I’ll be brief: In between actual work, I’m busy itemizing every last box of garbage can liners, every paint brush, every power tool, anything and everything we spent this year in any capacity on the house. My accountant says that because part of the house is a rental unit, we can deduct anything we used on the rental part and common areas. Since our own apartment is borderline squalor, almost all of it was used to bring the “paying customer” areas up to the standards of Western Civilization.

But why bother, when the paying customers are 30-year-olds who live like a typical 19-year-old and keep their rooms like a typical 12-year-old? No exaggeration, one girl who just left kept her room in a perpetual state of disaster. You could not avoid stepping on something in her room. She bought a bed and slept on it with no sheets or blankets. She tacked a piece of sheer fabric over half the windows and then complained it was too bright at night. I harangued her to clean up her room any time I had the misfortune of noticing it was still full of all the same shit as the last time I bugged her. Adding insult to injury, she smelled bad. And then she had her friend stay at the house for five days — which would have been fine if she didn’t have the friend stay in a separate room I normally rented out and use my electric heater cranked up to the high setting. I would have at least liek to have been asked, and I would have said yes. When I confronted her, she was baffled that I might be even mildly annoyed. When she finally moved out — after a month of postponing her move-out date — she tossed the splintered remains of her furniture onto the curb as if the garbage men went about their work happily picking up every scrap of refuse us residents were too lazy to bundle up. No, I had to bundle the pieces of wood up myself on trash day and stack them neatly. Oh yeah, nobody wants your hideous fatpants, honey, so don’t hang them from your broken-ass dresser on the curb like anyone in this neighborhood is poor enough or tasteless enough to deign to add such a hideous item to their wardrobe. Please.

Anyway, the girl who took over the whole apartment and then got her own roommates — yeah her CHECK BOUNCED. Well, since we both have the same bank, when I went to deposit it, they kindly told me they could not accept it, and they couldn’t tell me why. I got a lame excuse as to why her account was NSF, and since I’m a fucking pushover I’m not charging her late fees. I tell myself it’s because I want her transition into taking over the apartment to go smoothly, as it’s in my interest. Whatever it takes, you know? To not feel like a stupid fucking fag with no business sense. Anyway, other than that she’s a pretty good tenant, and her check did go through today.

What is so hard about putting the garbage can lids on tightly? Do they like rats? Or do they like seeing me have to rebag the trash after the rats shred it to bits and piss and shit all over it? Hilarious. For all of you, surely. Ah, Bushwick.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming. Otherwise, Monday. I know, I’m so presumptuous. You’ll live.

My grandma was in town this week on one of her occasional visits to see my 2-year-old cousin in White Plains. She and my uncle took the train down to Bushwick this Friday to see the house and have dinner at — where else do people take their family? — Northeast Kingdom. Moron that I am, I forgot she is recovering from screwing up her knee when she was in Italy a few months ago, and arranged to meet them at the Morgan stop and just walk them back to the house. Took longer than I realized: “You forget, your grandmother is old now,” she admonished. “Bullshit,” I responded with indignation.

Of course we live upstairs — my uncle frowned as she made her way up them. It really only took about 30 seconds, but she was definitely “differently abled.” They poked around the apartment for a minute — “you got a loooot o’ work to do here,” says Grammy — and we plopped down on the couch while Luis called Bushwick Car Service to take us to the restaurant. They always say 5 minutes, but within 60 seconds, the car was honking and Grammy hobbled her way back down the stairs.

Like everyone who goes in, they loved NEK. My uncle, involved in various aspects of the restaurant business his whole life, was impressed. He asked whether we feel protected here; the answer was of course “no,” but neither do we feel threatened. As it seems to be in New York, my grandmother, a native of the Bronx who grew up in Jackson Heights, had absolutely no bearings in Brooklyn, as if it were a whole other country. “Ridgewood is two blocks that way,” I said, and pointed out the window across Wyckoff. “Oh, it’s right there?” I went into a story about how my doctor is in Ridgewood and one day I went, they wrote my name down and said “All the Italians here today!” She replied, as if to contradict me, “Ridgewood used to be all German.” Yep.

We walked them to the Starr Street entrance to the L and said our goodbyes. “You did good, honey,” she said, and gave me a kiss. As they eased down the steps, I said, “you know how to get back?” Uncle Keith fake whined “oh, we’ll manage, don’t worry about us.” We all laughed as they turned the corner into the bowels of the station.

This is pretty much the most beautiful day I can remember since moving to Bushwick. Not a cloud in the sky, a brisk breeze wafting through my open windows…sure, I have to keep the door to the back yard closed so rats don’t come in and workers are busy building a five-story condo 20 feet from my back property line that will look directly into my garden, but you take the good with the bad, right? And everything has a silver lining. Most things. I guess people looking down into my yard gives me the kick in the pants I need to finish cleaning and landscaping it.

I hope they’re planning on clearing off the rubble-filled lot next door to the condo. Be useful if they actually plan on selling them.

A girl just came to look at a room I have available and agreed that it’s a beautiful day but expressed a little worry that it’s 62 in January. I said, if this is global warming, bring it on. She didn’t mind that Bushwick doesn’t have much in the way of entertainment, just that even after having walked around the hood all day, she’s still a bit nervous about getting killed or whatever. Fine. She’s a native New Yorker, and so had all kinds of preconceptions that likely colored her day here.

On the weather front, it’s all downhill tomorrow. Back to sweaters and jackets and uncomfortably cold fingers, despite the cashmere lining in my gloves. Okay that’s enough, back to work.