Rough Night

I went to bed at 5am. Well, I went to bed at 10pm, then woke up at midnight for Ivan's yearly April Fool's Day joke (surprisingly, I wasn't gullible this year--I was prepared for the call), back to bed at 1:30, then back up at 3am. Why was I up at 3am? The worst April Fool's Day trick EVER--played by my apartment complex. Unfortunately, it was no trick. Water was dripping/pouring from the apartment above me, soaking the smoke detector and everything in my hall closet. The alarm went off, I freaked, called my rental company, wrote down the emergency maintenance number, and called--twice. It had been disconnected. SUPERB. I then resorted to calling 911, screaming "NOT AN EMERGENCY!!!!" as soon as the dispatcher picked up, and explained the situation. She referred me to the Bloomington Police Dept., who then referred my to the Bloomington Fire Dept. By this time, I was sick of trying to yell over a fire alarm (and it was really freaking me out even more), so i threw an oven mitt at it until it quieted down to a sickly, squealy groan (water and batteries don't play well together...?! Sigh.). I told the dispatcher several times that it was not an immediate emergency and that human lives weren't being threatened, but they still came speeding through the city with their sirens blaring...all three trucks carrying all six firefighters and the fire chief (the picture above is of the fire trucks parked on the street). I understand that it must have been a slow night, and they were probably bored, but I was trying not to wake my neighbors at 3:30am. They investigated, nearly smashed through the window of my upstairs neighbors, and drained their 30 gallon water heater. They will have cold showers this morning. I think it's good payback for all the loud lovin' they do every day at 8am...and 11am...and 3pm...and 10pm. Sheesh.

Meanwhile, three random neighbors from the house across the alley, whom I had never met (or cared to meet), were discussing the situation with the firefighters. They were up at an ungodly hour, no doubt because of all the commotion I brought to the neighborhood, so I kindly offered them a beer from my fridge. It is important to note that the beer was Bass Ale--no cheap Keystone for these fellas. They gladly accepted; I then discovered that they were all drunk, and one was especially obnoxious. They requested/entered my apartment on their own for a tour of the situation, so I begrudgingly complied. After all, a team of Bloomington's finest protectors were just a few feet away. I realized the drunkest one had a cigarette in my apartment, near the dying smoke detector, right in front of the firefighter. I shooed him out with a very stern, motherly lecture on fire safety and respecting people's space, and they all went back home. Yuck.

The fire chief told me their heater had been leaking for a while, but they hadn't felt the need to mention it...idiots. he also said that the manager of my rental company was furious that the emergency number on the recording was wrong, so I began to worry. Would people lose their jobs over this mishap? The economy is bad enough--I had better be sure that the number was wrong. I called the main number back and listened to the recording again...OHHHHH...the area code was 888, NOT 812....shit. I freaked out. After the firefighters left with a flurry of me screaming "thank you" and "I'm so sorry it wasn't a real emergency," I waited another half hour for the maintenance man to finally take down the screeching smoke detector.

The adventure doesn't end there. The maintenance man who came to my house was obviously drunk, and I suspect that he was into meth (rotting teeth, open sores of picked skin, etc.). He took down the smoke detector, then stayed another 20 minutes to tell me about his new Blackberry and walk in stumbly circles. Sigh. While the odd meth man was fixing my flooded apartment, I hear a knock at the door. Who would knock on my door at 4:30am? Oh, hooray--the creepy drunk neighbor boy! He half stumbled into me, asked if I wanted to smoke a cigarette with him, and when I said I didn't smoke and was going to bed, he walked away in a huff in the opposite direction of his house. In the words of the Four Seasons, "oh, what a night!"



On top of that, I have a paper due at 1pm today. Ugh.

I need a hug.