Halloween on Allied Drive vs. State Street

I found Halloween to be unbelievably quiet out here - I remember it was like that last year too. There were a few costumes here and there, not a lot of people out on the streets, and all around, the aura was not consistent with children's frenzy and excitement. It was fine for me because I was not all that up for going out or dressing up this year anyway. An interesting conversation I had with a neighbor who was going out to State Street for the first time ever, revealed that she was actually scared to go out to State Street. She said that she is petite, and she has heard it was crazy out there and she just does not know about the whole plan. Ironic, because I hear that all the time about people being scared to come out to Allied Drive.

Last holiday season, I was was selling really heavy on eBay where all my spare time in November and December involved making my share of 4th quarter retail profits. During those two months, it made sense to hire someone to do some light housekeeping for eight weeks, once a week for one or two hours. Would you believe that I had three different businesses tell me no, they will not come out here? One of them I remember after telling them my address starting asking me a LOT of personal questions about my living situation, why I need a maid, and I was thinking, aren't I the one that is doing the hiring and supposed to be the one asking the questions? One of them said they needed a deposit because of the "risk" involved in cleaning my house, and since I was an eBay pimp that month, I had the cash flow, so I agreed, maybe a little too fast because he called me back to tell me he can't do it because of some other lame reason. Then there was one woman who had an ad in the State Journal classifieds who finally said she would do it for $14 an hour and a two hour minimum. Fine. eBay was consuming all my time and the two extra hours to help me sustain all my other responsibilities would have helped me not kill myself from sleep deprivation.

The day she was supposed to come out, she called early in the morning to ask me if my apartment building is safe. She said her boyfriend told her Allied Drive was a bad neighborhood, so she wanted to make sure. I told her that I have never had a problem here. Then she asked me how dirty my place was. "I mean, is it really grungy?" Ok, now I was getting irritated, but I maintained my composure and said, no, not really. She said her boyfriend was going to come with because she just did not feel safe. Again, I am a little irritated because I really was not wanting all these people in my house snooping around and lifting my valuable eBay secrets. So she comes out, I hear a knock on the door, by the time I get to the door, I see a woman practically running out to the parking lot. The naive part of me thought, oh, maybe she forgot something and she's coming back. About 15 minutes later, the phone rings, and it was her. She said she can't come out here. She was here and she just did not feel comfortable. There was a car in our lot with a broken window and she could not afford to allow her things to be stolen. You know, whatever.

Let me tell you about things getting stolen from here. I had accidentally dropped a Visa gift card that fell out of my lap while I was getting out of my car in the parking lot. The next day, one of my Latino neighbors approached me and gave me the card saying they found it next to my car. Now this was a gift card that anyone could have just used without getting in any kind of trouble. I thought the card was lost and I really didn't care because it only had about $8 left on it, so it was no big loss. However the card was returned to me by one of my neighbors who saw it next to my car and assumed it was mine. I really didn't want to hear about this lady thinking that everyone on Allied Drive was out to steal the junk in her run-down car.

Anyway, back to this lady who looked so raggedy herself, I really don't know if she could've cleaned all that well anyway. First of all, if she would have taken the time to really look at what was in my parking lot, instead of just seeing what she wanted to see, she would have noticed a lot of really nice pimped out rides. I have a lot of Latino neighbors who work on their cars all summer and you can tell that they really love their cars - and they hook their cars up - there are some really sweet rides in our lot! We had a memo from Meyer Management telling us that we can only have a certain number of cars parked in the lot, likely because some of the cars that my neighbors work on are extra cars over and above what we are allowed to park. She said she was scared, what was she really scared of?

I don't know - it is probably the same thing that my neighbor heading out to State Street was scared of ...