Book Review--Where the Pink Houses Are

If you are looking for a reason not to do any housework, go ahead and start this book. If you have too much work to do, wait until you have a day off. You will not be able to put it down!

If you have a Kindle you can download it today. If you have a Nook, you can still download it today through WestbowPress.com as a pdf.

Brenna is a tragic character being both an orphan and young widow. Following her former mother-in-law to Ireland promises to be a needed escape and change of scenery in an otherwise lonely existence. Besides, her mother-in-law is the only one Brenna has left. Where Anna goes, Brenna goes.

The last thing on her mind is love, but apparently her beauty is irresistible and the local lads are drawn to her charm. A short term vacation turns into an extended stay and Brenna learns to forge friendships and navigate a painful new relationship that is wrought with drama.

Brenna's budding faith is growing, but so is the emotional turbulence that leads to a life-changing decision akin to watching a train wreck. This is my favorite kind of story, however. There's plenty of real-life mess with a hefty dose of redemption. It might seem too good to be true, but if you don't want a happy ending, you can watch the evening news.

In full disclosure, this book was recommended to me by the author, Rebekah Ruth, who was going to be a friend of mine in Buffalo had we not moved to Omaha, but through the wonderful invention of Facebook is a cyber friend whom I can observe, admire and support from afar.

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Pink-Houses-Are-ebook/dp/B006K8XPYO/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323748143&sr=1

Confessions of an Email Hoarder

Wow. It's so obvious now, but why it has taken me so long to reach this conclusion is a mystery. I've already confessed my natural tendency toward hoarding so it's not all that surprising actually, but I really thought that I had licked it pretty good. No one would walk into my domicile and accuse me of hoarding. I do a pretty good job of getting rid of stuff so it doesn't overtake the few bits of space that we need for wrestling matches.

But today, I was called out by a complete stranger for email hoarding.

When Yahoo switched to unlimited data storage it was the best and worst thing that could have happened to me. On the one hand, it's awesome that you don't have to delete large documents, photos, etc. to make sure that your emails don't get bounced. Remember those days? Someone would send a few pictures and you'd be done for. Don't even try to go away for a week without clearing the Inbox...you'd might as well have fallen off the face of the earth to anyone trying to reach you.

On the other hand, I completely gave up the discipline of deleting emails. Other than the obvious ones that I don't even open--special offers I'm not interested in, lists I joined and haven't bothered to unjoin and other random junk that I don't have time to read, I pretty much just left everything in my Inbox.

I kept thinking that I would go back and organize them--you know, save important things in well labeled folders and delete the ones I now realize I didn't need to save. The trouble is that every day this task becomes more and more daunting, because the number of emails to sift through grows and grows and grows.

This has been on my invisible to-do list for years (you know the one you have running in the back of your mind that if you ever get a big chunk of time to do something you should probably work on?). Do you want to know how many emails I've been hoarding? I'm not sure I can tell you. It's kind of like divulging your weight, only most people can't really guess just by looking at me.

17,000

Apparently that's a big number. The guy at the Apple Store flat out called me an email hoarder. To my face. That's when I realized that I do have a problem.

At first I fished for excuses..."I know, I really need to go through them because there might be something important in there."

"Don't you think you could safely delete everything prior to say, 2005?" he politely asks.

"There's no way I have emails from before 2005..." I stammer.

"Let's check," he innocently suggests.

Yeah, my problem goes back all the way to 2001. Do the math--that's 10 YEARS of email hoarding gone unchecked. Seriously. This is embarrassing.

"Maybe I just need to delete them all and start fresh," I say hopefully.

"That's a great idea," he affirms.

"But what if I die? Wouldn't someone want to comb my emails for all of the wonderful things I've written and had written to me?," I'm grasping.

"If you die, I'm sure the first thing your family will do is read through 10 years of junk mail that you never deleted," he says, not unkindly.

"But some of them contain addresses, you know for those Christmas cards that I haven't sent in 5 years," I defend gallantly. Then I realize that in 10 years, that person has probably moved 3 times.

I want you to know that I came home and deleted them all. I didn't even look them over first. There was probably something very important in there that I will be screwed without. My life may end without a trace of evidence that people loved me enough to send me email. But my invisible to-do list just got shorter. I'm feeling a little lighter now.

