Michael Rossi's Landlording Blog

Many of you have been wondering why I haven't posted to my blog in the last week. I've been extremely busy this week with my family and have really debated whether I wanted to discuss what happened with my family this week on my blog.

When I last posted, I was about to leave on a 3 day camping weekend. We went to Deer Creek State Park this weekend and had a great time camping with friends from Church. We had a wonderful weekend and a great start to the week.

That suddenly changed Tuesday evening. My wife and I were sitting at home. I was watching some stupid movie and my wife was checking her e-mail. I made a comment about how stupid the movie was and my wife didn't respond. I glanced over at her and noticed that the laptop had slipped off her lap and was laying at an odd angle. She also had an odd look on her face. I asked her if everything was alright, and she responded in a slurred speech that she was 'having trouble thinking'. She stood up and it was immediately obvious that she was having trouble standing and balancing. As a former paramedic, the altered level of consicousness and difficulty speaking immediately made me think that she was having a stroke. She was trying to walk to the bathroom and I assisted her in doing so. As soon as we arrived at the bathroom, she began vomiting. I grabbed a trash bag and immediately put my wife in the car.

Within a few short minutes, we were at the hospital. My wife was still vomiting and could no longer walk. I found a wheelchair and rushed her to the emergency room. I told the triage nurse that I believed my wife was having a stroke and she immediately signed her in and cleared an ER bed for her. By this time, my wife could no longer talk and appeared to be quite confused. The staff immediately began to work on her, starting an IV; putting her on a heart monitor; starting oxygen; drawing blood; and checking her sugar level (which was normal). A couple of minutes later, an ER doctor came into the room and evaluated her. It had only been 25 minutes from my wife's first symptom occurring, but at this point she had lost the ability to speak and couldn't move her arms or legs. I was trying to think of what could cause paralysis in all four limbs (other than an injury) and the only thing I could think of was a stroke near the brain stem. The ER doctor immediately ordered a stroke protocol and they took her for a Cat Scan. The result of the Cat Scan was negative for bleeding in the brain, but the neurologist thought he saw something in the lower part of the back of the brain. He consulted with another neurologist at Riverside Hospital and decided that the only reasonable explanation was a blood clot in the lower part of her brain. He started TPA (a clot busting drug) and ordered a medical helicopter to transfer my wife to Riverside. Needless to say, this entire episode was very scary!

The helicopter flew my wife to Riverside and I began driving. By the time I arrived at the Riverside emergency room, my wife could talk and her level of consciousness had improved, although she still couldn't move her arms or legs. Over the next several hours, she slowly regained movement in all her extremities and over the next 18 hours, she basically returned to normal. The hospital performed 3 more cat scans; an MRI and numerous other tests. All the tests pointed to a stroke that had been repaired by the prompt application of TPA. She was in intensive care until Thursday, when she was released.

As the title of my post indicates, I believe that a miracle was certainly present in this incident. The sequence of events that led to a successful outcome was astounding. First, I was with my wife at the time of her stroke and immediately recognized what was happening. Next, the right people were on duty at our local hospital to rapidly evaluate my wife. The doctor that was on duty aggressively treated my wife with TPA even though her relative young age (40's) and complete paralysis were not a typical presentation for a stroke victim. If the neurologist had hesitated on the treatment to be 100% sure on the diagnosis, the outcome would likely have been quite different. TPA can only be administered within 3 hours of the initial onset of symtpoms. Moreover, the TPA (clot busting drug) worked perfectly and my wife regained complete movement. It was apparent from my interaction witht the hospital staff at Riverside that this is the exception as opposed to the rule. In fact, the ICU nurse said that she had only ever seen one other patient released directly from the ICU.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this incident, that lesson is to know the symptoms of a stroke and immediately get the victim to the hospital. My wife is living proof that rapid treatment can make all the difference! I am very thankful that my wife is back home and healthy!!!

After feeling guilty all week (or not) about not working, I did work about 2 hours yesterday. My project for the day was to repair a soft spot in a floor where the previous owner of the building had covered an old stairwell with some particle board that was too thin. Fortunately, there was access to the underneath side of the floor from the basement, so the repair was quite easy. While in town, I also showed an apartment to a couple who were....well.... LIARS! As it turned out, he was a violent criminal and she was a deadbeat who doesn't pay her bills. Application DENIED!

While I was home yesterday, I glanced at the computer, which had my security cameras up at the Pink Elephant and noticed that there were many people on the sidewalk all looking across the street. I knew that something was going on, so I called one of the tenants and asked what was happening. There was a fight occurring across the street and one person pulled a knife. Five or six people were involved in the fight (all young punks) and another person broke it up before anyone was stabbed. There was some blood from the fight, but no one was seriously injured. Fortunately, none of this occurred on my property (probably due to the criminals knowing about my security cameras). I'm seeing a major increase in violence this summer and am not sure what the cause is. It could be the lack of summer jobs for kids or it could just be a general deterioration of our society. Low income people are breeding at an alarming rate and it's inevitable that society will fall apart as all these lazy kids grow up feeling entitled. Most of these kids are growing up to be worse than their parents. They are lazy. They are criminals. They are on drugs. They have absolutely no intention of ever getting a job. It's a mess!

Since there is nothing I can do to correct the world's problems, I'm taking a 3 day weekend to go camping!!! Have a good weekend.

I took another day off today. I didn't really have anything pressing to do in the rental property business, so I did some things around the house and then went to the city to pick up a part for my wife's car. While in town, I went to 3 Walmarts and then the largest gunshop in the city looking for handgun ammo. All 3 Walmarts were out. The gunshop didn't have any self-defense ammo, but they did have some target ammo. I bought 3 boxes, which is the limit due to the ammo shortage. I'm trying to buy ammo because I need at least 750 rounds for the two trainings I'm going to - one in June and one in July.

