Empty Spaces

Well, it’s official now. Yesterday at 4 pm, the duplex we’re living in was signed over to the new owner. Only a few short hours later, I could already smell the pungent aroma of cigarette smoke leaking upstairs. I still don’t know anything about this man, other than he’s a smoker and when he spoke to us seems to be kind of a loony. Hell, I don’t even remember his name, so I’ve just been referring to him as “Smoky.” There hasn’t been any moving of furniture going on between then and now, yet he clearly spent the night in the downstairs of the duplex. I don’t know on what furniture he spent it, so maybe he just curled up in a sleeping bag. It was easy to hear footsteps walking around downstairs, the droning mechanical noises of household items being turned on that hadn’t been turned on since February, and the more obvious yawns and laughs and smells that come along with having a downstairs neighbor.

I can’t exactly figure out why, but I’m having trouble convincing my instincts that this man is not an adversary. I feel very defensive about him having a key to our place and the ability to know when nobody’s home and I feel very anxious about having to communicate with him day-to-day. I keep telling myself it’s alright, but I just can’t shake that feeling that he’s an “opponent” somehow and I’m developing a kind of brooding contempt for him. It’s very unsettling, since this is an emotion I don’t feel very often.

My last few weeks at work have been a massive challenge for me. Each project involves me spending several weeks creating it, then it gets sent out to the other departments for a while, and then returns to me to put the finishing touches on it. I started almost two years ago and the projects are all supposed to be done with a little more than two years from now. So for the entire month of May, I’ve had the perfect blend of new stuff that I’m still building and old stuff that’s in the process of coming back to me to fix. It’s a very stressful feeling to finish one thing only to discover that three more have come back from out of nowhere. By the time I finish those, I have even more.

The good news, though, is that Lia and I have found a new place to live. Due to a conflict that arose when giving our notice, we find ourselves having the entire month of June as an overlap to move into the new place. I would like to get another look at the place before I go about describing it. Further details will be provided in the future.

Bad Juju

Lia has what she considers a Birthday Curse. Her birthdays are generally forgotten or filled instead with the selfish-intent of the provider, leading her to develop a lot of misgivings surrounding her special day. Being the first of her birthdays I have known her for, I have been determined to break this cycle. The weekend prior, I took her out for breakfast, planned on going to the Art Museum (though that was rescheduled), took her to see “Date Night” and have dinner at the cinema grill near Bayshore Mall, and capped the night off with tickets to see Demetri Martin, who has always been one of our favorite comedians. The day was a success.

We had both taken off on her actual birthday, a Wednesday, to head for the Art Museum like we had rescheduled. It was a fun, midweek adventure. Afterwards, we headed home and dealt with picking up my broken car from the mechanic, soon to be followed by dinner at the Olive Garden. We drove separate cars home, during which time she received a happy birthday message from my parents, ending with an ominous summons to have me call them. Meanwhile, I had neglected to answer their call to me, since I hate talking on the phone while I’m driving. The message waited until I arrived back at our residence. I returned their call shortly, only to learn from my father that our family dog, Blaze, had passed away while at the vet that day.

To quote my mother’s explanation: “He had been having heavy panting/breathing as part of his problems lately. It was one of the things we were getting the blood drawn for as a first step. Just that morning at home before we left, he had an episode of that weird breathing and then it settled down. When the tech was there to get blood that breathing started again and he then stopped breathing and collapsed and he was gone immediately. They tried to resuscitate him but it did not help. He never started breathing again.”

Farewell, Blaze. The family just doesn’t feel complete anymore. According to Lia, the Birthday Curse continues.

Two days later, on Friday, our landlord informed us that the duplex we’re living in has been sold! Our leases and security deposit will transfer to the new owner, who will be living downstairs once they close on the property at the end of May. The following Sunday, the new owner came by with the house assessor, while he was measuring our apartment. The new owner talked to Lia and I for about 20 minutes. Notice, I didn’t say that we had a conversation; he “talked at us” that entire time. Hardly stopped to take breaths in between, and every couple of sentences was a new topic about a few other members of his family tree that he just expected us to know somehow. The man was clearly out-of-his-mind. Most notably, though, is the fact that this man absolutely reeked of smoke. Being allergic to smoke, and knowing that we could smell the previous tenants’ cooking every single night, our apartment is going to turn into a 700 square foot smoke-box. Now we’ve got to put our noses to the grindstone in order to find a way out of the apartment before the new guy moves in. Plus, he was fairly creepy and I don’t know how I feel about Lia being there when I’m not home while he’s got keys to the apartment.

The following day was our anniversary. Our first year together! In the morning before I left for work, Lia could feel the first indications of an impending migraine. She insisted it was no big deal, and called in sick to work. A couple hours into my workday, I got an email from a friend that said Lia had been trying to contact me all day without success. Lo-and-behold, my phone was still on silent from the night before, and I now had several missed calls and text messages. I quickly ran outside and returned the phone calls. Lia was currently in the emergency room with her mother. Lia’s migraine had evolved into a numbness pervading large parts of her body, her vision started to recede, and confusion had set in, which made it difficult to even remember phone numbers that she’s known her whole life. Knowing that all of these are symptoms of a stroke, I started to panic, but she and her mom insisted that I don’t leave work to meet them at the hospital. The doctors gave her a CT scan of her head, a couple of IVs and a prescription for Codeine. They’ve determined that she hasn’t had a stroke, but have instead classified it as an “atypical migraine.” Usually, her migraines go away when she takes Benadryl or when she goes to sleep. Since we happened to be out of Benadryl that morning and she had just gotten up, she didn’t have any weapons to combat the migraine with. The hospital’s official conclusion is that this is what all of her migraines would turn into without immediate medication.

In the meantime, I’m considering the merits of chalking this up to a brand new Anniversary Curse. Time will tell.