I'm sorry if you ask me for information that I no longer have. I really don't think there was any other way. I am committed now to clean out my Inbox daily so that this never happens again. Feel free to ask me how it's going. I'm sure I can use the accountability. (A 10 year old habit may be hard to change.)

The truth hurts, but the truth can also set you free. On to my real to-do list now...

Why I May Never Move Out--My 1st top 10 list

Lest you think my stories about crazy people mean that I am dying to get out of this place, I wanted to shed some positive light on our living situation. You may already know that we live here rent-free, which is an obvious benefit. I mean, things would have to be pretty darn bad, or our financial situation would have to miraculously change in order for us to even think about moving. Plus, I told Bo when we moved here that I'm not moving again unless we can afford movers. I happen to know that we can't afford movers yet, so I'm setting down roots.

However, I happen to find apartment living desirable for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that it's free for us (though not really free since I have to earn my keep).

Here's my top 10 list of reasons to like apartment living:

1. It's cheaper than a house. Even if you don't get free rent, apartment living is definitely cheaper. At first, it might seem comparable since some fancy places do charge an arm and a leg, but once you consider utility costs, apartments win hands down. Our highest gas bill last winter (which runs our heat) was $42. That's just ridiculous. If our electric bill is $100 we have a heart attack.

2. It's greener. The other great part about low utility costs is that it also means we are not consuming as many natural resources as when we heated & cooled a house. This gave me great consolation in the early days before I lobbied for a recycling service (no recycling would be a huge down side of apartment living for me, but being the manager means I can fix that!).

3. Noise. It's not a lot of noise, but enough to know that people live around me. Our apartments are very quiet, but I can still hear my neighbor come home and the guys downstairs playing video games. I'm not quite sure why I like it. Maybe it assuages my guilt that we are super noisy so I like it when I can hear other people too. Maybe it just makes me feel not alone in a world of isolation.

4. Bumping into neighbors. We don't exactly have the most social of atmospheres (we don't have a club house or any gathering place, plus there is a wide range of people who live here it's not like there is some kind of affinity group sprouting up), however, I like seeing people in the hallways or in the parking lot or at the mailboxes. Since I know everyone I always say hello and get all nosey about their business. This would probably be true of me wherever we lived, but when people in a neighborhood can drive directly into their attached garage it's harder for me to corner them.

5. Forced simplicity. I am part slob (from my dad), and part hoarder (from my mom). I should say that's whom I would be in my most natural state. I used to have a really hard time getting rid of things, but living in 1000 square feet while trying to maintain some semblance of family order, purging is a skill that I have developed for survival. Also, my office used to be the absolute pit of our house--the dumping ground for everything I didn't know what to do with. Now my office is part of our kitche-offi-dini-living room. I have had to learn to organize paper and not let piles run rampant. Since we have less stuff, my inner slob has less to mess up.

6. Less cleaning. I've finally come to terms with the fact that I will never be a clean freak. I might as well just admit it and stop beating myself up all the time. The beauty of apartment living is that when I do finally suck it up and clean the place (never all at once--I could never be that focussed), it really doesn't take that long. I can vacuum every room without moving the cord for crying out loud. How hard can it be? (It still is kind of hard because I would really rather do just about anything than actually clean.)

7. No maintenance or yard work. When something breaks, I don't have to stress out about coming up with the money to fix it. Now, in my situation I do have to make sure it all gets done and I do plant flowers and rake leaves from time to time, but for the most part we do not have to factor yard work into our family equation. If we're still here when the kids get old enough to start mowing, I envision hiring them to do it so that they will learn how and have some responsibility, but if they decide to get a job doing something else, so be it.

8. I never have to throw out left overs. Furnace filter day is when I get to spy on all of my neighbors and see what goes on behind all those closed doors. What I've discovered is that some people live even more simply than we do. Way more simply. In fact, you don't really need much of anything to live as it turns out. Some people don't even have food. I don't go peeking in cupboards or anything, but you can tell by the trash bin overflowing with take-out containers that there is nothing like cooking going on in that kitchen. I don't offer my left overs to just anyone, but when I know that someone never eats a home cooked meal, they don't turn me down.

