KURWA!

So here I am, sitting at my computer, chatting about baseball online, and there's a knock at my door. I open it, and it's my 86-year-old Polish upstairs neighbor Halina. Halina lives alone, and I'm not quite sure how she pays her rent, but I suspect she sells drugs of some sort, be they pharmaceutical or otherwise. Anyway, Halina's first line to me is, "Do you have a knife?" I look at her puzzled, and she explains to me in her best English (which isn't very good) that she has locked herself out of her apartment. Without waiting for a response, she walks into my apartment (which she's never been in before) and heads to the kitchen, where she grabs a paring knife, a screwdriver, and a corkscrew. "Can you help?" she asks. I shrug, always up for adventure, and follow her to her place, where she proceeds to ruin the paring knife, screwdriver and corkscrew trying to pick her lock and somehow jimmy open her door.

After about 15 minutes of swearing in English and Polish she suggests we go around back, where there are four windows, including one on the back door. she ruins yet another lock, while continuing to ruin the implements she has borrowed from me, while I just stand there trying not to laugh. She keeps saying, "You try! Could you try?" I tell her I will not be responsible for destruction of her property, but these words don't translate well.

After about 15 more minutes, I tell Halina that I need to go get ready for work, and to call the police. Oh, by the way, the landlord is out of town, and I don't have an emergency number to call a maintenance guy or something. Anyway, I leave her standing at her back door, looking utterly helpless.

About five minutes later, she knocks on my door one last time. To ask for a hammer. "Follow me," she says, and I'm kind of wondering whether she intends to brain me for not being able to break into her apartment.

We go upstairs, and I get the rare pleasure of watching an 86-year-old Polish woman break her own window and get showered in glass.

It was awesome.

Adventures in Apartment Living

One day a young couple stumbles upon a big, beautiful, charming old apartment in a nice neighborhood. There are some slight blemishes, but it's a steal for the price. Thinking they've pulled off the ultimate rental coup, the couple signs the lease then and there.

The moment they move into the apartment, it falls apart. Starting with the constantly dripping bath faucet, to the absence of a shower head, to the clogged tub; graduating to the toilet leaking through to the neighbors down below, then not even working at all. Then there is the washing machine that floods the basement with every use, and might be the source of the frequent stinky backwash in the kitchen sink. And last but not least is the cranky old furnace that heads to kaputzville for the winter.

Finally, one sleepy Sunday morning a stranger appears at their door. He informs our troubled twosome that their dream home has gone into foreclosure because their unseen landlord has not been paying his bills. Might it be time to consider a new place to live, and an attorney.

Defeated, the couple retreats to their beloved abode, accepting their fate. Then the front door lock freezes shut and a water pipe bursts in the basement.

While I wish this was a synopsis for the remake of 'The Money Pit,' it is, in fact, my life.