The OCD Stalker!

Our first home was a duplex in Liverpool.  The house was blue, my favorite color!  The duplex ran side-to-side and we had our very own driveway!  At the time I was unaware of what square footage meant so I thought the space was perfect for us.  It was a whopping 650 square feet for the entire half of the house.  The entryway came in through the tiny kitchen.  When the door opened up, it hit the table and chairs that was our dining area.  It was a 2 x 3 foot folding table with folding chairs.  It had a tiny sink, an apartment sized refrigerator and a stove that was so little my cookware that I received for wedding showers would go in storage until we moved to a bigger place.  Not even a cookie sheet would fit in that oven, just a small 8 x 8 pan!  There was a 12” piece of countertop to work on.  The living room snuggly fit our new brown plaid couch, a loveseat and two end tables.  The bedroom had a full size bed, a tall chest and a dresser with no space to walk!  I still loved that place!  We bought our furniture at Raymour!  I am pretty sure that the entire living room set was less than $200.  We still have the dresser set that is being used in Mark’s bedroom today.  It’s pretty beat up, but it still does the job of holding clothes quite nicely!  The front of the house had an entryway that had access to both apartments.  We were told in very specific terms that the landlord was the only person to use the front entry so we didn’t use it.  The landlord was a stalker!  I’m not joking!  He was a crazy stalker!  I don’t think we knew anything about OCD in the 1970s, but this man wrote the book on it.  He was obsessive about that house.  One time Mark was outside washing and waxing the car and had come in for lunch.  The phone rang and we answered it from the phone on the wall because that’s where phones were in 1978.  All I heard were obscenities being shouted at me through the receiver as I barely spoke the word “hello” into it.  I handed the phone to Mark and listened while Mark and the landlord exchanged their creative language!  We knew the owner of the home drove past our apartment every morning and every afternoon and every evening because he told us he did.  Evidently, on this particular day, he noticed Mark left the hose sitting on the grass burning up the lawn for the 40 minutes it was outside!  The man pretty much offered to evict us immediately if Mark didn’t move it!  So, that started the Mark vs Landlord game!  I personally enjoyed avoiding conflict, Mark enjoyed creating misery for the OCD man.  Every opportunity Mark had, he would leave something on the lawn.  Sometimes it would be the tire to the car, ever-so-slightly pulled to the left or the right of the driveway and touching an inch of grass.  Sometimes it was a watering can.  Sometimes it was the trash can that he took to the curb placed on the lawn instead of the stone.  Yup!  Mark was having a blast and I was begging him to stop.  The line was drawn in the sand though one morning when Mark had gone to work and I was home on a paid holiday.  I was still sleeping so it must have been around 8:30 or 9:00 am.   I sensed someone in the room so I sleepily opened my eyes and sat up.  There was the creepy landlord standing at the foot of our bed and just staring at me.  I screamed and told him to get out.  He mumbled something about fixing the hot water heater in the closet in the hallway and he didn’t realize anyone was home.  I didn’t believe a word he said.   Once Mark found out, I spent the remaining days living there worried that Mark was going to take the guy out!  Although we had only lived there for about 8 months, Mark and I began the process of looking for another place.