indicated through Kim that emergency carpet people were called and on their way. Kim told me this after hanging up the phone...she added that we would not be given a place to stay as "you live in a two bedroom apartment and therefore it is not warranted" as relayed to Kim by Jennifer by some unknown entity at this point. Further, Kim added, she did not know any information as to timeframes regarding cleanup.

It was time for me to lose it again apparently. I ran through the list of things that never happened regarding taking care of the mold in the apartment which I added was still in the bathroom and growing. Further, I indicated that I wanted to speak with someone who was making decisions. At that point Kim decided to call Jennifer and let her know I wanted to talk to her. Jennifer was called and the phone was given to me. Jennifer proceeded to let me know that I was wrong with regard to what she had told Susie. She indicated that she asked Susie to schedule to have certain things done. When I told Jennifer that, regardless of the fact that this was not Susie's impression after their meeting together, we had attempted on several occasions over the past 2 months to get the ball rolling by asking Kim (the only person whom we are able to reach but who wields no power and often tells us she will get back to us) only to result in more waiting and the eventual message that the baseboards would be changed in April...3 months after the initial complaint and no mention of the mold in the bathroom which Kim had looked at, as ordered to do each time we complained, with no cleanup. Jennifer had no response when I told her that this was the result of our request to schedule an appointment and that her indication that they were waiting on us to schedule a time convenient for us simply did not fit with the sequence of events. Needless to say, by this point I was pretty heated. No apology was offered for our situation and no assistance was offered for our new predicament including a crass decision that we would need to stay in the apartment even before anyone looked at the apartment.

The conversation with Jennifer went horrible throughout the phone call and, in fact, ended with her "losing the connection" which I think was actually her hanging up. I refused to leave the front office at this point as it was Wednesday at 5pm and I was not willing to chance nothing being done until the next day or whenever. I told Kim that I was sorry for her placement in the middle of all of this and she indicated she understood. After about 15 minutes, Jennifer showed up and we proceeded to get in an argument over what transpired regarding the mold issue as she acted as if the meeting with her and Susie was an aboration and indicated that the reason the carpenter was not coming to do the baseboards until April, which we did not ask them to do in the first place by the way, was due to emergencies in other apartments over the course of March. The initial complaint was made in January which she had no response to. When adding that we are trying to live with our baby and schedule our life around these things, she said that she had lived through worse situations with her baby. We went around in circles as we discussed the new issues while I tried to surmize as to when this would be taken care of and why nothing was being done to help us in the meantime. She finally indicated that she could not do anything as to this situation as it was her parents that had made the decision rather than herself. I asked her to leave and asked her to send someone who could actually make decisions.

Enter the owner. While walking Jack around the complex sometime around 7:30, two and half hours past his bedtime, after dehumidifiers were placed in our bedroom by the emergency carpet man, the owner of the complex showed up. I knew it was her as she got out of her car, a Lexus SUV, with a perma-frown glued to her face. She seemed to know it was me probably from my disheveled look and the baby I was wearing on my chest. She said, "Are you A-15?", a perfect predictor of the way I would be treated in the moments to follow. I answered that I was and she said, "Let me take care of the cat and I will be right down." Susie and I and Jack waited for her return at a picnic table as the noise in the apartment was too loud for Jack to fall asleep. Finally, she appeared and we walked up, just the two of us to the office where we began discussing the situation. I prefaced the entire discussion with, "please understand that we don't want to cause problems, in fact, we like living here...we simply want these issues addressed and to know when they will be addressed". That would be about the last civil exchange we would have.

She proceded over the next hour to tell me, "you complain too much (despite my indication that I was simply following up over the course of 3 months on the same one complaint that was never addressed in the manner we were told it would be), we will not be changing the cabinets (despite her daughters indication that they would despite our lack of request regarding this), it seems you will never be happy no matter what we do (despite my repeated indications that I would be happy if everything was done in a timely manner and the mold situation was addressed to the point of everything being cleaned up and areas of previous and current water damage being checked and monitored), you're a big boy so you'll figure it out (when I asked how we were supposed to plan our life with our baby without knowing when things would be taken care of and who to talk to...on top of her open defiance towards a commitment towards regular contact with one another until the issue was addressed). The evening with the owner ended with Susie finally asking her to leave as she attempted to tell her that she was insulting us and not being reasonable. You know it is bad when the kindest, gentlest person I know throws you out.

So that's that then! That's that! And the worst part, we like living in this place and don't want to move.

The next morning I left at around 6:30am as my big Family Fun Night was to be that evening at 6pm. Over 130 people showed up for free food, games, and fun all arranged by me. Jack and Susie came too. The day was non-stop without a break until I drove home at around 8:30pm.

On Friday night, we moved our stuff back in the bedroom as things got done relatively fast. The mold which awaited cleanup for 2 months was clean and the bathroom was painted. The carpet was dry and put back down. Meanwhile, the bedroom awaits paint and popcorn. I was forced to ask Kim to please have whomever paints to close the door to the room they paint as the house was filled with fumes for an entire day as a result of the bathroom being painted without the doors being closed or windows opened.

Yesterday, the air condition person came out while Susie and I were at work. I came home to a house that was freezing cold as the thermostat was left on 50 degrees. I asked Kim if this was on purpose in the case the air condition people were testing the unit. She laughed and said that it was not and it was a mistake and that the air conditioner was fine contrary to the owner's suggestion that she thought it was broken or something due to the lack of noticeable circulation in the bedroom. I guess I can't get in enough complaining.

Question: How should I continue to advocate to take care of my house and family without continuing to be perceived as a problem and in the process placating to those who obviously want us to disappear?

The current plan: Continue to await the rest of the work to be done as it seems to be happening relatively fast now. Then, I plan to write a letter regarding our appreciation for taking care of the matter and adding an apology for the sequence of events that resulted in the heated exchanges on the day the roof caved in.

Question: How do I write an apology letter without somehow making the owner and daughter feel justified in their inappropriate and insulting methods of dealing with this throughout?