Petrified Cheese
I am not the most organized person in the world, but I am clean. I can not stand to have my house dirty. Filth drives me absolutely batty. My husband feels the same way. I have just given my home a massive cleaning, because MY GOD the cat hair was about to come together and form a muscled mass that could have easily picked us up and tossed us out the front door! Whenever I come across someone who is so disgusting that they should be "Baker Acted," I sit and wonder how they came to be so dismissive of their living conditions. For example, the tenants who used to live in this apartment before us were nasty, destructive people.
Some time back in mid-July, when Erik asked me to moved in with him, I was thrilled, but also apprehensive. For those of you who don't know, we live in a city named Hialeah that is situated in Miami, Florida. Although considered a suburb, Hialeah is anything but. It more closely resembles a ghetto that has been trying it's best to rebuild itself into a nice place for years and years, but it never reaches "nice" status. It just remains half done- as if it's stuck in some sort of limbo where
completion is not possible. Even though Hialeah is what it is, apartments and homes are EXTREMELY overpriced. A crappy, run down house with one bedroom, one bathroom and practically no backyard can cost over $300,000. Why? Nobody has any idea.
Anyway, we mentioned our desire for a place of our own to a good friend of mine, whose aunt and uncle own several properties. She told me that her aunt had a small, cozy apartment that was to be up for grabs soon and that she would speak to her aunt about arranging a viewing. We had nothing to lose, so we agreed to take a look at it. The tenants at the time were around our age, but they were uneducated and disgusting. The apartment was pretty much hidden under a layer of filth... BUT it was
cheap- cheaper than any other apartment anywhere in the entire city.
At that point, I could have cared less if part of the roof was missing. We were going to be able to afford our own place! We said yes and waited about a week for the tenants to move out. Actually, the tenants, who owed three months of rent, fled in the middle of the night with their very few possessions.
Armed with buckets, brooms, mops, gloves, every cleaning product ever invented, scrub brushes and garbage bags, we went in there the next day to clean and paint. I wish I could say that I have never been so horrified over the state of a place before, but I'd be lying if I did (a couple of people I know are absolute pigs). The apartment was DISGUSTING with a capital "D." We found enough used Q-Tips to fill a shoebox; the blue bath tub was black and brown (a sign that it hadn't been scrubbed
in months); the white-tiled floors were black; we found mud BEHIND the stove, along with ancient food particles; I uncovered a wad of chewed gum stuck to the top of one of the kitchen cabinets; there was tomato sauce splattered over the top of the fridge; the door handles of the refridgerator were green and yellow (the fridge is supposed to be white); the door of the livingroom closet had been ripped off; several
of the light fixtures had been smashed.; the bathroom's once white walls were white no longer (it looked more like a rainbow of filth); I found a glop of cheese dangling underneath one of the cabinets. God only knows how long it had been there, because it was PETRIFIED. I actually considered bringing in a hammer and chisel after the scrub brush failed to remove it. There were also enough cobwebs and spiders lurking everywhere to start an arachnid farm. Bring the kids!
The level of filth had surpassed awful and had careened straight into the level known as "Either sandblast the sucker now or bring out the nuclear weaponry!" We had to use an entire bottle of Easy off on the oven and almost choked to death in the process from the fumes.
I think I cursed every second of the clean up. We were all just so shocked at how gross some people can be. How about you? Have you ever encountered someone so disgusting, you nearly gagged?
