Sooo, Liz and I have moved out of our apartment, and will be living in our friend Patty's spare bedroom for the next month, until our new lease starts. Sound like fun? Didn't think so.

Now for the story...

Last week, we had a new woman try to move in with us -- think short, stout, black, early 30s. She'd had the key for all of 12 hours when she started berating Liz and me about, well, basically everything, but mostly about the fact that we were filthy (there was one piece of carrot in the sink and a few crumbs on the stove). She screamed at us for 30 minutes ("How dare you call yourselves grown women?! You have more character flaws than anyone I've ever met!" etc etc etc) and literally wouldn't let us get a word in edgewise. We were stunned and angry, since we'd done absolutely NOTHING to cause this (we'd known her for 12 hours!) and so we went to the landlord, told him the story, and begged him to move her out, which he agreed to do (he likes us).

We stayed with friends until Sunday night, and then, when we went back to the apartment, we discovered that she had vandalized the place before she left -- stole our brand-new printer, broke a wineglass and left the shards around on the floor (including under our bedroom doors so we'd step on them), dumped detergent all over all the clothes in the laundry room, smeared jelly on the counters, left nasty notes everywhere ("Thank you for showing me that black women aren't the dirty ones or the only ones who come from single-parent homes. I know where my daddy is -- what about you, Liz?"), dumped Miracle-Gro all over, scrubbed bars of soap over the couches, took a framed collage of pictures down off the wall and tore through Liz's face (then reframed and rehung it), put toothpaste on my doorknob, clogged up the sink drain, left the doors open (front and balcony) so anyone could have waltzed right in, and, best of all, turned the refrigerator down to the lowest setting so that all the food spoiled.

We called the police and filed a report, just to cover our bases, and the landlord changed the locks right away, so she can't get in even if she did make a secret copy of the key. They're also reimbursing us for the printer, all the food, and for the hotel where they put us up before we found another place to live; they're also letting us out of our leases (and reimbursing us for most of the month of April), so it's all working out okay. It's just incredibly frustrating to have to deal with all this on top of the usual end-of-semester stuff. Grrrr.

Well, it's Friday the 13th, so hopefully that's not a bad omen... if this woman shows up again today wielding a machete, don't say I didn't warn you... ;)