Alas, not the landing we had hoped for

More like an Earth-Shattering Kaboom!

After not being able to write for a week, we find ourselves back at the hotel until Friday.

It’s been a rough, busy week.

The friend had promised us that he’d have the basement ready in four days (which seemed a bit fast to me, but he assured us it could be done). So all our plans were set up for that.

We arrived on Tuesday (I think, my days are getting messed up), having rented a Uhaul to bring over some of our furniture, only to discover that in the six days after he told us he’d be ready in four, he hadn’t even started.

Now, I could understand him beginning the job and finding out that it was bigger than he thought it would be. But not even starting it, when he knew when we’d be moving in, that’s just carelessness and disrespect.

Then we came to find out that he was going to be charging per week what we had thought he’d be charging per month. Note: the claimed reason for doing this was to help us out. So he would be charging us near hotel prices for an unfinished, unfurnished basement. And not even offering breakfast! My husband talked him down to just a bit more than we were thinking in the first place.

Then, until he had finished the basement, we would be staying in the back room of the house, with an exterior door, and walking outside and through another door to use the basement bathroom. Note: I’d seen nicer rest rooms/outhouses while out camping. It didn’t even have a working light!

And the back room still needed to have everything taken out of it, and to be vacuumed. Once again, it was about an hour after they said they’d be done with that before they even started. Close to midnight before we could start setting up the mattresses and try to get some sleep.

But they decided to leave their tv running full blast in the living room, with no closable door between it and the back room where we were staying. Note: I said leave running, not watch. No one was in the room with it. My husband eventually got up and turned the volume down to a dull roar, and we could rest a bit.

In the morning, I went to get our son from work, and my husband went down to the basement to use the bathroom and work on some things. He discovered that they had put two dogs (and not their own dogs) into the basement. Now, we know these dogs, they are a couple of sweet and loving pit bulls. But we had rented the whole basement, and no one had asked if they could let the dogs stay there. So my husband remonstrated with our erstwhile landlord that he wasn’t supposed to put dogs in there. Thus he disrespected the guy who was supposed to be renting to us.

The guy physically attacked my husband, and hit him multiple times with some sort of wooden post with a jagged metal piece attached to it, as well as pulling a gun on him, and kicking him off the property.

Note: We had moved all our clothes and furniture there, since we were going to be staying there. I was afraid that we had lost everything again. As well as the money we paid for the first month’s rent.

The rest of the day was spent signing up for an ex parte hearing (apparently being covered in blood and bruises wasn’t enough to get a temporary one set up until the hearing), getting back into the hotel we had been staying at, but a different room. That evening we had a friend come over, we got another Uhaul, and got our stuff back, under police escort. Honestly, we were a bit surprised that he hadn’t taken any revenge on our stuff, especially since he knew that our son had an expensive computer. Although he might not have been able to tell which of our four computers was the expensive one.

I must say that Wednesday night, when we were back in the hotel, and had our stuff back, I felt much better than I had on Tuesday night, even being out the money for the rent, and having rented two uhauls, when we should have only needed one. I felt that they were giving us a bait-and-switch, stonewalling, and gaslighting us. Probably several other nasty terms as well. I had been wondering Wednesday morning, before the final blowup, how to write up my frustrations without burning any bridges. After the blowup, I didn’t have that worry anymore. Just too much to do, and not enough energy to write.

Anyway, we’re back in the hotel again. We’re here for two more weeks, then we really need to find some place cheaper.

This isn’t as well written as it should be. I think that even after a week, I’m still shaking with rage when I think of it.

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