If It's Not One Thing It's Bob
The traveling diaries.
April 3rd Flying was a complete shitshow under the best of circumstances. Right now is definitely not the best of circumstances. We bought the tickets right before the debacle that was the partial government shut down complete with copious unpaid TSA personnel. ICE joined in to help the nightmare circumstance that security lines devolved into. The TSA folks got some emergency funding before we flew, like a day or two before, but not by much.
Turns out none of that silly confloption affected our flying. What did was the blow back of the aftermath – flights delayed and sometimes canceled. We were more than an hour late leaving Liberia and more than 90 minutes late hitting Charlotte for our next flight. I was on the sharp tines of a set tenterhooks hoping we’d make our flight. Going to Charlotte we had to get through customs and immigration before going through TSA and heading to our next flight. Held little hope. As soon as we got through the border patrol section the sweet girl helping us with my wheelchair took us to customer service to see if we could reschedule the flight to big Baton Rouge (joking, ha ha!) They told us our flight had just finished boarding and there wasn’t another flight until 2 pm the next day. As we were talking about options (standby to New Orleans on a midnight flight, or Dallas for a midnight flight, overnight there and fly to BR at 8 am the next day!) the agent said, “Oh wait a minute! Your flight hasn’t boarded, the gate is changed and there is a 45 minute delay on your flight.” We rushed through TSA and got to the gate in plenty of time to make the flight. We just had to let my husband’s brother know we were delayed.
Got to the house, no water of course because of the pesky water leak in the tub. But, miracle of miracles, Bob the neighbor had not thrown any of my bottled water, food in the fridge, drinks, and lots of stuff in the freezer or cabinet. Once he threw away everything in the fridge and pantry after I was gone two weeks. Arrived back after those two weeks to a stripped kitchen at midnight with just what I had in my purse to eat. We had words where I said it could be years out of date and growing so much mold that it was sentient but do not throw anything away! I would deal with it.
Last time I was here for over a month and I decided I was tired of camping and I was not doing it any longer, bought the things I needed to live comfortably in the house. It really made a difference to our comfort levels arriving to stay here. That and the furniture coming back from Mom’s assisted living. No longer camping out on an inflatable mattress in the living room.
Yesterday was consumed with finding and scheduling a plumber (hard to do hard on the heels of Good Friday in a highly Catholic area), getting a real estate appraiser out here to price the place, going to the grocery store, getting the mail and sorting it, dealing with bills and the like. Sweet sonny boy, the real estate guy, Mr. Jimmy, shuffled walked like he was a 100 and wheezed. He could barely talk he was so short of breath. He said the house was in excellent shape as old as it was, with clean fresh looking paint and mostly beautifully maintained. I don’t see it, I just see extremely dated everything. The plumbing is in sad shape, but the emergency plumbers are here this morning.
One of the things that I have discovered is that Bob the neighbor is an incompetent ninny, shit-stirring, old coot of a weasel. Why do I say that? Yesterday he referenced again his flipper friend and tried to say we would owe him a $1,500 ‘finders fee’ if we sold. He keeps pitching helps/services for additional finders fee of the same. He’s trying to extort a little money out of us.
It also came out that Bob didn’t discover the water leak for over three months. How do I know? Going thru the mail and discover they auto drafted over a thousand bucks over three months from Mom’s bank account for the water bill. As it is we’re storing his golf cart and trailer in the large garage cum work shop for the trade off that he picks up the mail and does a weekly walk through the house to make sure nothing like that is happening. Interestingly enough the plumbers said that the tub faucet just drips (they fixed that!) and the real culprit was the sink in the master bath. The master bath is moldy right now. Bob keeps turning the ac up to 85, and I keep telling him that the ac has to stay around 70 to keep the mold down, and protect the mold remediation we went through the last time I was here. Called the mold guy again, and I’m considering putting a lock cover over the thermostat.
My biggest problem with Bob is that it came out he’s insisting we don’t list the property, that we quietly let real estate agents to whisper it around and that he, Bob, gets to say yeah or nay on the new folks. Why? He’s a racist of the first water. He says he cannot have black neighbors because (his reasons, not mine!) they lower the tone of the neighborhood, bring down property values, and once one moves in a pile of them follow and the neighborhood devolves into some sort of free form ghetto complete with gun fire and young ‘thugs’ (again, his words, not mine).
I cannot tell you how offended and aghast I was at this discovery of hard core racism in a guy that seems reasonable in all other respects. I lived near DC for thirty years in a mixed race neighborhood and it isn’t even remotely true. Didn’t tell him he’s been living across the street from a mixed race woman (Mom) and that I am mixed race too. When we had family medical DNA testing done we discovered we’ve got heritage from the Canary Islands. Likely from the Islenos that were early settlers of Louisiana.
Made the mistake of complaining to one of the Aunt Heap last night and got told off, told that Bob was right. That I should do it Bob’s way.
You do not know how tempted I am to look for a black buyer right now. I cannot stand racists. So so tempted to tell the Aunt Heap they’ve been passing as white for years under Louisiana’s old laws one drop makes you entirely a person of color.
Well, I guess at least Bob watered Mom’s plants, even if he’s been horrid on these other things. Had the plumbers fix any number of things here today, changing out gaskets and lines. Hopefully the leak situation was contained. Mold remediator here now spraying the latest mold because of the leak and the temperatures. One truism in South Louisiana is everything molds unless you stay right on top of it.
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