Geisha School Dropout

The Worst Apartment in San Francisco

San Francisco is full of crappy places to call home, but Tim and I were lucky enough to live in the worst.  It wasn't a crack den or in the projects, but if I can do it any justice with my feeble writing skills, by the end of my tale you will see that it was much, much worse than a crack den.  It was such a dark, depressing time of our life, we didn't even take any pictures.

I was working in downtown San Francisco at the time, and Tim was about to start a job in Palo Alto.  We decided to move from Oakland to SF so Tim wouldn't have a bridge commute.  We also thought we were were financially comfortable enough to rent a house, and found a Craigslist ad for one in the Portola District, a 10 minute bus ride away from the Glen Park BART station.  The street name was Bacon, which we took to be a good sign.

It turned out that the house was the first 2 stories of a 3-level building similar to the ones pictured above, with space in the garage for 1 car and half of the backyard.  The interior was beautifully decorated and obviously remodeled with love.  It was way too much space for us (this place was 2600 s.f. and we were moving from an 1100 s.f. apartment), but we figured we could use the entire bottom floor as a play area for Isaac (who was 2 at the time) and Riley.

The owner of the house was a young and hip Chinese chick who made a ton of money as a salesperson for some huge telecom company, and she claimed although she loved the house and had a good relationship with her upstairs neighbors, she wanted to live in a hipper neighborhood and had the money to keep this one while she lived it up in some loft somewhere.  She seemed really laid-back and flexible, so we decided to rent the place right then and there.

We soon learned the real situation.  The upstairs neighbors, a strange Filipino couple named Luz and Allen, were an obvious marriage of convenience (they were of much different ages and openly despised each other).  Plus, they were absolutely nuts.  Our landlord warned them that we had a young son and a big dog and they claimed they were okay with that.  We also made sure that Riley was able to poop and pee on the wood chips in our part of the backyard, and they were okay with that, too.  But once we moved in, almost every time we walked Riley back there (on leash of course, out of respect), Luz or Allen would be there, keeping an eye on things, making sure we didn't enter their part of the yard, that we picked up after ourselves appropriately, and even would replace the 2 pieces of wood chip that got picked up along with some poop (keep in mind that even though they were adamant that we not touch anything of theirs, they had no problem doing things like this on our stuff).  Allen was retired, so he had nothing but time to stalk us like this.  Every time we would open the door to go down the shared stairwell, he would open his door to make sure we turned off the hallway light.  We forgot once and Luz taped an extremely angry letter to our door saying "You AGREED to turn of the lights EVERY TIME.  You are WASTING MONEY!!!!!!!"  We responded by re-attaching the letter to their door with a $20 bill taped to it.  They responded back by re-attaching the letter to our door, but kept the money.

Luz and Allen were also anal about the garage.  They would hang a futon pad on the outside of their car doors to keep away any dings we may give them.  They would hire this poor contractor every couple weeks to repaint their cabinet doors white, standing right behind him while he worked to make sure he didn't cut any corners.  Then they would inevitably find something wrong and refuse to pay him, telling him to fix his "mistakes" in a couple weeks.

When we asked a few friends over to have dinner to celebrate our new home, the get-together would be punctuated by occasional bangs on the floor.  We were seriously just having dinner, no music was playing, just conversation amongst 8 people, including children.  But the banging would keep coming, and our puzzled guests left with uncomfortable looks of sympathy on their faces at around 9 pm.  Meanwhile, there was a huge party going on across the street, complete with drunken fistfights and house music blaring like a nightclub.  So when the police knocked on our door around midnight with a noise complaint, we figured it was because of that party. 

"Ma'am, we got a disturbance of the peace call."

I was in my pajamas.  "Oh, you must be talking about the party across the street?  It wasn't that bad actually."

"Um, actually, the caller gave us this address specifically, unit #1."

"Really???  We just had a few friends over for dinner, and they've been gone for a while.  Our upstairs neighbors probably called, they didn't like the noise and were banging on our ceiling until our guests left."

The SF policewoman looked really, really annoyed and asked if she could enter so she can tell off Luz and Allen herself.  Allen excitedly opened his door when the policewoman knocked, and started railing about how loud we were.  But the cop sternly told him that he was completely in the wrong, he just wasted everyone's time, and she had her eye on him, and if she received any more frivolous calls she would take action against him.  Oh, it was awesome.

Another day, we had a friend stay over from Vancouver with her 2-year-old daughter.  The sound of 2 kids running around laughing during the middle of the day on a Saturday was enough for Luz and Allen to slam what sounded like 50-pound weights down on their floor, over and over again until our friend's little girl started crying, then they pounded on the floor to express their displeasure at the crying.  Needless to say, our friends looked for other lodging.

