E-mail to the real estate agent

As I’m sure you’re aware, we live in a slightly (to moderately) dodgy 2 bedroom apartment whilst we save money for a house deposit. Houses are expensive down under. Anyway, whenever something needs fixing, it takes ages and sometimes threatening emails (threatening to call emergency plumbers and so forth and then make the owners foot the bill, not threatening their person or anything like that. That’s not how I roll) to make anything happen. The door of one of the cupboards in the kitchen fell off when we first moved in, and that’s yet to be fixed. But that’s not really a must fix, so it doesn’t bother me too much. It’s just kind of annoying.

Let me just clarify: It’s not the real estate agent who manages the apartment that is the problem, she tells the owners whenever a problem arises (or so I’m led to believe), it’s the owners who just don’t bother to do anything. They prefer “fixing” things themselves and I don’t know, maybe they just can’t be bothered or something. Maybe I need a cattle prod. Then when they do come, they just show up. No phone call, no appointment. They just show up. Once they came when I was sick, hadn’t showered, and was laying around on the couch in nothing but my fuzzy pink bathrobe. Awesome. You can read about that here and here.

Why am I telling you this? Because we have another problem. Sigh. Our bedroom door won’t shut. And the tap in the bathroom doesn’t turn off properly. So I wrote the estate agent another email. Seriously, this is word for word, I copied and pasted this bad boy straight from my sent box (including the illustration):

Hi Taryn,

I know it’s hard to get the owners of the apartment to actually fix anything (please don’t forward this email to them…), but it’s been about a month since the last inspection where I showed what’s-her-name the problems of the apartment. And I haven’t heard a peep about when they will be fixed.

In case she didn’t tell you, the door to Aaron’s and my bedroom is broken. Well, not so much the door as the little thing that comes out of the side of the door to actually keep the door shut. I’m not sure what it’s called. Anyway, our bedroom door is missing this little thing because it decided that it did not want to retract when we turned the door handle to let us into our bedroom. We were locked out. I do quite like sleeping in my bed rather than the couch, so Aaron got out his tools and took the whole door handle off, along with the little thing that latches the door. He discovered that the little thing, let’s call it Bob to make things easier, was in fact broken.

So Aaron put the door handle back on, sans Bob, and now we can’t shut our door.

That may seem like no big deal, but we have 2 small children, one of whom thinks it’s absolutely essential to taste everything he comes across. And by taste, I mean shoves in his mouth. He also enjoys pulling everything possible off shelves King Kong style and making a giant mess. He’s cheeky, what can I say.

We have over 100 board games in our bedroom, so you can imagine the chaos that said child creates when he enters our room. Which is easy because the door won’t shut. Plus most of the games have tiny parts, which, as I pointed out, he enjoys putting in his mouth. He did once choke on a sticker and I had to call an ambulance, so I’m a little petrified of what may happen should he decide to attempt ingestion of board game pieces. Please see the attached illustration.

When he gets into the board games, he does that smile that is so big he has to close his eyes to accomodate his pudgy cheeks.

We have been pulling a big oil fin heater in front of the door to block Daniel from entering our room, but the cheeky monkey has recently discovered that he can make like a battering ram and force his way in. This is obviously quite a problem for us.

Furthermore, the cold tap in the bathroom is getting worse. I know the owners know about that one because one of them said he’d come back to fix it months ago, but you know how that goes….

Now when we go to turn it off, a little trickle keeps coming out. We have to turn it on full boar, then turn it off again whilst it makes noises resembling a dying whale. Sometimes it turns all the way off then, but other times we have to repeat the process up to 5 times. That could be just an annoyance, but Hannah has recently learned how to turn the tap on to wash her own hands. She can also open the door all by herself. So sometimes she goes in there, does her business, washes her hands, can’t turn the tap off because it’s crap, and then comes back out. I’m none the wiser that she’s even been in the bathroom and the tap is trickling water for hours before I notice.

Lucky for me I don’t pay the water bill…. And I’m not going to pay for excess water either. Not when the owners know about the crap tap.

Anyway, if you could maybe give the owners a little please-fix-stuff-in-the-apartment kick up the backside, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sheri

We’ll see what sort of response this gets. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: I only sent the email yesterday at nearly 5pm, and I’ve already received a response AND the owners called and arranged a time to come and fix stuff. Booyah. See, amusing emails are far better than mean ones. As Taryn wrote back “I always enjoy reading your emails, and now they come with illustrations too! Haha.” I’m glad she has a sense of humour because I can imagine that a lot of estate agents would find that sort of email obnoxious and get their noses all out of joint.

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Sometimes, I get ugly

Usually we go away with I and M (who do not approve of being named on the interwebs, so I will just use letters) for Australia Day.  Of course, usually we get a long weekend for Australia day.  Not this year.  This year, Australia day was on a Wednesday.  So instead, we went to I and M’s  house with Hannah for dinner, games, sleep (for some of us) and then breakfast, lunch, and more games.

