Happenings in the Hood: The Weave By The Pool

I saw this little gem lying next to the pool today at the property that my husband manages:

It sure is a beauty, isn’t it?

Seriously though, this kind of junk doesn’t even surprise me anymore. This is mild compared to some of the things that I’ve found either spread around the 96 unit property, or left in vacant apartments  over the course of the 10 and a half years that my husband and I have been together.

We lived in the only 3 bedroom apartment on the property when we were first married. Back then, the neighborhood wasn’t as bad as it is now. In recent years, the place has not only become somewhat of an eyesore due to the way that many of the residents and the local class-ditching high school students treat it, but it’s also earned a bad enough reputation that pizza delivery drivers won’t come there after dark anymore.

Needless to say, I‘m very thankful for my condo in a decent neighborhood, but I still spend a lot of time at the property, doing odd jobs to earn some extra cash, and just generally helping out.

Maybe I missed my calling as a trash collector. I’m not the type of person that can just step over a piece of garbage and not feel guilty for not picking it up, so I’m always tossing stuff in the dumpster whenever I’m out and about.

In addition to picking up garbage and painting, my husband asks me do ‘trash outs’ from time to time. That’s when he has to evict someone, or they skip out on their rent leaving a bunch of stuff behind, and I properly dispose of it. I love doing trash outs. Not only is it easy money, but sometimes I find decent items that I can either keep or take to the thrift store that I run on the weekends. The last trash out that I did had brand new kitchen utensils, some still in the packages, and piles of jewelry and clothing with the tags still on them. They just left it all behind. In the one before that, I found several brand new, unopened bottles of laundry detergent and shampoo. Score! Three trash outs ago, we found Ray. Ray Darr. The world’s worst excuse for a pet rabbit. I’m really not all that convinced that he was a great find, even if my daughter seems to think so.

I once cleaned out an apartment that had a few hundred dollars’ worth of fantasy gaming collectibles, many of them still in their original packages. I also regularly find DVDs, video games, CDs, books, and tons of spare change. They’ll also leave behind furniture and small appliances. I’ve lost track of all of the TV sets, microwaves, coffee makers, sofas, beds, tables, and chairs that I’ve pulled out of vacant apartments.

More often than not, though, the places are just loaded with pure junk, and so disgusting that you look around and think, “How could anyone live like this?” Somehow they do, though, if you can really call it “living”. I’ve braced myself and grimaced through purging a great many apartments that are so devastating that it takes months for the nightmares to stop. Like the one I’m currently painting. The walls are literally dripping with nicotine residue, and it smells so strongly of cat urine, that I have to duck out to get a breath of fresh air every half hour or so.

Yeah. Most of these places look and smell pretty harsh by the time people move out of them, and the scenes I find in them are usually like something out of a horror film.

So, the weave by the pool inspired me. It inspired me to share with you, my adoring fans (all 2 of you and probably less after you read what’s to come), a list of several of the most disgusting and/or strange things that I’ve found either lying around the property, or in vacant apartments. I advise reading this list on an empty stomach for your own personal safety.  Enjoy!

Stuff found around the property:

Weave by the pool. More than once.

Weave wrapped around a bush.

Weave stuck to some bubble gum, which I then proceeded to step in.

Weave stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

A dirty T-shirt by the pool.

A dirty T-shirt in the pool.

A dirty diaper by the pool.

A dirty diaper in the pool.

Human feces in the pool. Even the attack scenes from Jaws are slightly less terrifying than seeing poop bob around in the pool.

Vomit in the pool. The culprit probably spotted the poop.

Used condoms in the pool. Boy. It would seem the poor pool takes some serious abuse, wouldn’t it?

Enough used condoms everywhere to recycle into a bouncy house. Wouldn’t that be a great rental for little Jimmy’s next birthday party? Hey kids, let’s go jump around in Casa De La Trojan…

A bunch of used condoms were found around the laundry room, too. I don’t even want to think about why…

A used condom tied around a tree branch. Uh oh, they’re getting creative now…

A used condom with bubble gum in it. Again, let’s not dwell on the why…

A litter of kittens behind a bush.

A litter of kittens behind an air conditioning unit.

A litter of kittens under a propane tank. Okay. Someone…anyone…please for the love of humanity…neuter these stinkin’ cats!

Garbage bags and dirty diapers next to the dumpster that no one could actually bother to throw in the dumpster.

And the find of the week: A gooey sales receipt from McDonald’s with a false eyelash stuck to it. Yeah. I dare you to figure that one out.

Stuff found in vacant apartments:

Weave stuck to windows.

Weave stuck to countertops.

Weave stuck to walls.

Weave stuck to tape stuck to walls.

Animal hair stuck to walls.

Animal feces stuck to a dirty mattress.

Animal feces in an ash tray.

Animal feces crammed into a high heeled shoe. Just…never mind. I’m not touching that.

Animal feces in a freezer. The how in this case might be just as unsavory as the why…

Animal feces in a bathtub.

Human feces in a bathtub. Hey, when you’ve gotta go, why let a little thing called ‘acting civilized’ stop you?

Rotting cherries in a bathtub. That was really the pits.

Pubic hairs stuck to a bathroom ceiling. Yep. Throwing up a mental roadblock on that one.

Pubic hairs in the freezer. I can probably imagine how that one happened. Come on, people, use your air conditioners. Seriously.

A gushy black bag of what I could only guess were once potatoes. It dripped sludge when I picked it up and smelled worse than death. I had to step outside to recover from a raging case of the dry heaves. Well played, rotting food…well played.

A dirty diaper in a Ziploc bag with maggots all over it. And the dry heaves strike again.

A dirty diaper stuck to a framed picture of zebras with broken glass.

A small mountain of cigarette butts piled up in a corner of the bedroom.

A body-sized patch of greasy, grimy carpet around the bottom of a stripper pole.

A pot full of grease with dead roaches floating in it shoved inside an oven.

A shriveled up French fry stuck to the floor by a wad of gum.

Rotting broccoli inside an unplugged refrigerator.

Rotting ground beef inside an unplugged refrigerator. Burning said refrigerator to the ground wouldn’t have gotten that smell out.

My daughter cleaning rotting broccoli and rotting ground beef out of said refrigerator.

An army of creepy, crawly things happily devouring a loaf of green fuzzy bread.

A fur-covered Christmas wreath fused to the kitchen wall by cooking grease. Just what I’ve always wanted! Who said Christmas comes just once a year?

And last but not least:

WHAT IS THIS THING?!

It’s lying on the dining room floor in the apartment that I’m currently painting. I’ve been side-stepping when I get too close to it for fear that it might growl and lunge at my ankles.

I won’t be taking the time to find out for certain what it is due to the fact that it might take a deeper level of investigation than I’m willing to commit to. Like oh …poking it with a stick and potentially angering it, or…touching it. I believe that upon distant examination, though, I may have it narrowed down to one of 2 things.

It could be either a piece of candy coated in nicotine and rolled in cat hair, or one of these guys:

Tribbles!!!

At any rate, somebody please call Scotty and get him to beam this thing out of here.