Over the course of a few weeks, Riley started acting strangely.  He no longer wanted to go out back to pee and would instead have accidents for the first time in his life downstairs.  Things got so bad that we eventually laid down several layers of industrial-strength vinyl under some newspaper so he could go potty that way because he would just cower at the door frame and shake.  We wondered what was going on while we were at work, but couldn't do much about it.  Then one day I had to call in sick and saw Allen climb down the emergency ladder into our patio.  He started screaming at Riley and shaking this noisemaker device.  Riley cowered in the corner furthest away from the patio door.  As I approached him, Allen turned pale and scurried back up the ladder yelling "Keep that damn dog away from me!"

Things deteriorated quickly after that.  They called our landlord repeatedly complaining about the dog smell and the mess we were making in the backyard.  She would then come over and look around and see that none of their claims were true, apologizing each time, saying that Luz and Allen were annoying but ultimately harmless.

Then came the harm.  I was dragging Riley into the backyard before leaving for work when suddenly I heard from the upstairs deck, "Goddamn motherfucker!!!"  I looked up to see Allen, and then he sprayed me with his garden hose.  Riley cowered and immediately ran back into the house, and I knew this wasn't the first time Allen terrorized him with the hose.  I ran back inside as well, dripping wet, and told Tim what happened.  Tim was enraged, and opened the front door to see Allen sheepishly scurrying down the stairwell to escape.  Then a shouting match occurred, where Allen claimed he did nothing, that I was a liar, he didn't know what I was talking about, and that actually he was aiming for the dog.  Idiot.

We called our landlord and told her we were moving out and she let us go without any argument.  We were out of there within a week to some ghetto house in south Hayward.  A few days after we moved, we got a letter of apology and our original deposit check back.  A few days after that, we got an email from her that she found another renter: a good friend of hers, in fact.  And with a smirky emoticon, she oh-so-casually mentioned that he was a single dad...with a very large German Shepherd...and was black.  And Luz and Allen haven't made a peep.  Apparently he scared them into silence.  What a punchline!

Actually, the even funnier punchline was that we paid $2500 a month for the privilege of living with these lunatics.  Looking back, I can't believe we survived it.

Goodbye, Friend

Riley-boo Mang, 7/4/2002 - 5/7/2009

Oh, Riley.  You were the cutest damn puppy I had ever seen.  You were literally dropped into my arms that August day when we were in East Palo Alto, recruiting students to Tim's new charter school.  Mr. Rodney, fresh out of jail, told me he was going to drown you because you were the runt.  When I protested, he lifted you up by the scruff and threw you at me.  When my arms caught you, it was love at first sight.  You had these long, clumsy legs and humongous feet, and you were clearly a bit of a dim bulb, but you were a great kisser and snuggler.  You also came completely housetrained, which was remarkable.

You were also the most destructive dog I had ever seen.  Books, table legs, 5 pounds of Halloween chocolate, garbage cans, couch cushions, even the entire interior of my Civic fell victim to your jaws.  You could even destroy the indestructible Kongs.  But those jaws were so gentle with us and the kids.  Even with an entire roast chicken in your mouth, I was able to stick my hands inside to save our dinner from you.  Probably because you knew there'd be some pieces saved for you, but also because you loved people so much.  I have never met a dog so eager to please people.  You even almost got kidnapped one day while hanging out at Tim's school because you were so trusting.  Luckily the principal was there to stop them.

You transitioned from puppyhood to adulthood when I became pregnant with Isaac.  You stopped jumping up on me the day you sniffed my bellybutton and somehow knew there was something growing inside.  You followed me everywhere, making sure I was okay, taking naps with me, making sure no one messed with me.  And when the baby was born, you sniffed him up and down and then went back to your bed.  Both grandmas were so afraid that you were going to crush or kill the baby, but your bully toughness proved to be quite beneficial.  Both kids learned to crawl by crawling to you, learned to pull themselves up by pulling on your skin, learned to walk by chasing after you.  You were their furry snuggle toy as well as an extra couch cushion.  You let them do what they willed, and you felt no pain.

 

 

Then you got sick.  More than two years I injected you with insulin twice a day.  Then the heart disease.  You slept all day, waking only to eat, bark at the mailman, and sun yourself in the backyard.  But you would always open your eyes and wag your tail for me; I took that as a sign that the old Riley was still there.  Now I also know that you were keeping yourself alive for me, trying to stay helpful and upbeat, trying not to disappoint me with your mortality. 

When you had that huge seizure at 4 in the morning on May 6th, you were looking at me, you looked mortified.  I saw you struggle to come back, to regain control of your flailing legs.  I kept telling you that you were okay, that you were a good boy, that I was there.  You eventually stopped shaking, but you couldn't see me anymore and panicked.  You fell off the bed and ran to the kitchen, then you paced back and forth, bumping into everything, looking desperately for something but not finding it.  You weren't responding to my voice, you paced like that for an hour while my dad and the pet ambulance made their way to our house.  But even then, when you smelled my dad's hand in front of your nose, your tail wagged.