Being a mom, I can now no longer stay up past 10.  Fine, I’ve never been good at that, but whatever, that is not the point.  9pm rolled around (I put Hannah to bed at 7:30, FYI), and I was already struggling to stay awake.

It probably didn’t help that I don’t really like the game we were playing.  Games with lore checks, this check, that check, and what have you (where you roll a dice to see if you can or can’t do something), bore the pants off me (not literally, don’t get too excited).  Sigh, they are so slow!  And when you have 8 people playing, it seems like 5 hours of people rolling dice before they can actually do something before it finally gets back to your turn, where you roll some dice, inevitably roll a 1, can’t do anything (or die), and then it’s someone else’s turn again.  Ugh, no thanks.  And I like board games. Most anyway.

No one could remember whose turn it was to bring drinks, so 2 whole cases of beer ended up coming, in addition to the home brewed spirits that Johno and Adrian brought.  Oh goodness, recipe for disaster.  Not for me of course, I know that drinking with a bun in the oven is linked to F.A.S., which I definitely don’t want my future child to suffer with it’s entire life.

Alcohol, and being quiet, don’t mix.  A lot of the people there that night are loud anyway, but add spirits, and bang, it’s like being next to a bunch of hyena’s who’ve had way too much catnip.  Eventually, I was so tired that I fell asleep anyway. Not a good sleep, a fitful, restless sleep that ended abrubtly at 1:30am when loud banging woke me up.  Not just me, but Hannah too.  Adrian was so drunk that he was banging his head on the table in attempt to be able think more clearly for game playing.

Hannah didn’t seem to mind being awake, she just laid in her port-a-cot next to the bed, rolling around, singing to herself and reciting her name.  I, on the other hand, laid in bed tossing and turning, fantasising about what I would yell at these loud obnoxious people if it were my house they were being loud and obnoxious in.

I don't mean for Hannah to shut up, I mean the loud people

Of course, I couldn’t tell them to shut their loud annoying mouths if I and M were there because that’s just rude.  I, wouldn’t like it if they came over to my house, and told me how to behave.  No, instead, I stewed in bed.  And I went to the bathroom because I have nanna pregnancy bladder and have to go at least once per night.  I did attempt to glare at them on my way out, but I’m not sure if they actually noticed since I wasn’t wearing my glasses and can’t see my own hand in front of my face unless I do.  Maybe they were doing an obnoxious ha-ha-we’re-going-to-keep-being-loud-and-obnoxious-all-night dance, I don’t know, to me they resembled blobs of fuzz, all meshed together.  I couldn’t even slam the door in passive aggressive annoyance on my way back in because I didn’t want to upset Hannah.

At 4am, they were really giggly and loud.  I wanted scream, yell, kick, bite, and scream at them some more.  How could they keep me up all night??  I listened in bed.  Hmmm….it seems I and M weren’t there anymore.  They must have gone to bed.  In the other house.  They would be sleeping soundly, with no interruptions from loud drunken people.  I could tell they were playing Telestrations (oh how I love that game.  So so funny).  Telestrations is always funny, but it sounded so much more funny when drunk (judging by the loud obnoxiousness anyway).  That was it, I’d had enough.  I put on my towel (it was 45 degrees celsius that day, there was no way I was going to sleep in clothes), went to the bathroom (nanna pregnancy bladder again), then I couldn’t contain myself anymore.

I marched up to the table (so I could see them a little bit) and let loose.  “Do you know what time it is?!”  I didn’t let them answer, I kept going.  “It’s 4am! FOUR AM!!! Do you have any idea how loud you people are?  Do you know how hard it is to sleep?  I went to bed at 10, and I have hardly slept all night!”  They all looked at me, like I was a lion and they were tiny little baby zebras, about to be devoured by me.

I pointed my finger straight at Aaron, “and don’t think that I’m going to watch Hannah all day tomorrow just because you stayed up all night!”

“Are you mad?”  He asked me.

“YES I’m MAD, I haven’t slept all night!  How can I sleep when you people are so loud and someone is banging his head on the table?!?!?!”  Everyone continued to stare at me like I was some sort of nutcase escaped from the asylum.

Then I huffed off back to bed.  And they packed up the games and went to bed too.

Sure, it seems really mean of me to point my finger at Aaron and yell at him like that in front of his friends, but at 4am after hardly any sleep and no good sleep?  No, it didn’t seem mean at all.

