Yes sadly, we are moving again—in less than a year of living in Ocala, Florida. And this is a big move! We are leaving Florida. The state Richard and I have lived for 40 years. But we’re very excited to be going to New England and get to live next door to our family!! If you would rather listen instead of read, play the audio:
Why are we moving again so soon–what’s gone wrong?
Let me know if this list is too harsh for me to post (after we move) as a review of the apartment complex. They’ve been asking for tenants to leave reviews for the complex on Google but I’ve hesitated to leave a bad review, since A) I don’t want to be THAT person, and B) I didn’t want to cast any more negativity on the community as they’ve already brought upon themselves. Thank you in advance!
- Neighbors – Our upstairs neighbors are quite heavy-footed as they walk around in the upstairs apartment. I waited three months after we moved in to complain as I thought it may take them time to adjust to apartment living. Sadly, things never got any better. This has been an untenable situation. Yet apparently, due to the Federal Fair Housing Act, the apartment community cannot assign people to particular apartments based on age, working hours, or whatnot. These younger tenants work nights (or something) because they come in between 11 pm-1 am every night and then leave around 4-5 am in the mornings! They slam the door. They stomp up and down the stairs. They drop things on their floor, which sounds like a bowling ball hit our ceiling. I have literally jumped when this has happened! They have had yelling matches. They had their loud Dodge Charger car backed into the parking space in front of our bedroom window and left it running while going back upstairs to get things before leaving!
- Apartment Community – We enjoyed paying our rent and sending communication to the office via an online portal, but shortly after we moved in the community closed the pool area for nearly six months (to rip up every bit of poured concrete around the pool and resurface it) with no reduction in rent. The pool has now reopened (we’ve yet to use it) and it IS beautiful, but we didn’t think anything looked wrong with it before.
- Apartment Community Signage – Every time someone (either our Kroger grocery delivery or Uber/Lyft driver) tries to find us, there’s no signage anywhere within the apartment community to direct drivers to where each building is, much less where each apartment number is within a building. I had to update this post to add this to our list of negatives about living here because we just had another Kroger delivery driver lament about how he’d driven round and round and some of the building numbers are on the backside of the buildings! Granted some of the drivers are working their first delivery job, but even our very experienced Lyft driver turned the wrong way and came back by our apartment after dropping us off a week ago as there are no exit signs in this place! There are a couple of signs that point one to the leasing office, but that’s it. I imagine the office would say that each delivery driver could stop in the office to ask where the apartment is that they’re delivery to but we all know most won’t take the time to do that (until they become exasperated trying to find us). And yes, I have (each time) added details to our orders to state how the driver can find us, but often they enter from the opposite entry than the one my directions are from and there’s limited characters for me to instruct them from both directions. A few signs would certainly ease a lot of people’s frustrations, as some of the large building numbers are on the backside of the buildings. Something I didn’t realize until one of the Kroger drivers first told me and then I had to look at each building after that to confirm to myself.
- Apartment Community Mail/Business Center – The office staff has changed and not for the better. The office put in a new locker room for package pick-up, so we rarely even go into the office anymore to enjoy the way they remodeled it (having completed that project just before we moved in). On one occasion, we had needed to use the business center (which was an amenity I had very much wanted that we didn’t have in Bradenton) and it was such a joke because the new printer wasn’t yet connected to either of the two computers. Purposely, I’d waited to try and print there for a month after the remodel so I wouldn’t run into these kinds of issues. The office manager had me use her computer as a workaround to print my mailing labels and lists. Also, the mail carrier won’t pick up any packages for mailing out. We had to catch him (to give him a small package) as he was delivering mail to the Italian restaurant where we happened to be dining! I have no idea why, but the apartment community office does not want people to leave packages there for the mail carrier to pick up.
- Parking – We don’t have a car (so I have no idea why they put us in an apartment on the parking side of our building when we could have been in the back), at least this does help delivery drivers find us once they find our building. But about a month ago a tow truck dropped a car in front of our living room window and didn’t even park it correctly, which was a nuisance to see. When we complained about it not belonging to anyone here, as it has no community parking decal, the apartment office manager quipped it must belong to someone because they fixed the tire! She (Ms. Personality) thoroughly missed the point and could have cared less! As I finished recording this, the upstairs neighbor called a locksmith, got into the car, disconnected the battery when the car alarm went off, and has now, driven away in the car! Whether he figured out how to buy it from a finance company or whether he stole it, we don’t know and don’t care! Ha!
- Overall Community Appearance – We were in the community office one day and overheard a lovely little old lady complaining (to a younger office staff lady who seemed to have cared less) about some of the things we’d witnessed too. We had not complained (about those items) because we didn’t feel the office would do anything about it. We’ve seen trash lying all around the community as we walk to the mail center, grocery store, and restaurants. We have seen overflowing dumpsters. We have seen huge piles of dog poo where people haven’t picked that up (and we could tell it was all from the same dog as it was near one apartment near the sidewalk and all three piles close together). Yuck! People still speed though the community newsletter begs people monthly to adhere to the 10mph speed limit—the community should put in speed bumps! We needed that a whole lot more than a package delivery system and pool area! I hate to complain because I know we can’t control other people, much less change their behavior. We simply model good behavior, respectful and polite, and try to inspire others (though there is some sense of control involved even in that, I realize).
Mind-Body
I am not of a mind to ‘give up’ but as I just said, there’s only so much we can do. And I must draw a line on how much Energy I expend to try to continue living here. As it’s turned out, living here has not helped my mental health much, because the people we moved here to meet up with have not been able (yet) to make time for us. I am still hopeful that we’ll meet a couple of them during April! And I’m fine with continuing to peel layers of the onion and feel better even if we don’t get to meet up. I know wherever we go we take ourselves with us! Ha! And I know everyone is fighting some kind of battle we know nothing about. Tada!
I’m incorporating lessons learned (from our move here)
- I have secured a Budget rental truck for a week (no more U-Haul!)
- I put our furniture on NextDoor for sale and posted an ad for local loading help
- I sent our Notice to Vacate to our apartment community as soon as I knew what date we could move into the apartment next to my daughter
- I’ve made a checklist of all we need to do before we move, which seems much shorter than the list I had when we left Bradenton last August.
All in all, we’re feeling a bit better and able to load the Budget rental truck and hopefully, the loading help will show up; here’s a link to my NextDoor event and I’m already getting some offers of help! Yippee! I’m certainly hoping for that. If not, we’ll take our time and load it over two days as needed. We’re going to give ourselves a lot more love and self-care this time!
I also just noticed that our apartment number equals 8. And 8 is the number for infinity but also of COMPLETION! Woo-hoo! Perhaps our run of ill karma regarding places we’ve lived has been completed. I’m certainly considering it so!
Enjoy (IN Joy) and have fun! Be Everything All the Time.
May we all soar in ’24! Here’s to loving ourselves more, expanding our consciousness, living without regrets, and living FREE!
Yours in expanding, always seeking the better-feeling thought, spiraling consciousness,
Sheila “Spiral Sister” Murrey
Integrating the Spirals to ease suffering
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