9. When borrowing the proverbial cup of sugar I don't even have to put on shoes. Once in awhile I start a batch of cookies without realizing that Bo ate the last egg that morning for breakfast. Nothing like stepping out into the hall and having any number of neighbors to hit up for a favor. I love it when someone asks me for things too. I mean, they all ask me for apartment manager kinds of things, but when they ask for sugar you know they just think of you as a neighbor.

10. Forced togetherness. There is no place to run. No place to hide. We are all together. All the time. Some might include this on the list of downsides, and surely some days it is, however, I have come to love the chaos of cooking dinner amongst the hubbub of the daily wrestling match and the fact that we have one TV to fight over and the times when I have to run into the bedroom to find a quiet place to have a professional phone conversation about the benefits of our apartments when a perspective resident calls. We basically have one room. No basement or family room. It's just us, hanging out together in the kitche-offi-dini-livingroom. The boys share a bedroom, which is...you know, terrible some days and fabulous that one time when they played in there for hours without arguing. In the end though I think there's something to be said about closeness creating.....closeness.

These are a few of my favorite things about apartment living. I sometimes wonder if we will bail the minute we can afford to or if we will continue to choose this lifestyle. Right now we might as well choose to like it because it's definitely working for us. I know that there are things I may never have learned without this season of life so I'm thankful.

Vacant is Better than Crazy (Part 3)

I could probably start a blog devoted entirely to the crazy people I've encountered over the years in the rental business, but I'm highlighting three in particular. What they all have in common is that they arrived in the late fall/early winter and I let them in. Inherited crazy people are one thing--you can always blame the former management. Having to take responsibility for knowingly lowering the bar to infest the community with crazy people is all kinds of humbling.

I did this to us. I did this to my nice, normal, wonderful residents who I worked so hard to attract and retain.

Now that I've announced my shame, let's jump right in to the story of Crazy People #3. A couple we will call Crazy Woman and Crazy Man.

They had just moved to Omaha from Utah. She, a Mormon, he, a pack a day smoker, not even pretending to be Mormon. They applied for the apartment on the end so he can go straight out the door to light up (being that we have a no-smoking policy).

Let me pause and say now that though it is illegal, it is almost impossible not to stereotype people who are applying for an apartment. That is why we have a tenant selection policy laying out the criteria for applicants. We screen everyone the exact same way every time. We verify that the applicant's income is at least three times their monthly rent, we ask standard questions to their former landlord, we run a credit check and we do a criminal background check.

My problem is not that I form an opinion and want to turn people down, it's that I form an opinion and want to give them a chance.

Crazy Woman played the Mormon card. We rent another apartment to the Mormon church (actually we rent it to the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Utah Corporation Sole) which is occupied by various young men on their mission. They are some of the best residents ever. They are polite. They are tidy. They are always asking if they can help me with anything. The only complaint I have ever had about them was from another one of my inherited crazy neighbors who called to see if they had asked permission to use our basketball hoop. You know, the basketball hoop that is right out in the parking lot for anyone to use. (Tattle tale is gone now, by the way.)

Anyway, since I'm on this rabbit trail let me burrow a little deeper. I'm not trying to enter some discussion or debate about the Mormon faith. This is not a theological comment. I'm just saying that I have never met a Mormon that I didn't like. I was the coordinator of a Mormon Youth Conference one summer in college. Great people. All 500 of them. Wonderful, respectful young people and a joy to work with.

I was hired by a quasi-famous Mormon once. Mitt Romney's son Taggert was at a career fair in Boston and he hired me to work for a pre-explosion dot-bomb for a few months while I was looking for a real job. We traveled to a conference once where we were trying to get graduating seniors to give us their email address by offering a trip to Europe. Tagg was amazing. Nothing dissuaded him from asking the next group who wandered by, "Would you like to win a trip to Europe?" When I got a negative reply, I became rather passive and gun shy. Not Tagg. He was relentless.

I asked him about that on our plane ride back to Boston and he told me that after being a Mormon missionary for two years, no rejection even comes close. I saw his point. There is no repellent stronger than a pair of clean-cut 19-year-olds wearing shirts and ties riding on bicycles. I've always kept this in mind when interacting with my missionary neighbors. Thanks Tagg.

