Alright, so a few weeks ago we were taking out the trash and this one old guy who's been destroying the other apartments around us said that our landlord wanted to replace our back window. Actually, as he said this, he pointed to a window that was leaning against the end of the building - oh, so you were already PLANNING on doing it without our knowledge. Great. Brian ran into the landlord a couple of weeks back and gave him our phone number (which he asks for EVERY time we see him...) so that he could call and let us know what was up with the replacement of the window. In the meantime, the apartment next to us has appeared to be empty, with the guy (did I mention that he's pretty old?) dragging huge sheets of drywall up our rickety back stairs (yeah, the ones that they ended up tearing out without telling us) by himself. The apartment's back door has been wide open so I've seen what they've done to it - they gutted the "porch" room, replaced the windows, and put up new drywall. Plus, they've been hammering in there for weeks, at times SO violently that I expected to see a hammer attached to an arm come busting through our hallway wall.
Anyway, with our August rent check I sent a note that said, "We hear murmurings (exact word I used) of your intentions of replacing our back window. We are on board for this, but we have questions about the amount of time it will take and the potential mess it could cause. Please call us to discuss your intentions with this project. Here's our phone number..." We never heard from him - no call whatsoever.
Cut to Tuesday at 5:30pm: the old guy knocks on our back door and says they want to start working on the back porch tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. With only 14 hours notice? Nope. Don't think so. We try to convey to the guy (did I mention that both the old guy and our landlord only speak Spanish?) that that won't work for us and they really shouldn't come until Thursday morning (today) at the earliest. Well, this morning he knocked on the door, and then proceeded to knock down the walls of our enclosed porch. Did I mention that the porch on the back of our THIRD FLOOR apartment, which is connected to our kitchen by only a DOOR FRAME (there is no door), now has NO WALLS? I also asked the guy (or, again, tried to convey to the guy) that I would like a piece of plastic put up in the door frame between the porch and the kitchen so that (a.) it isn't exposed to the OUTDOORS, and (b.) so that debris (of which there is A LOT already) wouldn't get on all or our appliances and in our food. Apparently my hand signals need some working on because I see no plastic. Oh, and he has left our back door (off of the kitchen) WIDE OPEN. He just came back an hour ago, after having been gone for a couple of hours, and he had left the back door open the entire time. This morning, while Brian was getting himself some breakfast before rushing off to a temp job, he said to me, "Be sure and wear some shoes when you go into kitchen because the old guy was violently ripping a board off the wall and it flew back and broke a pane of glass in one of the windows." Sure enough, when I went back to the kitchen a few hours later (yes, when the guy was gone for a couple of hours and had left the back door WIDE open), there was STILL glass on the floor. All of those tools and no broom and dustpan?
My MAJOR concern (yeah, there's more) is for the cats. Sam is alright - I kind of figured that he would be so traumatized that he would just hide under the bed all day. Macon, however... Oh, sweet Macon. It's a miracle that curiosity has not yet killed this cat. Just yesterday when I went to take out the trash (we had to completely empty out the back porch - it was kind of like the beginning of "Changing Rooms" and "Trading Spaces" where they say, "Let's unload the room and get started!"), I opened our back door and, too late, noticed that the back door to the next door apartment was wide open. Flash of white fur, and I'm crawling over drywall and 2x4s in this empty (?) apartment looking for Macon. The solution? Well, right now, I pushed one of our bookcases into the doorway that leads back to the kitchen. That way, this guy can LEAVE THE BACK DOOR open while he works. I guess we'll just have to push the bookcase in front of the doorway to the backporch every night until he's done working on it - which, I'm afraid, could take awhile. Heck, he started working on ours while the one next door is WAY unfinished.

Ok. I'm a bit freaked. Richard just called from New York to see if we had power. I turned on CNN to find that NEW YORK CITY, DETROIT, CLEVELAND, TORONTO, ETC. ARE ALL COMPLETELY WITHOUT POWER. I'm going to start crying...