We have lived in several homes in three states.  Not all moves were smooth.  When we had sold one home and purchased another at times we were forced to rent an apartment.  We are in a rented condominium right now and today received an irritating memo regarding a patch of cheap vinyl siding off our rear deck.  Someone came onto the deck, and removed the offensive siding.  It is exposed to the flake board and it is due to rain tomorrow.  This flake board will be damaged and water will flow down it to ruin the whole batch of siding below the offensive ones.

We are fighting mad over the suggested fine of $250 to repair the siding that was removed.  I had just vacuumed the decking five days ago, and my husband has fed the birds daily out there. The siding was intact.  We were away from the condo for two hours today, and suddenly there was this ill timed and lousy situation greeted us once we returned.  This is today, which brought to mind another situation at another location.

We moved to an apartment complex in Connecticut.  It was off to a bad start when the movers abandoned the Mayflower van and drove off. This van, on a Saturday, blocked at least fifty cars in the parking lot. We had to use a football team to unload the offensive semi-truck.  Needless to say, boxes towered in all rooms in random fashion.  We had four children in this apartment.  We were pounding two pounds of shit into a one pound bag.  Pets were not allowed, so we had to board our five lb. Yorkie at a vet’s boarding facility at a price of an expensive room in a luxury hotel.

I unpacked, with great effort all of the boxes and sorted things out.  I prayed for boxes to fall into Long Island Sound and disappear.  We were off to a bad start. Then I picked up a black cat named Waldo on our third hot night at the complex.  Sweaty, but tired, I failed to shower.  When I did, I found a round red rash on my body with a dark spot inside.  My oldest daughter gently removed the dark spot.  It was a tick.  I sealed the damned thing in an envelope and marked it:  “Tick bite, date, and time.”  I posted this on the refrigerator and called the hospital.  They said: “If you develop symptoms of Lyme disease in ten days, come in.”

We lived near Lyme, Connecticut.  I did not make that connection until I came down with “symptoms” that hit me like a hurricane.  I threw up, ran a high fever, ached from top to bottom, and could only crawl…not walk.  One round of antibiotics did not touch it.  A second round allowed me to walk with my chin on my chest due to a headache that prevented me from fully opening my eyes.  People who live in Connecticut know to go for I.V. antibiotics the moment they see a rash, let alone a tick.

The large complex had a rental office, occupied by two.  The managers had developed a habit of taping memorandums on our doors whenever they damn well pleased.  One was about bicycles on decks, which could have been remedied with bike racks.  This required me to lose my temper.  Bike racks were installed.  Then we received another memo on all of our doors in our unit that someone had complained about a large number of young children playing in the hallways of the unit.

I wrote them a memo back.  I asked these two, not so nicely, to look in their log book of rental agreements to note the inhabitants’ population of children.  I went door to door and did a head count.  We had thirteen children age ten and under in our unit.  These children’s parents had rental agreements that noted the number and ages of the people living in each apartment.  Children do play, and in an apartment the size of a normal living room there was no room for indoor play.  I also mentioned, that one unit in another complex nearby had a pet.

This pet was an African Green parrot on a perch outside a second story deck.  This was a perfect parrot for a pirate.  It had a vocabulary that was “sophisticated.”  Whenever a woman came into its view it sounded off with a cat call whistle of a sailor.  I was the only female who did not get this cat call.  I guess I didn’t pass muster with it.

The children in our unit, including toddlers in pull ups, gathered by this parrot and talked to it:  “Pretty bird…Polly want a cracker…etc.”  It chattered on for awhile and then told the batch of kids (and me) to “Fuck off.”  This was not good, and to make it clear that it really was done with fun the parrot turned its tail on the children and shot out pellets of poop that landed on the children.  We all ran away.  I actually love talking parrots…but, I was boarding a Yorkie at a luxury pet hotel.

Years later, I still have systemic arthritis from Lyme disease.  My temper is something that I deal with when I encounter stupid memorandums by letters taped to doors or now, emails from some unheard of place in Arkansas.  I know that the parrot was kept inside that apartment by the screen door.  I also know that that bird is still alive somewhere because they live to be nearly eighty years of age. It will be able to attend my funeral, but only if it deems me important enough to deserve its sympathy.  I left it with a new sentence to emit from its colorful beak:  “Fuck you, too!”