Anyway, I must have had all those positive Mormon thoughts swirling through my mind when going to bat for Crazy Woman and Crazy Man. OK, so they've had their car repo'd. Their landlord said they always paid the rent. I have all kinds of apartments vacant. Did I mention my phone never rings? Let's give 'em a shot!

And we did.

At first I was so proud of my good instincts. Things were great. He was handy, a mechanic, and he kept our lawnmower in working order. They asked if we could help with anything. Genuinely nice people.

I'm not exactly sure when things started to crumble. The first thing that was mildly alarming was that he traded his truck (he said it was a gas guzzler) for a Batmobile. To be more precise, it was an old Trans Am or something like that. It was hard to tell being that it was spray painted black with a spray painted Batman symbol on the hood. Crazy Man was always working on that thing. We probably have some rule against it, but since I had allowed him to repair our lawnmower I kind of felt weird not allowing him to work on his car. It wasn't too big of a deal except in the heat of summer when he worked shirtless.

I haven't yet described the Crazy Couple. Lest you envision some hunky mechanic sweating away under the hood with his shirt off, let me give you some visual realignment. Crazy Man had some teeth issues. I don't know that I can provide much detail because I tried not to look at them, but I have a fuzzy notion that there may have been some missing and I'm fairly certain that none of them were white. Now move your eyes down the torso to the beer belly. Now cover everything with a filmy sort of grime that never washes away. Add the smell of B.O. and you pretty much have the picture.

Crazy Woman was stout and appeared to have razor stubble...on her face, poor dear.

When I met them I really just had that heartwarming thought that there is someone out there for everyone and these two found each other. I realize that my descriptions probably sound rude, but that's not my intention. I just really think you need to have the picture so you can experience the full shock of what happened with these two.

At this point, nothing had transpired that would be considered a lease violation. They were a curiosity, but harmless. I did have some concerns about our property giving off a slight "white trash" vibe, but sometimes he would be at work and there would be hours with no Batmobile visibility. A few times the rent had been late, but there was always a bailout from the Latter-day Saints. As long as the rent gets paid, we are not particular about where it comes from so as far as we were concerned, they were in good standing.

Then the fighting started. Turns out that the Batmobile was evidence of a mid-life crisis and Crazy Man was out picking up chicks with his sweet ride. I could hardly believe it myself. Not just one, but at least two women find this man attractive. And then it occurred to me...Crazy Man may have been hitting on me all along.

I'm generally naive about such things, but in this case the idea of it is so far fetched I think I just did not see it. At all. But there was this one day that he said something kind of weird and it struck me as funny at the time. I even told Bo about it because it was so odd. I was trying to install an under-the-cabinet microwave and I had reached a point where I needed some help. I'm not that strong and you have to be able to lift a dinosaur of a microwave (circa 1988) up into the slots before screwing it in. I didn't want to make the tenant wait for her awesome microwave and our maintenance crew was busy dealing with air conditioning issues and other more urgent matters so I was taking the task into my own hands. Crazy Man was around so I asked him if he would help me a minute just lift the microwave up so I can get it screwed in.

Our kitchens are small and it's kind of awkward craning your neck under the cabinet and reaching around a sweaty guy to get the thing plugged in and attached. What made it more awkward is when he looked over at me, smiled and said, "We make a great team."

I honestly don't even know what I said in that moment. I was completely dumbfounded.

But when I found out that Crazy Man was a ladies man, it occurred to me that he may have been trying to test the waters, which I'm sure he found quite frigid in this case. At any rate, whether or not he was trying to hit on me is beside the point. Crazy Man was a cheater.

All of a sudden, things got all Jerry Springer on us. The poor woman who lived above them reported that they had slammed doors so hard her picture had fallen off the wall. She also indicated that she's not that big on listening to people yell, "You had sex with her and then came home and had sex with me?!?" Then the police came and took Crazy Woman to jail. Her emotional stability was definitely in question, not that she didn't have a reason to be an emotional wreck, but she was out of control.

And then Crazy Woman told me she is scared because Crazy Man owns a gun.

That kind of stuff is definitely not OK.

So we issued a 14-30, which basically says, "You have 2 weeks to stop doing what you're doing or you will have to move in 30 days."

