Bad Faith

July 19, 2007 Savvy Spoonie 5 Comments

Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is a legal concept in which a malicious motive on the part of a party in a lawsuit undermines their case. It has an effect on the ability to maintain causes of action and obtain legal remedies.1

Bad faith is acting with the intent to defraud, the intent to cheat. There is a legal belief that one who has unclean hands cannot press a lawsuit against someone with clean hands. (I say a theory because like all human endeavors, the legal system is flawed and therefore I am sure all of you could cite many a personal story about some bad actor who sued your innocent and saintly uncle and took him for all he was worth. However, this post isn’t about your saintly uncle, it’s about me, so leave him out of it already!)

Therefore, the theory behind preventing bad faith actors from recovering in some court situations is a good one. If you are the breaching party to a contract, you can’t usually sue to recover against the non-breaching party.

Why am I giving this little legal lesson in Bad Faith? Why because it pertains to my life today, that’s why.

Our previous landlords are acting in Bad Faith. Bad Landlords, no rent check. They have the remainder of our security deposit, and have been holding it for ransom while they whittle away at it, bit by diminishing bit. These are the people who allowed us to move our little family, asthmatic child and pregnant wife and all, into a cigarette smoke covered and pet urine smeared house. A house that smelled so incredibly bad when I first walked into it that I almost threw up. These are the landlords that delayed removing the carpets that were so filthy we had to lay cardboard boxes over them to walk to and from our rooms, so our feet wouldn’t touch them, for months.

Now, here we are, happily out of their fracking house, and they claim there is a “strong doggy odor” in the back family room where we kept our dogs kennels. They are angling for new carpets.

No. I had them cleaned, professionally, per our lease agreement. The pets never, NEVER, urinated or defecated on the carpets. There is no reason to replace them, well, no reason other than greed and bad faith.

Wanna know where the unpleasant smell is? Why it’s buried deep within the cement under the carpets. The cement they were too cheap to seal with any sort of odor blocking sealant. The cement their previous tenant’s pets soaked in urine and feces. It could also be buried deep within the a/c ducts, where the hundreds of thousands of cigarettes he smoked, in the shower even, wafted their tar-laden contents into the air, to be whisked down the ducts and throughout the house.

Did they deal with any of these unpleasant odors when we lived there? Of course not, they wouldn’t even make the simple repairs we requested over and over again. No, they want us to buy them new carpets, because they are trying to sell their stinky little hell hole for way too much money and are too cheap to actually put forward enough dough to convince anyone to look at it.

Happily, I get to sue them if they try it. New Jersey, while muggy and full of people who like to make rude hand gestures on the highway, is a good place to be a tenant with crappy landlords. The New Jersey Rent Security Deposit Act allows me to recover double that erroneously charged me by my landlord, plus fees and costs.2

What does that have me busily doing? Why getting out my old photographs and filing a complaint.

It is the benefit to being a shark. When someone asks you to swim, you get to bite. Normally, I prefer to leave my teeth out of it, but these people have spent an entire year making my life hell. I have let violation after violation of our lease agreement slide, in the hopes that it would all be over soon. So now I am licking my chops.

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1. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith
2. N.J. Stat. §§ 46:8-1 to – 49

frustration, grief, Motherhood, Motherhood/body image, Stress

The third person

July 18, 2007 Savvy Spoonie 1 Comment

I believe I have hit upon the reason mom’s refer to themselves in the third person. For example:
“Mommy is busy right now honey, please wait until I am done.”
“No honey, Mommy can’t turn the t.v. up right now, Mommy is in the shower.”
“Mommy is still in the shower honey, I can’t get to the remote right now! Please wait until I am out of the shower!!”

It is in part do to the interaction with the infant, but I think it is really because mommies have three personalities, therefore Mommy is personality number three, the third person.

My first person is a young woman who loves to go dancing, stay up until dawn, smoke cigarettes and toss back one too many tequila shots. Sadly, she was put into a coma about 6 years and 9 months ago, so the chances of anyone seeing her again are slim. However, she occasionally invades my consciousness with a sweet memory and the smell of freedom, often when I am driving in the rain and turn the music up a little louder than I should.

