Meet Our Landlord, Eric

Disclaimer: This entire post serves the purpose of making fun of our landlord. Let it be known that he is a very nice person, and this is all meant in a harmless sort of way with the purpose of making you smile. Now here is what I really think:

Our Landlord just came by to pick up February's rent. Today is February 20th. He is 20 days late. You see, he comes by every month to get rent from us so that he can check up on the house. Its kind of like having an RA, except RA's tell you what day to expect a room check. This guy is liable to pop over any time between the 25th-5th. That abouts 10 days worth of dreading his visit. And it is ALWAYS (with the exception of today) early in the morning. We so dread to hear his very unsubtle knock on the door that sends our dogs from fast asleep into a barking frenzy. This is the most miserable way to be woken up...startled out of sleep by someone banging on the door, followed by barking that makes your ear drums burst, and at last the realization that Eric is here. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't insist on coming in an "looking around" every time. Its not that we have anything to hide. It's just that we can't stand him. Luckily I was home alone today because when it is just me here he stays outside.

So I am just relaxing on the couch when I hear the banging followed by the barking. I then have to wrestle the dogs into their room before I can open the door, otherwise we would be on the news: "Pit Bull and Boxer Maul Landlord." I can just hear our red neck neighbors being interviewed. "It were crazy, ya know, them dawgs jus came a runnin out her and jus chewed em to paces."

Once the dogs are secured I open the door and step outside. I hand him the cash and wait for the receipt, hoping to avoid any conversation past "Hey, how ya doin?" I don't even know why I would entertain the thought of this being quick and painless. Of course he is going to want to chat, he always does. It's not that I don't like talking to people...I love socializing! It's just that, we have friends and family that we love...we don't feel the need to be friends with our landlord. Call us rude if you want, but you should meet him before you pass judgement. Anyway, while he is making small talk ("your dogs sure love me har har har") a car with two men in it drives by and parks at one of the other duplexes. Eric looks at me with a knowing sort of grin and says "Thats Jim and Dave. They are, uh, real sweet guys." I didn't catch on at first to what he was suggesting. So I said "Oh thats nice. I haven't ever met them." To which he replies "They probably come out of the house alot...wait a minute no they don't!" Then he laughs, and hits me in the arm with his receipt book. When he is walking off he yells "Hey have you met my daughter, Sammy." Yes Eric, I have. You introduce us to her every month when you come to get rent. Sometimes, you even bring her in our living room and make us bring the dogs out so she can pet them. We've met.

When I go inside the house, I think back on our conversation. I finally figure out that he was trying to clue me in to the fact that our neighbors are gay. Thats when I got his joke, about them staying inside all of the time. Good one, Eric.

Thats pretty much where the story ends. It wasn't too exciting, but I never said it would be. Just another day in the life of a young married couple. Oh, while I was writing this post, I saw a mouse poke its head out of the eye of my stove. I threw my remote control at it...now the remote control and batteries are scattered around the kitchen...they will probably stay there until Brennan gets home in 7 hours because there is no way I am walking over there knowing a mouse in waiting to pop out of the stove and look at me. Luckily I will be watching HGTV until then anyway, so there wont be a need to change the channel.

Sorry to inconvenience you...

So last night on the way home from the gym Brennan and I decided to get some Wendy's. I don't love Wendy's, and neither does he, but unfortunately its right by our house. Every time we go there, and when I say every time I mean it literally, we receive the poorest service you can imagine. I mean, they treat us like we drove up to the window at their home and asked them to whip us up some burgers right in the middle of their favorite TV show. But no, we are coming to them at the restaurant they are being PAID to work at. It's their job to serve us, for goodness sake!

