flippity flop

"Where the hell are my flip flops" is something that Dale has muttered a lot lately. I could care less to be honest, but they are the only shoes the kid wears. Flip flops to dale are like food to a homeless person. You don't mess with his flip flops unless you want to unleash the fury.

Not too long ago, our conversation went as follows:

"Dude, I can't find my flip flops...I KNOW i left them in front of my door."

"I don't know man, I don't have them"

20 min later...

"Dude, I'm an idiot, they were in front of my room all along...I think I'm just going blind."

"You're going something all right."

a few hours later, they have been misplaced again. Dale and I are sitting on the couch and what do we hear? "flip flop flip flop flip flop..." coming from the kitchen. The indian man came back from god knows where and walked into the living room. We looked down and what did we see? He was WEARING Dale's flip flops. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Dale didn't. I am not sure what cleaning measure Dale took, but I know he didn't take the right one as they weren't set on fire.

10 Missed Calls

Just ate dinner and went upstairs to do some work. I grabbed my phone and what do i see? TEN MISSED CALLS. I scroll through them:

805 -215-xxxx 7:38PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:38PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:37PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:37PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:36PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:35PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:34PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:34PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:32PM
805 -215-xxxx 7:31PM

I do not make this stuff up people. 10 MISSED CALLS from Lora in a 7 minute span. Reason #342 that I drink just about every single day.

The House that Insanity Built (Part I)

House tenants over the summer and how it all started:

First Name: Mike
Last Name: Brennan
Age: 25

First Name: Dale
Last Name: Gerbetz
Age: 23

First Name: Ryan
Last Name: Kelly
Age: 21

First Name: Lora
Last Name: Williams
Age: 35

First Name: Sehla
Last Name: Williams
Age: 5

First Name: Grace (american name anyways)
Last Name: unknown
Age: 38

First Name: Kyled
Last Name: unknown
Age: 40


Dale, Ryan, and myself have all been living in the house for a year. Two of our roommates had left for the summer and only 3 of 5 rooms had been occupied. Neither could afford paying rent with a 3 way split, so in an effort to lower the costs of the house, we put an online ad to find summer roommates only.

After a barrage of emails/calls, we finally found 1 person who wanted to stay for the summer only:

6/29/05
I'm moving to Buffalo to attend D'Youville for my MS, RD.

Oh cool! this is the apartment for $330 includes everything till end of August? Can you call or I'll call if you prefer so we can talk more? Thanks!

Lora :)

Seemed harmless enough so I wrote her back and we spoke on the phone. She said she need a place just for the summer...yada yada...and things seemed ok. Then she dropped the bomb. She had a 5 yr old daughter. She was able to tug at my heart strings and I told her she could move in. Expected move in date: 7/9/05.

On 6/30/05, approximately 10:30pm, my phone rang. It was a girl who spoke very poor english. I could hardly make out what she was saying. After 10 minutes i figured out that she was in a class with me the year before. She had a friend who needed a place to stay for 3 weeks only. They came over the same night and looked at the room. They left and i figured i would not see them again. I was wrong. Around 2am that night my phone rang. The woman wanted to move in on the 9th of July.

Being the classy guys that Dale and myself are, we thought it best to skip town the weekend of July 9th...we took off to go to Albany to see my sister. The time frame of details for the weekend are as follows:

9pm on the 8th: Ryan calls dale. he states that Lora contacted him and that her purse was stolen. She asked for his credit card info to rent a car. He wouldn't give it and he called us. We all thought it was a scam and she was not going to show up at all.

9:30am on the 9th: Lora calls ryan to state she is here. He goes to pick her up from airport.

11:30am on the 9th: Lora asks ryan if she can take him to buy groceries. She said that she heard of wegmans and asked if they could go there. They go there at noon.

1:30pm on the 9th: Ryan calls dale. Ryan states he has been in wegmans for 1.5 hrs. He says that Lora set him up and she was reallly there to meet her online boyfriend. This was the first official duping of anyone in the house.

3:30, 6:30, 8:30 on the 9th: Ryan calls dale to say how much he hates Lora.

Late at night on the 9th: The asian woman shows up to move in.

5pm on the 10th: Dale and I return home. We are welcomed home to a wall of odor. It turns out that the Asian woman was a 2-for-1 with a 40 yr old indian man. His cooking could be smelled from the 990.

We didnt' see or talk to any of the 4 people that moved into our house that day...but more was to follow...

Apartment Shopping

12:15 PM....home for lunch...."Mike, can you give me a ride to look at an apartment, I am supposed to be there at 12:30 to meet the owner". Of course I couldn't take her though, as I had to get back to work.

6:15...middle of a beautiful nap...."bang bang bang...Miiiiike...are you in there?" I walk and open the door. "Nice boxers." "WHAT do you want lora?" "Can you take me to look at an apartment...I have to be there at 6:30." "FINE lora".

