Unexpected

 The weather is getting cool and Tim worried about our newest tenant. Her apartment is heated with a vented gas heater. We shut it down in the summer when it is serviced. When it gets cool outside, it can be relit and it is ready to go. It is thermostatically controlled like any furnace. 

Tenants seem to be nervous about lighting it, which surprised us a little, but Tim would obligingly walk down and demonstrate it for them once sgain.. The last tenant nervously messaged me about when we were going to turn the heat on. We were horrified. She had been shown how to do it, and we never even considered that she wouldn't. We had turned on our own heat a couple weeks earlier.

Now we live 1/2 hour out of town and Tim wanted to make sure the new tenant had the heat turned on. It has been getting into the 30s at night, and the mornings are frosty.

I messaged J but received no reply. Still, we stopped by on our way through. I rang the buzzer, but she didn't come to the door. 

The downstairs tenant was hooking his truck up to his trailer of lawn equipment. I greeted him cheerfully. 'Is J out, do you know?' 

His answer was short and curt. "I wouldn't know." Just the was he said it, I kind of got the idea that he was upset.

Now, understand that we have had problems with tenants getting along before. We had a real slyboots once.  She had been with us for several years. No matter who was in the other apartment, there were problems. She like to stake claim on the shared washer in the basement. She would put clothes in it over the course of a few days, and run it when she got around to it. When the other tenant came to use the washer it was always full of her not yet washed clothes. We fixed that by assigning days. Odd days the washer was reserved for the bottom apartment. Even days belonged to the upper apartment. Clothes not removed from the washer or dryer were allowed to be removed. 

The next tenant she complained about non-stop. To be fair, that girl was a partier, when her lease was up, we did not renew it. 

The third tenant, our longterm tenant just did stupid stuff. If she saw the tenant on the back deck, she'd throw handfuls of bird seed from her balcony 'for the squirrels' as the seed rained down on the tenant trying to enjoy her view. The hall light had a shared switch. When the downstairs tenant came home with her groceries after working her second shift job, the upstairs neighbor would switch off the hall light on her. There were other things. Lots of things. We gave her a three month notice, and were glad to see the backside of her.

Things have been pretty quiet ever since. We thought, anyway.

I said, "is there a problem?"

He said, "I'm not saying anything. I need a place to live." He was mad though.

I was a bit dumbfounded by that. "We would never just get rid of a tenant for that. We've always try to mediate."

I couldn't imagine what it could be. J is a quiet person, with a shaky voice. She has had a rough go of things and was so emotional hearing that she had the apartment, that it made us sure she was right for the building.

I said, "I am sure that we can work it out with her..."

He said, "So he wasn't honest with you at all, I see. I grew up with him and his family and..."

The change in pronouns made it clear to me. I said, "We know she's transgendered."

He threw up his hands in disgust. "I know his family and they are good people."

I said, "Listen. It doesn't matter. We did not ask her to pull down her pants before renting to her. We didn't ask you to either."

He snorted. J. opened her door at that moment. He said, "We will talk later."

I could not even imagine what was left that needed said. He got in his truck and drove off with his trailer. 

I guess what made this exchange so unexpected is that we knew him before he ever moved in. We know his family. I attended church with his grandma. His brother and sister in law were coworkers, as well as church friends. We knew him. I ushered in his nephew's wedding to his same sex partner. I watched him dancing at that wedding with his girlfriend, a gorgeous black woman with long flowing hair. It would never have occurred to us that he was one of those. 

Tim and I agonized over how to best handle it. I actually lay awake last night. My biggest fear was that there had already been words exchanged that might have J feeling as if her living situation might be at risk. 

This morning, I just bit the bullet and called her. I explained it very briefly. I had barely begun to speak when she said, "I know he doesn't like me. He has never said anything, but I can feel that. He knows my family."

I said, "Good. I honestly don't think he is going to say anything. I was just blindsided by the conversation. I just want you to know where we stand on it. You are a good tenant, and you never have to worry that this will affect your relationship with us. This is his problem to sort through. Just know that if he ever begins to harass you, we expect to be notified immediately."

In other news, Hegseth has given the greenlight to Qatar opening a military base in Idaho. Gotta say I did not have that on my bingo card.

Trump did not win the Nobel Peace Prize today. 

We installed heat tape on a house as part of a birthday present. I baked 4 loaves of zucchini bread when we got home. Supper was just a simple tomato soup and grilled cheese. For the first time since we moved into this house, I managed to grill the sandwiches without setting off the darn smoke detector, something that I think is worthy of a prize.