You just have to love the legal process. Go ahead and keep doing what you're doing for the next two weeks, but as long as you stop on day 15 you can stay.

Well, they stopped. For awhile. Then there was one more incident involving the police and we had a decision to make. We now had grounds to file for eviction based on the 14-30.

She is emotionally unstable. He has a gun.

I will admit, I weighed these options very carefully and decided not to evict them. Instead we waited them out. Things remained quiet, but when their lease expired, we did not renew it. They were given a 30 day notice to move for no reason.

Crazy Man and Crazy Woman were not at all happy with me. They did not understand our decision. In some ways it was hard, but the look of relief on the face of the woman upstairs was worth it all. I know it was the right thing to do.

So this fall I chose a mantra, "Vacant is Better than Crazy," to remind myself that crazy never works out. Sure, you might get some rent for awhile, but the drama is most certainly going to outweigh the benefits. The unfortunate thing, and I hope I am not writing about more drama a year from now, is that sometimes crazy people find normal people to rent an apartment for them. Sometimes crazy people have perfect credit and good jobs. Maybe I'm just negatively stereotyping, but I do believe that I have moved three crazy people into the same hallway in the same month.

Oh Lord, I hope I'm wrong...but I will keep you posted.

Vacant is Better than Crazy (Part 2)

This is the story of Crazy Person #2 or "The Hard Fought Battle of the Weed."

Our apartments are not fancy. The buildings are 20 years old and starting to show their age. We still have some original appliances and vinyl flooring. Our cabinets and counter tops are all original. We are a small complex with no amenities to speak of. No fitness center, no pool, no club house. We don't even have an office (which is why I can work at home with my kids). We also have this weird set up where you can only exit and enter one way onto 72nd Street, which can seem like an inconvenience until you become a U-turn master.

What I'm trying to say is that we are not going to compete with a brand new, fancy place with all the bells and whistles. If you want all that stuff, don't move here. We will never have bells or whistles.

What we do have, or what people have told me, is nice for the price. When you compare our space with others in a similar price range you will see the value. We have implemented a no-smoking, no-pets policy which greatly enhances the smell of the place. We are slowly upgrading appliances, flooring, fixtures and the like so our units look good. We are in a super convenient location relative to just about any area of Omaha, which is great for Bo in the homecare field. Whether he has to drive to Bellevue, West Omaha or Council Bluffs, it's not more than 20 minutes from home. You can sure find nicer places if you want to pay more, but if you look at places any cheaper than ours you will be entering dumpville...or roachville...or scaryville.

What does this have to do with Crazy Person #2? The point of all this explanation is that we are in the perfect price range for people starting out or starting over. Crazy Person #1 was starting over. Crazy Person #2 was starting out.

A young guy, early 20's, this was his first job and first apartment. He worked down the street, less than a 1/2 mile away at Builder's Supply. He had never rented before so he had no rental history to speak of. He had been at Builder's Supply for quite awhile and he didn't have any credit. This is one of those applicant situations where you don't have much to go on.

It was now winter and we had vacancies. What do you do? I'll tell you what we did--we took a chance.

This was the same apartment that had recently been vacated by the peeing cadet host. The guy downstairs, a very good resident by all standards, was already in a fragile state, having witnessed the peeing. As it turned out, moving Crazy Person #2 upstairs from him was about to shatter every last bit of his resolve to continue living here.

What I didn't know about Crazy Person #2 is that he had a smoking habit rivaling that of Cheech and Chong.

We have a non-smoking policy. For some reason, some people do not consider smoking weed "smoking." I would put this under the category of "Common sense is not all that common." I take some responsibility for this because up until that point I had not clarified that no smoking means no smoking of any kind whatsoever. When the reports started coming in about the smell of pot, I did go have a conversation with Crazy Person #2 about this issue where I laid out all of the things you cannot smoke inside the building. I tried to include anything I know people smoke and even a few things I've never heard of people smoking just to make the point.

Talking does not help in some cases.

Did I also mention that my children were exposed to what I would consider porn in this apartment? On furnace filter day, they were helping remove the old filters when I notice their eyes drawn to the giant poster of a woman wearing next to nothing looking like she could nurse quintuplets.