It seems like it rains every single day anymore and today was no exception. However, today's rain occurred this morning and we had a break in the weather this evening. So, I got my mountain bike ride in, without incident!

I finally got the court date for my eviction and it is July 1st. The delay in getting the court date was because the court is so far behind due to the shear number of evictions in the area. Fortunately, I only have one eviction going this month!

That's about it for today. Tomorrow, I'm planning to do a little work and then I'll be taking a 3-day weekend to go camping.

I wish that I could give you an interesting update regarding my rental business, but I just haven't done much the last week or so. Late last week, I did work a couple of hours building shelves in my storage unit. I was off all weekend and then mowed grass for a couple hours yesterday. I took the entire day off today.

The rental business isn't 24 hour excitement. In fact, there can be relatively long periods of time when there really isn't much to do at all. I currently don't have any current maintenance to do. There are a few projects I could do (such as trimming some trees or doing some painting), but I don't have any pressing projects. So, instead of inventing work, I've just been taking a lot of time off.

The big excitement of the weekend all revolved around birds. I bought an "upside down finch feeder" which is a really cool cylindrical bird feeder that finches hang on upside down while they feed. I put it up late one evening and by the early the next morning, there were 3 finches hanging upside down feeding. It was absolutely amazing to me that these birds found this feeder so quickly.

I also bought a bird feeder, which sits on top of the pole from which the upside down finch feeder hangs. I sealed the feeder with spar varnish over the weekend and then installed it today. In no time, there were a bunch of birds feeding. Most interesting to me was the number of doves that decided to sit on the ground right under the bird feeder. They didn't seem to have any interest in feeding, just sitting on the ground. That was quite interesting to me.

My wife and I finally got the swimming pool open over the weekend and we had some relatives come to swim almost as quickly as we finished. The temperature has been averaging about 12 degrees below normal this spring (despite global warming), so the water was quite cool. We haven't run the pool heater yet, so they must have wanted to swim pretty badly to brave that cool water!

My wife and I went to the shooting range on Saturday and I got the chance to run some ammo through my new handgun. You could really tell that a LOT of new people have been buying guns, because the people on both sides of me had bullets all over their targets (and I'm sure many missed the targets). I wanted to buy some more self-defense ammo while we were out, but neither the range nor the gunshop we went to had what I wanted. Ammo is still in very short supply, thanks to the increased number of people buying guns and people concerned that Obama wants to take their guns and ammo. I went to Walmart and Dunham Sports tonight and neither of them had any .40 Smith and Wesson ammo either. If that's not a sign of the times, I don't know what is!

That's it - we're up to date.

I keep thinking I've seen it all in the rental property business. Then, I realized again today that I had not.

In yesterday's blog, I described how many low income tenants act crazy during the summer. When June arrives, so does STUPID! After an incident last evening, I decided to go to the police station today to pick up the recent police reports for two of my low income apartment buildings. I was pleased to find out that there have been VERY few incidents - only 5 in the past 2 months and most of those incidents didn't even involve my tenants. However, one of the reports illustrates what a freak show low income tenants can become when the weather warms up!

CAUTION: If you are easily offended, don't read the rest of this blog.

The following is the EXACT text from the police report: (these are two of my tenants) "Steven and Jessica were arguing with each other because Steven wanted Jessica to "perform oral sex on him" and she would not do it. Steven told Jessica he "would find someone that would do it", and Jessica got mad at him for saying that and they argued. Nothing physical, all verbal. Steven is legally blind so he called a friend to pick him up to leave for the night. All calm on Ofc departure".

comment: I didn't even know that having a girfriend (or wife) refuse sex was a criminal offense. I guess that men can now call 911 if their wife/girfriend says no!!! lol!

I don't know what else to say - UNBELIEVABLE!!! It's a freak show out there!!!

After eight months of not having an eviction, it looks like I'm not going to be so lucky this month. One of my tenants, who always pays a couple of days late (during the 3 day notice period), announced on the last day that she was moving. I explained to her that she still owed June rent and she wanted me to use her deposit as her last month's rent - which I absolutely will not do. I told her that if she didn't pay immediately, she would be evicted. She hasn't paid and she is being evicted.

Believe it or not, the attorney that I've used for my evictions these past 6 years was indicted by the grand jury on felony drug charges, so I now have a new attorney. My new attorney is a young lawyer who has very little court experience, but I think she'll be fine. I had a phone conversation with her this morning about the eviction and then took the paperwork to her this afternoon.

Once again, I didn't do any maintenance today. However, I did spend a couple of hours trying to make paperwork disappear (by paying bills, filing, etc).

This evening, the police were at the Pink Elephant for at least the 3rd time in the past few weeks. This is what happens when you have low income rentals and the weather gets hot. Tensions run high and trouble erupts. The same thing happens every year and in my experience, it takes a firm hand to get it stopped before problems set in for the entire summer. So, I drove down to the Pink Elephant to take care of business. I had the police legally bar 2 scumbag neighbors from the property (one is a convicted felon who is on parole) and the police are looking for another convicted felon (also on parole). These two guys were the same ones I wrote about a few months ago. The terms of their parole don't allow convicted felons to associate with each other, but their parole officer won't do anything about it. I will be talking to the police captain about the issue tomorrow and will try to exert some more political pressure to get the situation resolved. These criminals were on my property this evening visiting some of my tenants. I had a stern conversation with my tenants, letting them know that if they invited this scum onto my property again, their month-to-month leases would be terminated. They've seen me evict many other people and they know that I'm not bluffing!