Soaked

My first job today was in a dingy apartment building. The whole place smelled like a bathroom. All the windows were open in an attempt to air out the place. I woke the couple up. In fact the man never got up, he just laid in bed asleep the whole time (must be nice). The woman was nice.
The second job was at some row homes. A couple doors down there was a bunch of young black people just hanging out on the porch. In this place there was a woman missing a few of her teeth, her elderly mom and a child. They were watching religious programing. The one where the guy touches people and heals them. The woman was telling me the she had just given up smoking recently because she was getting sick. But now that she can smell her room smells terrible to her. She asked her mom if that she has smelled like all these years, and she said yes. So she is very determined to give up smoking.
The next job was in the worst neighborhood in my area. I was rather shocked at how clean and nice the place was, they had completely remodeled it. Admittedly it was wrong of me to make an assumption about how the place was going to look, but every other time I've been in this neighborhood the places looked horrible. This particular house had three trucks parked outside. When the door was answered there was a guy sleeping on the floor in the living room. The woman woke him up and had him move into one of the bedrooms. The woman spoke no english but eventually a fourth truck showed up and in it was someone I was able to talk to. Another woman showed up as well later on. The also had a small child there who pretty much just sat there silently.
After that I went to ranch house in a much nicer part of town. This house had some really nice metal sculptures in the front. There was a lot of interesting artwork throughout the house. I got the impression that the woman here stays at home to raise the child. Her kid kept calling me cable guy and showing me his Thomas the Train toys. At one point he presented me his little plastic toy drill and told me it might help fix the TV. I was able to solve most of the problems here, but there must have been something going on in the attic. Fortunately I couldn't quite fit in her attic safely to fix it. I think I've had my fill of attics for the week.
Next was another ranch house but in a very different neighborhood. The house was very clean. There was an elderly woman who sat silently facing the wall reading the yellow pages the whole time. The woman apologized for how the basement looked, said her daughter has taken over the place. I was surprised to see the place devoted to Final Fantasy. She had every game and posters dedicated to characters from the game. I can't say I've seen anything like that before. There was a lot of other anime paraphernalia as well, but it was all centered around Final Fantasy.
Next was at another run down apartment building. The woman there apologized for how messy her brothers room was as she was showing me in, but the place seemed bare. There was no furniture, except a boom box and a TV. there was some clothes in a pile in a corner. There was also a blanket on the floor, I guess that's where he slept.
After that I went to an extremely nice house in one of the wealthiest parts of town. You really can't get much more disparity than between these two jobs. The woman who answered the door was beautiful almost uncomfortably so. Her nanny was there with her child. As I working on one of her TVs I looked up and saw an autographed photo of her and her husband with Dick Cheney.
My last job was in another apartment building. This style of apartment I'm finding to be quite common around here, but this has been remodeled recently. The doors at least looked new. The gentleman was very nice. Apparently he's a cook. He said he's been working at the Holiday Inn downtown for like 30 years, but he quit. He's hoping to open his own restaurant here soon.