There are no rules about not hanging offensive posters on the inside of your apartment. I chalk that up as a teaching opportunity to have a conversation about objectifying women. I should thank Crazy Person #2 for providing this wonderful moment for my young boys. Thank you Crazy Person #2 from the bottom of my heart.

I know what you are thinking. We have a non-smoking policy (which Crazy Person #2 signed upon entering this contract), he is smoking, just kick him out.

Well, that sounds like a fabulous idea except that the burden of proof lies on us to show that he is smoking inside his apartment. This is harder than it seems because no one ever sees him doing it. They just smell that smell coming from somewhere. We all know where it's coming from, but can it be proven?

So we resort to calling the police. Do you know that the police can't really do anything? Maybe, just maybe if they are called soon enough and it is happening where they can tell that it is currently happening they might be able to have grounds to enter. But this never happens.

Here's where you can take action. There is usually a clause in most leases about not disturbing the quiet and peaceful enjoyment of the premises by other residents. The only problem with this is that to prove this in court you need other residents who are willing to testify that said person is disturbing their quiet and peaceful enjoyment.

Do you want to go to court with your neighbor?

This is a losing situation for landlords. Residents complain, but they really don't want to get dragged into a court of law to complain to the judge who could actually do something about it. If we give Crazy Person #2 a notice that they are in violation of their lease without any proof, he can stay and make us go to court to get an actual eviction, which we won't get if I show up with the lackluster "evidence" that people are complaining.

So I wait. I listen to complaints. I explain the legal process (which I really don't understand myself). Finally, I have someone crazy enough to offer to go to court. She is one of my long-term crazy people that I inherited from the last management and she does not care what anyone thinks of her. She does not like what she sees and you can drag her butt into court--she will be there.

This gives downstairs neighbor confidence that he too would be willing to testify. A third witness says yes, she will go too.

I have three residents who will not back down. He needs to go. We will not wait for his lease to expire. He must go now.

I deliver the letter. I explain that he can go peacefully or he can face court and get evicted. I make sure to mention that I have 3 witnesses prepared to testify against him. I am very persuasive. We do not evict many people here because persuasion is one skill I do have.

So Crazy Person #2 moves on. Another lesson learned. Vacant is better than crazy. He nearly drove away some very good residents with his antics.

Neither Crazy Person #1 nor Crazy Person #2 hold a candle to a pair of crazy people. Because when you have 2 crazy people in one small apartment, things can really go wrong. Stay tuned tomorrow for the case of "I traded my truck for a batmobile and other really classy happenings."

Vacant is Better than Crazy (Part 1)

Welcome to my life as an apartment manager. I am going to give you an insiders tour. Buckle your seat belt. You might not be able to handle the excitement.

I started this job in June of 2008 out of sheer desperation and an unreasonable desire to be home with my kids. Filled with heaps of self-doubt, I applied with no expectation of being hired. I was hired with no expectation that I would succeed. I simply needed the job and trying seemed better than the alternative. It's not like I had some wildly successful career prior to having children or some really useful skill to fall back on. What I did have is some hard knock experience in being a small-time landlord and a relentless calling to be a stay-at-home-mom. Put those two together and viola--Resident Manager seemed like the perfect fit.

What I didn't know is that the complex I was hired for was a hot mess. My boss, Dana, handed me my first vacancy report and there were 14 apartments listed. In a 48-unit complex, 14 vacant units means things are bad. Very bad.

Next to each vacant address were progress notes about what work had been done and how close they were to being ready. I scanned the list, trying not to look terrified, and noticed the word YUK! in Dana's handwriting.

"Um," I asked, "what does 'yuk' mean?" (Is this some fancy real estate term that I am too green to know?)

Dana replied, "When I went to check out that apartment, I opened the door, said 'yuk,' closed it and decided that will be the last apartment we deal with."

Oh, so yuk actually means yuk.

That was just the beginning. I have a story or two to tell about those early days, but then I will never get to the point, which is, "Vacant is better than crazy."

See, what I have learned the hard way, both as a landlord and in working for a landlord, is that screening tenants is the most important work we do to improve a property. Laws generally protect tenants over landlords so it's really important to keep the crazy people out because once they are in, it's pretty difficult to get rid of them.