The emergency vet got you stable enough to see a little bit again, but I knew you had suffered enough.

Oh, Riley.  You greeted everyone at the vet's office with an enthusiastic tail wag the morning we put you to sleep.  I was almost afraid that we were putting you down too soon.  But the doctor saw your breathing was labored when there weren't any faces to kiss, and heard your tiny whimpers as you lay on the cool tile floor.  And you didn't get up to greet him and clobber him with kisses like you usually did.  I'm now glad that you were alert enough to recognize people and to know that you weren't alone.

I held your head and stroked your ears as the doctor injected a sedative into your IV.  You fell asleep quickly, your face relaxed, you were so peaceful.  Then the pink stuff went in and it was done.  There was no change in your face.  Riley, you gave me such an amazing gift that day.  You showed me that death is actually a small step to take, nothing to be afraid of, beautiful in its stillness.  My nose started bleeding then, and some drops fell on your head.  It caught me by surprise, but now I am happy that a small physical part of me will join you when you get cremated.

Now, I feel mostly relief.  I am so thankful that you are now without pain, that you no longer have to keep pushing your heart, your knees, your mind to their outer limits in order to stay with me.  I am finally ready let you go.  You were a good boy, Riley.  Thank you for the memories.

The Beginning of the End

Riley stopped eating on 12/29.  By the time New Year's Eve rolled around, he was having trouble breathing, cold to the touch, and vomiting.  In the early morning, he whined to go out and just flopped down on the frosty grass.  When I tried to coax him back inside, he instead headed into the garage and lay down on some old sheets.  Riley normally hates the cold, so that's how I knew something was really, really wrong.

When he got to the vet's office, we discovered he had lost 8 pounds these past few days, and his body temperature was 97.9, when it should be around 101-102.  Dr. Perrault, ran some blood tests and the test results were not too bad: his kidneys were working and things were not too discouraging.  But he also ran x-rays and Riley's intestines were all out of whack.  Maybe he swallowed something and it got stuck in his gut?

So off to the emergency vet we went for an ultrasound and possible surgery.  However, the ultrasound showed no foreign body in his gut, just severe inflammation and gas and nothing really moving around.  Riley might have eaten something heinous and just needed some help healing, or he was shutting down and dying.  It was 50-50 either way.

So three days passed with Riley in the hospital.  He wasn't drastically improving, but he did start to eat and poop again.  Further ultrasounds showed that his GI tract was healing, but they discovered a very weak heart in the process.  Apparently, normal hearts pump 40-50% of their volume of blood per beat; Riley's heart was pumping 9%.  This resulted in an unstable blood pressure and further uncertainty about his long-term viability.  We started him on heart meds and decided to wait and see.  If it took another 24 hours to see if there was hope for this dog, why not?

After the first 24 hours, the 9% went up to 10%, which is nothing in medical terms, but clinically he looked a lot better.  They asked for another 24 hours and another medication to see if Riley would further improve.  Those 24 hours will end in a couple hours.

I did visit him yesterday evening, and he did look much better.  They said most likely he'll come home today.  But even if he's the same or improved slightly, he still only has a few more months left with that crappy heart.

So this rascally mutt, my pal for 6.5 years, defies death yet again, although not unscathed.  But he is eating, he recognizes me, still gives me kisses, and can walk around and theoretically can still hog all the covers in the middle of the night.  And now I have been endowed with a new role and responsibility: to make sure my companion's last days are spent at home in comfort and love.  These past few days have been surprisingly hard to deal with, coming to terms with the loss of a loved one, even if most people would consider him "just a dog."  But oh, if I sat you down and told you all the stories, all the ways my life, and Tim's and the kids' lives, are entangled with Riley's life, you will begin to see, too.  When Riley's life ends, so will the first act of our family history.

This picture needs a caption

2008-09-18 iPhone 007, originally uploaded by Julie Kang.

This is Emily posing all Bette Davis-like with our neighborhood Hitler cat. And I'm not dogging on this cat's demeanor here. He has a mustache and an intense stare, and he keeps looking towards Poland, but he's friendly and puts up with Emily so I'm cool with him. Did you know that there is an actual website dedicated to cats that look like Hitler? Don't believe me? http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com beeyatch.

Anyway, this picture has such a weird juxtaposition, I feel like there's a LOLcat caption just waiting to be voiced. Alas, my LOLcat linguistic skillz are zilch.

Any suggestions? Winner will be sent weirdly-named-yet-delicious Japanese cookies!