Here’s some background, because people asked. They knew I couldn’t possibly have become a horrible mother overnight – it had to be a gradual “You Suck at This Mother Thing” process.
To begin with, when Brighid moved into her apartment at Pegasus Landing back in August, I had a long list of items I wanted them to address. There were broken blinds, paint splattered all over the leather furniture, graffitti spray painted on the balcony, food residue left on the stove. We took pictures and wrote everything down.
Brighid had a ton of stuff to move in. Her grandmother Andersen and I had gone shopping multiple times, bought everything a kid could need in a new apartment, and then had to haul it all up there. In addition to Brighid moving in and out, she had two roommates doing the same. So when it seemed hot and humid in the apartment, we just put all the fans on, lowered the temperature on the air conditioner, and assumed it was because it was Florida. And August. And the front door had been open more than it had been closed over the course of the day.
But several days later, with the temperature on the air conditioning unit turned down, it still wasn’t cooling off. So I went to the office and told them. And they said it would be fixed.
And it wasn’t.
I lost count that first two weeks when Brighid was living there how many times I went to the office. We stayed in Orlando into September, until the other kids had to go to school, and we were at Pegasus Landing so often, they weren’t asking for our ID as we went in the gate (which they are required to do for non-residents). Finally, the day before I left, I went to the office AGAIN. I demanded the manager, the woman who was supposed to be in charge of all of the 19 year old college kids getting a break on their rent by working here doing nothing. The manager, Katie Price, was not on property that day. Or apparently any day that I was there. How convenient.
I left Brighid with instructions to stay on top of this. If maintenance doesn’t come, you have to keep calling. And she did.
And they came, and they said it was fixed, and they said the unit was old and insufficient, and it was the best they could do.
Then the bill came at the beginning of October for the amount they had gone over their electric bill. It was $40. Per kid. The electric bill for that unit had exceeded by more than $120 the $115 budget. I. WAS. LIVID.
I called the office. I was told I had to speak to accounting. Accounting told me they had to investigate. I called the office to ask for the manager. I was told Katie Price was no on property. I asked for the number for the property manager. I was given Megan Edwards at 407-362-5190. She told me she would look into it. I paid the bill, because if you don’t, you get an eviction notice. I got a call back from Megan Edwards. She told me accounting would look into it and see what the bill was. I argued that I didn’t want to know what the bill was, because obviously, they were charging me what the bill was. I called maintenance, and spoke with a person there who identified herself as the manager. She was going to look into the work orders.
Then they told me they had no work orders on file for this unit. No one had apparently ever complained, so the bill stood, no refund, but they would have someone stop by and check out the air conditioner. Again.
And when I got Megan Edwards on the phone, she told me there was nothing they could do. A work order was NOW in for the air conditioning unit. And I said to her, “You do know you can get mold in their, it’s so humid.” And she told me they would have someone fix the unit.
Over the past 10 months, I’ve made numerous calls to the office at Pegasus Landing. Every time I have visited Brighid – which as been once a month since she started college – I have visited the front office at Pegasus Landing. None of my issues have been addressed.
Thank goodness for winter. The girls shut their inefficient, barely working air conditioning unit off when the temperatures got cold. And to save on their electric bill, they didn’t put the heat on unless it was ABSOLUTELY necessary. And I got a bit of a break from the monthly contact with Pegasus Landing.
But spring came, summer is on it’s way, and I’m back with a vengeance. They thought I was a pain in the ass before…