As landlords, we deal with all kinds of random stuff. And when I say we, I mean him. I don't relish the idea of being a landlord. I think it is kind of crappy, aside from the income. But its been a great way for us to get to enjoy a larger house that costs us very little... not to mention the fact that its an investment. Once the mortgage reaches its 30 years, we own it outright after having paid nearly nothing. There are sacrifices of course, like the endless amounts of painting and upgrading we did last year in order to get it ready between tenants. And we deal with things like noise issues, and broken items, etc. In the past, these have all been Dan issues. He deals with the tenants and with fixing broken things and collecting rent. I take the checks to the bank and deposit them, and whine when they are too loud.
This tenant however, has forced me to be involved and I hate it. So how did a Dan problem become a Mandy problem? When I saw my first bug in the house around Halloween. I don't "do" bugs, never really have. Even the sight of ants is cause enough to whip me into a frenzy. So you can imagine my delight when I googled "kitchen bugs" and found out that it was cockroaches.
PANIC.
Now, I understand that in some areas of the country it is so hard to get rid of them that people have just decided to get along and deal with nasty little things. Not here in Connecticut. So, as you can imagine I was in a stressed out frenzy for the first time in my life. When I say stress, I mean acid reflux, missing periods, not sleeping stress. When I talked to my tenant, she confirmed that she had noticed the bugs too, around the time her brother came to stay with them.
In case you are curious, no... she is not allowed to have her brother come to stay with her. I don't make that rule, the state does. Because they pay 95% of her rent. Apparently, she did not think it was a big enough deal to let me know that the cockroaches had come. I had to discover them nearly a month later on my own and call exterminators in a panicked frenzy.
Anyway, that was early November. They're still around. How does this have anything to do with Christmas, you ask? Well it's pretty straightforward really, they live on water and crumbs and they hide in dark spaces. I did not want to provide water (in a tree stand) or dark places (behind decorations or garlands). So we did not have any decorations this year. And, we had a fake tree.
I know, I know.... its awful, isn't it? In the interest of making "the best" of things, I decorated the fake tree as glitzy and artificially as I could. After all, people know the tree is fake, there is no point in trying to make it look real.
So, with that super long back story, here are some pictures of our super fake tree.
So what do you think? I have to admit, I kind of loved how fake and glitzy it was. Additionally, it was quite simple to take apart last week. The glittered spirals were picks that I just rested on the branches, the hideous tinsel garland looked less tacky behind the wide gold ribbon.The balls (bulbs) just all went in a hat box since I am not super concerned about whether or not they break, and the "topper" of shooting stars just just tossed into a box. Nothing was really breakable, the light were already on the tree and it went together in 3 easy pieces. I am not a fan of fake trees, and you can bet that I will have a real one next year. But I might be setting this one up again since it was kinda cute and pretty easy.
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