I get dressed and we head to the apartment. It is in Tonawanda pretty far down on Delaware. I park the car and she tells me that I should smile more. I threaten to leave here there and leave. We walk to the place and she tries to open the door. It is locked. I sit on the sidewalk with Sehla. Lora tells me to come look in the windows to see the place. I say i don't care. She is persistent so I go. I ask where the landlord is. She calls him and there is no answer. "Chase me...Chase me...Chase me..." starts all over again. I contemplate whether I'll ever have kids. Sehla takes my hat and puts it on. She then puts it on her mom. I didn't like that one bit. Sehla runs to the back yard. I walk after her to get away from the 10000 questions that the mom is asking me. Lora calls the landlord again. She wasn't supposed to be there until 7:30. I tell her that I hate to be the bad guy, but we have to leave. I was SUPPOSED to be on a date but I'm putzing around trying to help her so that she'll be able to leave my house and it turns out we are one hour early. I'm now the bad guy.

I feel bad and offer to take her to get an area apartment guide. I have seen them at My Tomato Pie so we head that way. We get there and I tell Lora to go get it. She makes some weird comment about how she got a bunch of mosquito bites at that house and it must be from her pheremones, and she wonders why only mosquitos are nibbling on her. I say "if you are lucky, i'll still be here when you come out." She reiterates that she thinks I'm mean.

Sehla notices a bug bite on her leg. The tears start a'flowin. "I HAVE AN OWIE. OWIE. OWIE. I NEED A BAND AID." The remainder of the car ride is constant noise. Lora tells me she feels bad I have to deal with the screaming. I said "what?" She said sorry you have to deal with the noise. I said "Its ok, I am quite capable of blocking both of you out." She punches my shoulder and we pull into the driveway. Lora asks me to go to the movies with her and Sehla to see charlie and the chocolate factory. ...um...let me think about that....NO.

Lesson Learned: No more taking trips with Lora and Sehla.

Operation Buy Jelly

Its 4:45 and I have just gotten home from work. Sehla is upset because she wants a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but she has no jelly. Lora tells me that one of us contaminated her jelly. It turns out that Sehla has a gluten problem or something and can't even have one bread crumb. Apparently, someone used their jelly and double dipped the knife back into the jelly after applying it to bread....Sehla asks me to take her to get jelly...and of course I say ok.

I run upstairs to put a shirt on and when I get back down, there is a grocery list of 20 items on it. Lora asked me to pick up these things for her too. What was I going to say? The little girl was all excited to spend time with me. Lora then informs me she has no money and she'll have to pay me back later on. Dooooped again...

I put Sehla's car seat in my back seat. She gets in and her mom watches from the door as we drive off. "Be safe" she shouts...as if I'm not always safe.

We get to wegmans 2 minutes later. Sehla grabs my hand as we walk into the store. I wonder if anyone thinks she's my kid. We hit our first snag on this mission...we walk by one of those machines where you use a crane to get a stuffed animal. Sehla begs me to play. I tell her we can do it on the way out and this seems to appease her.

5 seconds later she's gone! Like a bolt of lightening, she takes off from me and starts running towards the back of the store screaming and laughing. "Chase me...Chase me...Chase me" I hear the same words that I heard 2 hrs a day while at home. I manage to get her to settle down and we start looking for Lora's food items. Nothing on the list is something that I have purchased before. It took me almost 1 full hour to find the items. I did learn one big lesson though: avoid walking past bulk candy bins with a kid.

The first time we walked by the candy, Sehla took a peppermint and ate it. I told her that was bad and I wondered if anyone would say anything to me. She laughed like the little devil she is. She then ran back to the candy bins and grabbed a handful. She was definitely noticed this time. I walked to her to get it from her but she ran from me. She ran to the opposite side of the bins and screamed. I walked to that side and she ran back to the other side. "Chase me...Chase me..." Six people stood and watched the cycle of me going to one side and her running to the next. I pretended to just walk away and then she ran to me. I figured that would work. I did get the candy from her which made her upset. I made a deal with her to buy it for her if she would stop running from me. She was good to go after that....until...

I thought we were going to have a smooth trip out of there. I forgot about the machien with the robot arm to get prizes. Sehla ran to it. A blind monkey with no arms would have had a better chance to win a prize. I put 3 dollars into that game for her. 90% of the attemps she pressed the button without moving the arm. In retrospect, I should have just told her she was playing and i'm sure she would have bought it.

We head home and I think to myself that i'm glad that is over. Lora was unhappy though: I only got 1 container of soy milk and the list said to get 4. I also got a jelly that was sugar free, but had nutrisweet. Apparently if you give that to someone who has anxiety issues, it could cause a panic attack. She thought that I should have known that...I told her I wouldn't mind seeing her lose it. She said i was mean. What can i say? I am!