The One With The Inspection

The property management company that controls the rental house we are currently residing in does quarterly inspections throughout the year. That means, every four months we will be getting a call requesting a time convenient to us for them to come and inspect the house.

We make sure and schedule it with enough time to find a place to hide the meth lab.

So tomorrow is our first "shakedown" as Charming calls it. I have never had to experience something like this. The only other time I have rented was with apartments and they never did inspections that I knew of. Sure, they came in if something broke to fix it and to spray for bugs etc. But never did they just come in to check and make sure we hadn't decided to knock down a wall and make a bowling alley in the living room. Realistically I knew the apartment managers had keys to my place and could come and go as they pleased, and maybe they did. But I was young and stupid and never thought twice about the fact someone else had unrestricted access to my stuff when I was gone.

With this house, yes they have keys to the place, per the agreement of our lease, in order to enter the premises in case of emergency if we are not around. However, we have an alarm system that they do not have codes for. So if someone decided to just waltz into our house without informing us first, we would find out. Provided the alarm company does their job and actually responds unlike previous experiences have shown. So there is an added sense of security we have when I stop and think about someone other than a family member or close friend having keys to my dwelling.

I am a bit nervous about this inspection. Not that we are doing anything wrong. Far from it. I expect the person to come in tomorrow and exclaim about how nice we are keeping the place and how cute I decorated it and oh can you come over and help me with my house because you have such a great eye (Yes, in my fantasies I am always perfect and wanted.) But it feels sort of like when the cells get tossed in Shawshank Redemption. I'm worried my sculpted chess pieces are going to be questioned and my Fuzzy Britches poster won't be able to hide the huge escape hatch I have tunneled out of the wall. We haven't changed anything in the house other than the closet, which we got permission for, and added a shelf under the loft banister that looks like it was part of the stairway to begin with. Nothing that should raise an alarm. But I can't seem to shake the feeling they are going to find something wrong. Like I really don't have the right to have my stuff in this house because it's not mine, I'm just parking it here for awhile and if they don't like it I have to leave.

So then I start to make a list of things that may come up that we have questions about any way and might as well get out in the open. Just to cover our ass. Why does the refrigerator run all the time? Because it's been doing that since we moved in. The microwave makes an awful lot of noise when run but it was always like that. Those bushes out front, the ones that look yellow and dead, we swear are green underneath and everyone's on the street look like that. Really, they do. Pretty soon I am going to be walking through the house making note of every tiny ding and be saying "That was like that when we got here!" in a sing song voice that barely hides my crazy.

The reality of what will probably happen is they will walk in the door, take three glances around the house we spent four days straight madly cleaning away any existence we actually live there, check our smoke detectors and comment on how nice it was we changed the filters on our own, and then leave.

We will shut the door behind them, Charming will curse that he changed those filters when he didn't have to and I will start preparing to fret over the next inspection four months away.