31 weeks

Pregnancy: 31 weeks 2 days (only 9 weeks to go!!)
Total weight gain: 12kg (26.45lbs ARGH!)
Baby size (head to butt): 27.5cm (10.82in)
Baby weight: 1.5kg (3.3lbs)

So I finally found the scales after moving, and put new batteries in it (it’s one of those swish ones with BMI, water percentage, etc. as well as weight…), only to find that I now weigh (gasp) SIXTY KILOGRAMS!!!! My scale hardly ever sees 50kg, let alone 60. I’ve been reading Up The Duff, a week by week pregnancy diary by a very funny Australian woman. She had gained 17kgs by week 31, so I don’t feel quite so bad. I’m not quite sure where all that extra weight has gone though. I can still fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans. Well, I put them on, zip them half way up, and then use the belly belt to fasten them. After halfway up you get to belly country, so obviously they are not going to fit over my baby belly. Point being, my butt has not expanded very much, it still fits into my jeans. I haven’t purchased any maternity clothing what so ever (I just buy my normal Aus size 8 shirts, but get styles that are quite long and cover my half zipped pants). My belly is not super huge, my arms aren’t flabby, my face isn’t fat. So where did all that weight go? The midwife even said there is hardly any fat on my stomach at all, so it is really easy to hear Mushi’s heartbeat. She had to turn her monitor thing down because it was coming in so loudly. She also said he/she is thriving in there, is the right size, and luckily, has been a very good baby and turned so he/she is no longer breech. Good baby.

One day last week I arrived at work, then about 10 minutes later my nose started gushing (well that’s an exaggeration, but it was dripping) blood. I sat at my little concierge desk with a kleenex hanging out of my nose with blood on it, still greeting people as they went by. I’m sure I looked very professional. My nose bled for about 10-15 minutes, but that whole time, not one person noticed (or they did, but didn’t want to say anything). This proves my theory that they don’t actually say hi because they want to, but because they feel they have to. Some don’t even look over when they say hi back to me. At least they are being somewhat polite. Maybe they just didn’t want to say anything because they were on their way to work and didn’t want to be late.

Last week Aaron and I put a night aside to set up our “wall of awesome.” We now have a very large shelving unit that takes up most of one wall in our living room. And this large shelving unit is filled to the brim with (wait for it…) BOARD GAMES! That’s right, we have so many, that we can make a wall of awesome. I meant to take a photo of our wall of awesome, to put on here, but then I didn’t. I will do it today, so check back tomorrow for photos. We are waiting for 3 more board games to arrive in the post. 2 are on pre order though, so they may take a while.

Saturday we had an all day early parenting workshop. How to swaddle, bathe, soothe, etc. your baby. It was very helpful. There were all of these infant sized dolls to practise things with. Mostly though people would put them in funny positions (mexican wave, headstand, etc) while no one was looking. The knitted boob also made an appearance when we learned about breastfeeding positions. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a pattern to knit a boob. There was one very brave man there. His wife is very very pregnant, due in a couple of weeks and didn’t come to the class because she couldn’t sit in the chairs all day. This brave man however, came on his own. I would find it hard to come on my own, and I’m the primary carer, the milk factory, the giver of birth. I can’t imagine coming on my own if I were a man. Hats off to you brave man.

I told you a while back about my unfortunate belly button freckle that makes my belly button look like a target. Well now it looks like someone has tried to hit the target with something only to miss, and hit twice just above it. It seems the entry and exit for my belly button ring (which I took out long ago as it was starting to look ridiculous) have both stretched as much as they can, and are not turning red as they don’t want to stretch any more. The holes also didn’t used to be that far above my actual belly button, but I suppose under pressure, they decided to head north for a better chance of survival. Lucky I didn’t put any laundry this morning, it’s now started raining. Sorry, that was a random thought. I almost put some in this morning.

I’ve noticed that people around here don’t seem to know how to drive. Yesterday when I was walking to the bus stop after work, I was crossing the street at the pedestrian crossing part of a roundabout. I was nearly to the refuge (in the middle of the road), only one leg still in the road, when a taxi came flying around the corner and honked at me. I looked before crossing, and there was no one coming. So excuse me Mr. Crazy Taxi Man, how dare I be crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing. I just can’t believe he honked at me, like I was doing something wrong. Back to driving school for you Crazy Taxi Man! This morning, on my way to work, I had another incident at the very same roundabout. I had crossed the first part of the road, and was walking in the refuge in the middle, scanning for cars coming as I was walking. There was a car coming from my left, but he had his right blinker on, so I continued to cross. This crazy driver, with his right blinker still on, continued to go straight, and had to slow right down while I was crossing the road. Hmmm…Last time I checked, you don’t put your blinker on when going straight through a roundabout. Maybe the rules have changed since last week??

Lately when I try to go to sleep, Mushi decides it’s time to practise his Tae Kwon Do skills on my insides. Not even a minute after I lie down, it’s practise time. Makes it very difficult to go to sleep, not to mention hard on my insides. For a little baby, Mushi sure is strong! The only problem with Mushi turning out of breech is the kicking. He used to kick the lower part of my belly, and towards the outside (I think he was posterior too), but now, he kicks my ribs, and all the other innards around that are smushed up around that area. He is very active too. They say if you don’t feel your baby move 10 times in a day to go get checked out. I feel Mushi moving probably a hundred times per day.