Soap Opera

Because I have never been able to fully dissuade myself from the belief that the sun and stars revolve around me, I have frequently been dismayed to think I may actually, like Jim Carrey in the movie "The Truman Show", be the star of some cosmic bad soap opera, but without the hunks. Everything that happens in my life, because it happens to me, is far more profound and significant than what happens to anyone else. (Your entire family was just wiped out by an axe murderer? You've been diagnosed with terminal Jungle Rot? Lava from an erupting volcano is within three feet of your front door? Sorry to hear it. But you think you've got problems? Let me tell you what happened to ME today....)

I live in a rent-subsidized building owned by the Chicago Housing Authority, which owns a hundred or more similar buildings throughout the city. While the city owns the buildings and sets the rules and regulations for occupancy which apply to all its properties, the actual day-to-day running of the individual buildings is farmed out to several different management companies.

I like the building I'm in. It is convenient to just about anywhere in the city, thanks to the Diversey elevated station half a block away. The thing I do not like about it is that the Diversey elevated station is half a block away, and elevated trains therefore roar within 500 feet of my window every three to five minutes, 24 hours a day. I don't know if they have ever measured decibel levels in my apartment while the trains are passing, but I would think they would be comparable to being located halfway down the in-use runway at O'Hare International Airport.

After three years, I don't even consciously hear the trains, unless I happen to be trying to watch TV with the windows open...or closed. I've become quite adept at lip-reading. But I am quite sure that the noise, even if unnoticed, cannot help but be deleterious to a really good night's sleep.

Recently, a CHA facility less than a mile from my current building, and only four blocks from Lake Michigan, reopened after having been closed for three years for a total renovation. Many of its residents were transferred to my current building when their building closed, and as soon as it reopened, they began moving the former residents back. I put in an application for transfer.

Bureaucracies are of course carefully designed to quadruple the amount of time one would consider the maximum anywhere else. The situation was compounded when my current building switched management companies and fired the entire staff that had worked here for umpteen years. So I waited. And I waited, checking every now and then on the progress of my application. They of course had never heard of me or my application for transfer at the new building, but I persevered, and things finally began to move. A week ago this past Saturday I had someone from the new building come over to "inspect" my living conditions. The fact that both buildings are owned by the CHA and run under exactly the same rules and regulations (which I believe prohibit keeping more than six farm animals in any one-bedroom apartment) meant nothing, since the management companies for the two buildings are different, and therefore each is its own mini-bureaucracy within the larger bureaucracy of the CHA.

But all, finally, seemed to be moving ahead. Then last week I heard rumors that this building has been placed "in quarantine" due to a serious cockroach and bedbug problem. Now, when I moved in here three years ago, cockroaches were indeed a problem, as they are in nearly every large apartment building in any large city. However, thanks to the diligent efforts of the health department, I have not seen a single cockroach in well over a year. And a year and a half ago, there was indeed a bedbug infestation which was not only embarrassing but involved an incredible amount of inconvenience in the process of eliminating them. But it has been over six months since I've heard of the problem.

Nonetheless, I was informed the new building would accept no further transfers until the quarantine was listed. When this might be or who might be doing the lifting was unspecified. Today I went over to the new building to see if this was indeed the case, and was told it was. The fact that they had already accepted several transfers of residents from this supposedly cockroach and bedbug infested hellhole before the new management company took over (and who assumedly brought all their bedbugs and cockroaches with them) of course meant nothing.

How long the "quarantine" will be in effect, I have no idea. But I will be willing to wager a kidney that the lifting of the quarantine will be timed to the very day when the new building has rented out its last apartment.

For thus are The Days of My Life.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.