When the City Stops By

I had an interesting thing happen on Sunday. Around 11am, a man from the city's housing authority stopped by to inspect my bathroom ceiling. I had called the City on Thursday to let them know that my landlord has yet to fix my ceiling (part of which collapsed over 3 months ago).

You can probably imagine my surprise, when I opened the door. "You all work on Sundays?" I asked. "Yup, sure do. With a city this large, we work every day of the week," he responded.

As he walked through the door, I apologized for the mess in my apartment. I hadn't washed the dishes from my morning breakfast, my rug needed vacuuming and I haven't washed the stain off my bathroom shower curtain, the stain that is caused by the leaking water from the hole in my ceiling. He laughed. "Why are you laughing," I asked. He said, "This is the cleanest apartment I think I have ever seen," he said.

He went on to say that he inspects a lot of housing complaints. He said that often he finds trash scattered throughout the apartment, boxes of junk all over the place, and usually there is a stench that makes him nautious. He told me that not only did he find my apartment very clean and orderly but that he liked what I had done with the place.

The man was in his late 50s to early 60s, probably not born in the US because of his thick accent (I couldn't place it).

Needless to say, I was flattered. And, after he left, I began to worry that perhaps I stress too much over the little things. Still, I need to vacuum my rugs. I can't have that go undone.