This is one of the views from our suite. I love that we live in an area not crammed full of condos so close you could almost reach out to touch your neighbor’s balcony.
I also love the little park we overlook with the pond where the ducks & geese love to land in their migrations north & south. I like that I see an occasional bunny hopping across our parking lot to go into the park area for the night.
I like the layout of our apartment – because we are on a corner we have windows on 2 sides & get beautiful cross ventilation. Because we’re on a corner our suite isn’t laid out with all the rooms along one long hallway, but rather flow into each other. We have in-suite laundry & 2 full bathrooms (so hubby & I don’t have to share unless we have company), a walk-in closet & large bedrooms. We are as far from the elevator as you can get & still be in the building, so we don’t get the annoying noises to deal with. Since we’re at the end of the hallway, no one needs to walk by our door except for our next door neighbor who has the other corner suite & is very quiet. Our apartment fits into our budget neatly & is very comfortable. But there are problems . . .
When we came to look at the apartment we were assured it was a mostly adult building which turned out later to not be true. It wasn’t so bad at first because most of the children were on the 1st & 2nd floors, so they really didn’t bother us unless they were horsing around in the parking lot & that didn’t happen too often. But now the suite 2 doors down from us has children (I think they may have just had another baby because there were lots of people coming & going in the hallways over the last couple of weeks & standing around in the hallway talking & laughing – almost partying).
Our apartment also faces south west, so it gets very warm & for some reason in Alberta, apartments don’t come with air conditioning. In Manitoba, unless you’re renting a dive apartment, every apartment comes with air conditioning. Luckily, we have cross ventilation – but if we leave the blinds open we can’t see the TV because of the bright sunlight till late at night. I hate Daylight Savings Time!
Another problem we have is our very controlling Condo Association. We received a letter from the condo association in mid Feb. telling us we had to take down our Christmas lights by the end of Feb. or we would be fined. Thankfully it was not a cold winter, so it didn’t pose a big hardship to take the lights down, but we had spent a great deal of time & effort carefully planning how to light our balcony so it was tasteful & pretty. This is when my husband first said the M (for moving) word.
Another problem – someone on the main floor has rented their condo to a drug dealer & we are getting a lot of unsavory characters hanging around our building now. Also the smell of marijuana in the hallways is enough to choke you most days when you cross through the lobby. What’s worse, when the weather was cool, they would disable the smoke alarms in the stairwells & smoke there, causing the alarms to go off & the fire department to have to come out & clear the building. When you’ve evacuated your apartment a few times in the winter, you get a little tired of it.
And today was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My hubby arrived home with a bill from the management company for over $150.00 for the lights in our kitchen. They charged us for changing the flourescent bulbs in our kitchen. We did not ask them to change the bulbs, we asked them to fix the actual fixtures which were not working properly. Further, they charged us because I asked the handyman to show me how to get the drain plug out of the drain in my tub because it was blocked with hair & we couldn’t figure out how to do it. You can’t just screw the stopper off to get at the drain, you have to take tools & pliers to do this.
So now hubby is mad & is even more determined to move than ever. He’s busy looking up rentals on the computer & printing out places for us to start looking at. I can see his point, but I really love my apartment & my view. It’s going to be very difficult to find what we have here again. Having said that, we may find something better, but maybe not. So I might as well get resigned to moving yet again.
Beth Ann
Apr 20, 2012 @ 05:38:41
Oh no—sounds like your lovely place is not so lovely today!!! The drug dealer situation would about put me over the edge, I think! It is not easy to move and to find what you are used to and what suits you but I am confident that if that is what you need to do you will find the right place. Good luck!! Keep us posted
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benzeknees
Apr 20, 2012 @ 11:43:12
I know – I hate what they’ve done to the place since last summer. We were so happy here. First time we’ve lived in a big city in 15 years & we thought we found the perfect spot. But once hubby makes up his mind I kinda have to follow or he’s not worth living with. He did find an apartment with the exact same layout as ours, unfortunately main floor, so we’ll keep looking. Thanks for following!
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Beth Ann
Apr 20, 2012 @ 13:01:45
Keep positive!!!
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El Guapo
Apr 20, 2012 @ 08:29:16
Wow, that sucks.
Why not withhold payment on the handyman until they do something about the drug dealers?