My second person is a serious lawyer ready and able to save the world. She is dedicated, tireless, and armed with the tools needed to wreak havoc on opposing council. She wears sexy yet serious business suits and sensible heels. She is witty at cocktail parties and political functions, and still amazes her husband with her intellectual prowess and social capabilities.

My third person is a mom. She is always there for tears, problem solving, lunch making, real and imagined insults, boo boo kisses, and upset tummies. She cleans the house, buys the groceries, prepares the food. She showers at night because she is usually showered in baby spit up several times during the day. She is a napkin, a washcloth, and more. She doesn’t sleep, hasn’t worn make-up in months, and lost her ability to put together a decent outfit ages ago. She is an expert in getting smiles and giggles, diffusing kiddo stress and consternation, and removing stains from laundry. She can change a really messy diaper in under three minutes with only three or four wipes.

However, she is the hardest personality to acknowledge and accept. She is much more disheveled than the other two parts of me, much more emotional, and seemingly less capable, though really, she is just dealing with more. After all, how often does a lawyer have to handle complex billing negotiations with a screaming baby vomiting on their suit? How many young and carefree women have to schlep children through the grocery store?

Anyway, the reason I think I refer to this third personality in third person is simple, it places distance between the sleepless, pale, disheveled mad woman in the mirror and myself. After all, carefree woman and slick lawyer are rarely interrupted in the shower by anyone for any reason, much less a six year old needing help with the television.

I really am still the young carefree woman and the slick lawyer. They are just currently hidden behind a river of baby spit up and burp cloths. Until I can see them again, or at least small parts of them, I will likely still continue to refer to the rest of me, that tired, spit up covered woman, in the third person.

house"keeping", Monkey, Otter

A morning of cuteness…

July 17, 2007 Savvy Spoonie 1 Comment

This morning Otter settled on the couch next to Monkey and watched an episode of Dirty Jobs, Monkey’s favorite show. (Lee has trained her to say that she needs to finish school and go to college so she can choose whether or not she wants to have a Dirty Job. It’s pretty funny.)

The siblings enjoyed an early morning snuggle together for about half an hour, until Otter was ready for second breakfast.

Our house is so comfy. The house is large enough that the dogs seem smaller, we seem smaller. As Devon put it, the house is actually to scale for us.

It is nice to wake up in a pleasant room with plenty of space for one’s things. For the past year we lived in a dark tiny cramped space infested with ants and owned by two people who were determined to squeeze every dime they could out of us and not give much in return. Now we live in a huge open space, well lit, with gleaming hardwood floors and spanish tile. Sunlight streams in through the many windows, skylights, and glass paned doors.

Our current landlords are kind people. They are interested in making sure we are getting everything we need, and are willing to make necessary changes and repairs quickly and efficiently. They are also really nice, I like them a lot and look forward to working with them in the future.

We are almost finished setting up our bedroom/Otter’s room. It is a large space, but hard to capture on film. Nonetheless, as pictures were requested by a certain preggosaurus, I tried. (Everyone knows, you never turn down the request of a preggosaurus.)
Here is our bed and my dresser. To give you an idea of the size of the room, our bed is a King size, and has always been the item of furniture that turns rooms into tiny spaces with no walking room. It fits neatly along one wall, next to my huge antique dresser, and leaves room for two end tables and a dog bed.

Our bathroom is through that white door there, it is green marble and burgandy paint. Mmmm…. Green and red, Lee’s and my favorite colors. Otter’s changing station and storage are located on this wall. There is still plenty of space in the center of the room, and no sense of being cramped walking between the bed and the rest of the room.

Lee’s dresser is on the wall with the crib, between the bathroom door and the door to our other room, which we have deemed the sitting/hangout room. It is larger than our bedroom. We haven’t set it up yet, but soon it will have a couch, our T.V., our Apple T.V. system, a rocking chair, and our closet in it. Off to one side is a kitchenette and laundry room, where we have set up the cats. We plan to keep water and beverages up there, along with any non communal snacks.

Downstairs we have set up the kitchen, the office, and the living room. I have a photo of the living room, but the light was too odd to get the other rooms at the moment, so you will have to wait for those.

The house is really long, so all our rooms are set up such to allow flow through the whole thing. It is pretty calming and definitely a comfortable set up.