Back up to 2008. By the grace of God, and through the desperation of not wanting to lose my stay-at-home-mom job, I rented apartments like crazy that summer. It was shocking actually. I would walk a potential resident through a half-finished apartment, my wild kids would be tackling each other in the living room or flipping themselves over on the breakfast bar and the person would actually apply to live here. Nice people. Decent people. With jobs. It was really more than I could have asked for.

Fast forward to 2009. Over 16 leases came up in a span of 2 months, mostly in the late summer and fall because of our initial leasing options. We did not think that through obviously, but I'm pretty sure no one, including myself, thought that I would actually lease all of those apartments by fall.

Many people stayed, but a handful of people moved on for very valid reasons (since this place being a crap-hole was no longer the number one reason people were moving). One couple was going to pick up their daughter in Vietnam to come live with them after 2 years of being separated. Another guy got married. One young couple bought a house. One guy retired and headed back to Chicago where his family lived. Stuff like that. Oh, and one guy couldn't stop himself from hosting parties for young cadets who thought it was funny to pee off the balcony. We asked him to leave. (Sometimes credit report does not indicate all possible factors of decent tenancy.)

When it all shook out I had 4 or 5 apartments becoming vacant over a 2 month period of time. Still thinking that I could get fired any minute, I panicked. It's true. I totally freaked out. The economy was bad. That whole 1st time home buyer incentive was keeping people out of the rental market. It was really slow and it was fall. I rented a couple in the early fall to some very nice people but then I got stuck.

November and December are terrible months to rent apartments.

I don't think one normal person even called. Every. Single. Person. Was. Crazy.

Why would you move right before or during the holidays? Why would you move in the winter in Nebraska? Only crazy people do that. I'm sorry if you've done that. You are crazy. Just go ahead and admit that it was crazy and you wouldn't do it again. It's OK, we all make mistakes.

So there I am thinking my head is on the chopping block, not one normal potential applicant is on the horizon and crazy person #1 comes along. She is moving from another city in Nebraska because her 20-year-old, drug addicted daughter is threatening to destroy her life and the life of her 17 year old daughter. They left town to make a fresh start. She transferred to the Walmart down the street and her daughter would be homeschooling high school.

Let me just pause here. This incident just proves that you can never make assumptions about people. I think the moment they said the word homeschooling my mind conjured up images of all of the wonderful moms I know who have chosen to home school. You may have some other stereotypes of home school families that could trigger your crazy meter, but every single one of the families I know that home schools is amazing and their kids are amazing.

So when she applied and did not exactly meet our qualifications I somehow found myself going to bat for this crazy single mom and her home schooled daughter. As it turned out, "home school" can also mean sitting at home all day watching your Rent-a-center TV and texting all of your friends you met on the internet. They lasted almost a year, but in the end, crazy person #1's choices continued to follow her and she agreed that moving is better than being evicted.

When it gets to that point the emotional drama becomes very taxing because kicking someone out just stinks. The fine women in our main office knew then what I know now, crazy never works out. It might be a temporary fix, but long term, it is not a great move for the neighborhood.

This I learned the hard way through crazy person #2...stay tuned tomorrow for the hard fought battle of the weed...

Thanksgiving!

Instead of making a New Year's Resolution this year I chose a word: Joy. One of the things I've been working through is looking up every verse in the Bible with the word joy. There's quite a few of them, and for some strange reason I'm doing it backward (starting in Revelation, ending in Genesis). I look up the verse, write it down and try to squeeze out anything I can learn about joy.

I've made my way to Ecclesiastes (Thankful to be through with those major prophets who remind us that if we ignore God there will be no joy...) and here was today's verse:

"Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do." Ecclesiastes 9:7

I'm frequently amazed at God's timing, how I would land on a verse about enjoying eating and drinking on a day like Thanksgiving! I'm not always sure how to interpret the book of Ecclesiastes because it seems so sarcastic, but I think the point is that our lives are so short it's ridiculous so we really should enjoy the great parts that God has given us.

Today we enjoyed a great meal and games with good friends. My heart feels merry and God approves. He is the inventor of celebration and it's a great gift to be able to have a day of rest and enjoy all that we have.

I hope you have experienced the same form of joy that we have today!