Eviction take two…

You would think after being evicted from (one of) my New York apartments in 2006, I’d be super duper careful about, well. Paying my rent. To begin, I would like to defend myself- my New York eviction was not my fault. I wasn’t even in the country when it happened, thank you very much. Just because I happened to find the biggest goldmine in all of Manhattan (500 sq feet- two bedrooms, two flipping LIVING ROOMS, a bathroom, a kitchen… all for me, me me!!) and happened to (knowingly) illegally sublet it from a 92-year-old Puerto Rican woman who happened to have bought it when she went to Columbia (back in 1944… how grand) doesn’t mean that I should’ve been EVICTED. I mean, hello, it’s me! I was taking care of this palatial estate. Darn shady maintenance men who call out innocent (yet at the same time, illegal) tenants. Sigh.

Anyway. After seizing the moment and taking control of my personal administrative duties, I was so proud of myself for (finally) closing out my Wells Fargo account (after all, there is like one Wells Fargo in the Midwest, and that’s in who knows where Indiana). How was I supposed to remember to update my Autopay for my rental agreement, so that my rent would get automatically pulled from my current checking account rather than from my closed Wells Fargo checking account? Sigh. Okay. Fair enough. My fault. But I mean, my goodness! The hard copy letter I received from the accountant of my building. With a title like “Notice of Insufficient Funds” in big and bold as the heading, it can only go downhill from there. I believe the words “termination of lease” and “seize of property” were the key words that stuck out in my fearful mind. Really? How much scarier can you GET? And I only had five days to get the corrected payment to the accountant before said seizure of property would begin. And I got the notice on Friday night. Note how the letter conveniently left out the word “business” in calculating the five day timeline. Wtf, right? Right.

No worries, I immediately got on my Gmail to send a friendly little notice to the accountant indicating my deepest apologies for the inconvenience and letting him know that I would get the requisite cashier’s check from my bank on Saturday morning and mail it in ASAP. I mean, it never really hurts to develop that personal bond, right? Right.

So I get the cashier’s check and traipse along to my corner mailbox to mail that sucker OUT. Ugh. As SOON as it deposited itself nicely into the heart of the mailbox bin, I began to have second thoughts about it getting there in time. I mean, with all this darn talk about the pending blizzard, who KNOWS how long it would take the US Postal Service to navigate to Park Ridge, IL… a whole 20 miles away from my cozy apartment. Okay. So maybe I worry a little too much. And by “a little too much”, I do mean that I got a total of about 8 hours of sleep combined between Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights because I couldn’t stop thinking about this little fiasco. I mean, what if I was homeless by next week?! This is real LIFE, people.

So I decided to really seize the moment and hop on over to the bank this morning (Monday morning) to pull out yet ANOTHER cashier’s check and take it over to the post office to mail it EXPRESS so that it certainly would get there by tomorrow (Tuesday), by noon no less. Taking care of business if you will.

And no worries. I decided to send my pal, Al (that accountant), a friendly little email (again)indicating every action I had taken (including, but not limited to, taking a cashier’s check out on Saturday, mailing it in regular mail on Saturday, freaking out… okay so I professionalized the terminology just a tad, taking out another cashier’s check today, sending it express today… well. there’s the brief synopsis. I tried to make it nice and personable, if you will J). Poor Al. He probably had no idea what he was getting himself into when he stamped that email address on that “Notice of Insufficient Funds” letter.

No worries. All is good now. Al and I are BFF. And I have confirmed that I will no longer be homeless. Whew. Close CALL.