The story is pretty much the same each time we visit, but last night was one of our most frustrating Wendy's experience to date. We pull up to the drive thru at about 10:30pm, which isn't even that late, and sit at the ordering screen for about 5 minutes. We watch the person up ahead of us get their food at the window, and get excited when they drive off because we figure now its our turn. We assume the girl is going to walk from the window to the headset, pick it up, greet us, and take our order. But no, she looks at us, and the two cars behind us, and disappears. So we wait, lets say another 5 minutes (an eternity in drive thru time) before Brennan really starts to loose it. As an assistant manager at Zaxby's he just cant understand how the people at Wendy's thinks its ok to ignore customers in waiting to order. So with me in the passenger seat saying "it's fine babe, lets just go somewhere else" he becomes even more determined to place an order and be served food from Wendy's. This Wendy's. Right now. So he pulls up to the window, lets the person standing there get a good look at us, and then starts to back up to the ordering screen again. But wait, the car behind us has already taken our spot. SO we drive around the restaurant to get back at the end of the line. This is when I strongly suggest we just go somewhere else. But Brennan was in the drivers seat, and we were going to eat at Wendy's no matter how long it took. I don't understand his logic, because we didn't even let them have it when they finally waited on us. Anyway, when we are pulling around to get back in line we see the manager get out of her car and walk back into the store. Based on what she was holding, we were guessing she left work to make a quick cigarette run. When it is finally our turn to order we ask for a number one with a coke and a plain baked potato, extra butter and sour cream. We always ask for extra, but thats mainly to make sure we get any at all. If the extra makes it in the bag we consider it a bonus.

When we pull up to the window, the girl opens it up and says "six thirty six". These are the only words she spoke to us. No "thank you", no "have a good night". Nothing, just the total. Then she hands us our food and shuts the window before Brennan gets the chance to ask for ketchup. So we sit there, he waves her down, and she comes back over, flings open the window and asks "yeah?" Brennan, politely as possible, asks "I'm sorry, could I please get some ketchup. Sorry." She doesn't answer, but instead grabs some ketchup, practically throws it at us, and slams the window shut again. This is the end. We drive home in disbelief at the service of Wendy's and when we finally sit down to eat our meal that has now taken 30 minutes to get, everything in the bag is cold. Of course. As frustrating as this all was, don't think that we wont go back there tomorrow. Why? Because its right by our house.

Side note: I told Brennan that I started a blog for us. He says "Blogging is weird. People put too much stuff on the internet." Then I read it to him and he thought is was really funny, so he is on board.

Brennan and Alexandria Roy

Hello! We are Brennan and Alexandria Roy...well, I am Alexandria Roy and Brennan is my husband who, as of now, doesn't even know this blog exists. He is 23 years old, but his technology age is more like 75. And these days I know plenty of 75 year olds who are way more tech-savvy then him. Anyway, he doesn't really get facebook, and thinks we should just delete his page and create on shared page because "why do married people need seperate facebook pages anyway"...like i said, he doesn't get it. SO I got the idea to create a blog to keep our family and friends updated on our lives instead of giving up our individual facebook pages.

We got married on August 8th 2009 and we currently reside in Cleveland, TN. I graduated from Lee University in December with a degree in Communications. Brennan is taking a little time off from school this semester, but will be starting back in the summer/fall and should be done within a year. Once he graduates we could really end up anywhere! We have no specific plans for the future as of now other than getting real jobs and settling down somewhere- this sounds like something that would be depressing, but we embrace it!

Brennan is a manager at Zaxby's and I am a Nanny. Clearly, these are not our forever jobs, but we are thankful to Jesus for blessing us with jobs that take great care of us during this transition time in our lives! We rent a cute little apartment in Cleveland...FALSE. We rent an apartment in Cleveland which we have decorated to look cute, but underneath all of our nice things is a very old dingy place that we can't wait to get out of. We were so excited about getting our first place that we pretty much rented the first apartment we looked at. I am guessing the landlord picked up on how eager and stupid we were because when we asked very nicely if it could be painted he said "No, thats the reason this place is so cheap, I can't paint and all that between tenants" (spoken in a red neck voice). To which we said "Aw thats nice, he wants to keep the price down for young people like us!" Come to find out, this place costs about the same as any other place its size in Cleveland and most other places are cleaned and painted between tenants. But thats ok, because us newlyweds didn't notice we were being taken advantage because we were just happy to be living together! We really don't even mind the mice! (previous sentence layered thick with saracasm)

In all honesty, this place has been our home (brennan's since april 09 and mine since august) and we will forever cherish all of the wonderful memories made here. After all, it was our first place as a married couple, and that is something that will always be special to us!

In this debut post describing our lives I can't leave out our children, Major and Karma. Major is a 4 year old boxer who we love more than anything in the world. Brennan bought him our freshman year of college...we can't imagine our lives without that precious dog! He is a little slow, but cute as can be. Karma is our Pitt Bull. Brennan loves karma so much! He loves to play with her and spend time with her. He would not be able to live without her! Karma and I have a complicated relationship...maybe one day I will learn to love her. Or not, whatever.

That is our life in a nutshell! Check back for more exiting updates! We (I) love you all very much!!