Good luck finding a new place. Hope you can find a nice one with better neighbors!
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benzeknees
Apr 20, 2012 @ 11:45:38
Unfortunately 2 different groups. One group is the Condo Association who decides who & what can go on in the building. The other group is the leasing agent (from whom we rented our condo) & they are the ones who have looked after maintenance for us. So one has no power to influence the other. Too bad, so sad
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terry1954
Apr 20, 2012 @ 08:55:10
i can certainly understand both sides here. good luck with your move
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benzeknees
Apr 20, 2012 @ 12:03:10
I really hate to give up this view, but what can you do if the building is going down the crapper?
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benzeknees
Apr 20, 2012 @ 23:08:58
Thanks for commenting, it is a bit of a connundrum.
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Chris Sheridan
Apr 20, 2012 @ 09:05:16
Either WP is playing some very strange head games with me, or I’m losing it here. I put a “like” on your post and low and behold, there were two of me up there. I then left you a comment in which I answered your post very thoughtfully, and the whole thing promptly disappeared.
So let’s try this again… If I really did create a “double like”, well that would be a miracle, so bless you my child… I figure that I should bless you now, just in case I’m hot and on some sort of holy roll here.
Condo associations are evil and they hate Christmas lights because they are all secretly worshipers of Satan, which is also why they rip people off by unnecessarily replacing fluorescent light tubes, so they can use them in their secret Satanic rituals in obscene and disgusting ways – I think this is why my last comment vanished because the condo asses knew that I had blown their secret Satanic cover by hitting them hard with the truth! But they won’t succeed in their cowardly efforts to silence me again!
It will be a great day when a brilliant scientist like Dr. Salk comes up with a vaccine to make us all immune to the sickness caused by condo associations, and they are all eradicated from the face of the earth!
But until that great day comes, I hope that you and your husband find a resolution that you can both be happy with, and since I already blessed you, even though you did not sneeze, I’m also wishing you both the very best of luck with that. 🙂
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benzeknees
Apr 20, 2012 @ 11:47:28
OK Chris, do you have the lottery numbers? For some strange reason, after your comment I have a whole new post exactly the same as the one above. Now I didn’t do this, so whatever you were doing you must have duplicated my post somehow. I still only got one comment from you though. Freaky!
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Chris Sheridan
Apr 20, 2012 @ 12:28:24
It’s that devil worshiping condo association, I tell you! When they failed to stop me from posting my “tell all” comment about them again, they resorted to the weak and cheap trick of creating a duplicate post in the hope that your readers would get confused and read only the fake post without my comment, instead of reading the one true post, on which my comment exposes all their vile wickedness!
But even though they are a bunch of condo association liars who love to worship the Prince of All Lies, their lies and tricks will not work this time!
And I just heard that the vaccine should be out any day now, so your days are numbered, all you condo association satanists!
Oh, I almost forgot… winning lottery numbers are 01-02-07-13-26, and have fun! 🙂
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The Hobbler
Apr 20, 2012 @ 13:49:39
Wow, beautiful views, but that is some bad stuff going on. Moving sucks though…
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benzeknees
Apr 20, 2012 @ 23:19:46
I agree, moving sucks. The only good thing about moving is I keep pruning our stuff down – pretty soon we’ll be a moving machine with not a whit extra.
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writerwannabe763
Apr 20, 2012 @ 19:16:21
Hi…Just stopped for the night on our way home from our holiday, so thought I’d read a bit.
What a dilemma you have. The ‘pros’ on one side and ‘cons’ on the other
It can’t hurt to see what else is available ..you might be pleasantly surprised..in any case it’ll help make the decision…Diane
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Tilly Bud
Apr 21, 2012 @ 04:14:58
We had a landlord who told us to change our curtains because ‘they lowered the tone of the building’ !! Get out as soon as you can!
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benzeknees
Apr 21, 2012 @ 10:34:39
If my hubby has anything to do with it that is the plan – he wants to go out looking at apartments today. Thanks for stopping by!
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trjensen
Apr 22, 2012 @ 00:32:13
You are appreciated! I nominated you for an award! http://narcissistsblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/reader-appreciation-award/
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benzeknees
Apr 23, 2012 @ 00:55:47
Thanks, much appreciated! You’re top of the pops with me!
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