Category: Eden Cove 9: 5 Weeks In Purgatory

Hyperbolically speaking, my ranting and raving about Eden Cove 9 will never end.

Or will it…?

Friends…Romans…Countrypeoples…at long last we have arrived at the final leg of our journey that should in theory land us in the Guiness Book of World Records under “World’s Longest Vacation Rental Review.” Indeed, it is my hope that this is the very last time I have to remind you that I thought it was a good idea to air all the grievances I managed to collect during the 5 weeks my fam and I took refuge at the beach house known as Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9) while our home was being repaired and renovated.

If you need to catch up, you can do so here, but in case your in the mood for some brevity, all you really need to know is that this place had to have been designed with the goal of passively-aggressively slowly driving guests mad.

It’s as if every little detail was crafted to mess with your head in small and asinine ways–nothing exciting or obvious–just a thousand little pains in your ass, each one so small that no one would believe your complaint to be an overt act of aggression–ergo, why I’ve been using terms like “purgatory” and “almost hell” instead of outright likening it to Hades.

But when you stand back and survey it all, you see very clearly that this place was…odd. Everything seemed just a little bit off…

I’ve waited a long time to reveal to you my own pet theory, and finally here it is: It felt like being in a sci-fi/horror/psychological thriller where there is some malevolent force–say, aliens–that is trying to hold you captive without you knowing it. And to do so, they try to trick you into thinking that everything is normal by creating a fake version of reality and plop you into it.

Why would they do this? Maybe we’re part of one of their scientific experimentations? Or perhaps we’re their favorite food supply, but can only be truly enjoyed when eaten fresh? I don’t know…that’s not really the point.

Anyways, these beings manage to do a pretty good job of mimicking the reality you expect–say, they nail it with 97% accuracy. But, not being humans, they totally overlook details such as providing an elevator shaft but no elevator, or make the toilets easy for their alien hands to flush, not human hands.

…and just like in The Truman Show, you slowly realize that your entire world is a facade.

…

That’s what it was like to live in EC9 for 5 weeks, my friends. Thirty-five days of constantly questioning your own sanity. Fun times, indeed.

Welp, enough of my digressions. I best get to my last few items and then we can all be done with this fiasco once and for all…

Level 7: Purgatory Freezes Over

“You want some clean, cold water? Hah! Good luck with that!”

For the first 2 weeks or so, we had to constantly keep our bottled water supply fully stocked. Unlike at home, EC9’s fridge didn’t have the indispensable¹Pun alert, mother ----- ! amenities of a built-in ice or water dispenser.

…or so we thought. I eventually made this discovery:

So…good news/bad news: the good news was that we did have access to cold filtered water. The bad news is, O-M-F-G, how insanely inconvenient can you make it?!? As you can see from my mini-movie, it fully required 2-3 hands–like “oh, you want some refreshing water? Well it’s going to cost you! You better think long and hard about whether it’s really worth the effort!”

I also couldn’t help be reminded of this classic Far Side:

Jeez, this is so on-brand for EC9, it’s not even funny…

“We’re all freezing down here!”

Boy was I tired of hearing Mother Dearest exaggerate about how cold they were at night on the first level, while we folks on the third level were getting the night sweats every stinking evening. (Though, in her defense, I simply couldn’t use any of the showers down there because it would be rather frigid when naked, even in the middle of the day…)

“Well, you have your own dang thermostat–just turn it up!”

With a thermostat on each of EC9‘s 3 levels, I could not understand how this was a problem. Why couldn’t we all be comfortable? Yet somehow, nobody was comfortable.

After only 4-5 days into our stay, and after 4-5 nights of nobody really getting any good sleep, I finally tried to investigate further into what the hey-ho was going on with the A/C.

Being ever the astute scientist, I decided it was best to proceed by changing one variable (i.e. thermostat) at a time, and then observe what effects that change induced (i.e. if the vents on a given level on were blowing air, and if so, was it hot or cold air?).

It sounded simple enough in theory, but quickly devolved into sheer madness. For example, I would set the thermostat on the third level so it should be blowing hot air up there. The result? The second floor air would turn off, and the first floor would still be blasting cold air. There should have been zero correlation there!

Later on, when I tried setting the second floor thermostat to cool, the third floor air shut off, and the first floor started blowing hot air. The holy ----- is going on here?!?

After about 3 rounds of complete and utter insanity of this variety I broke down and had one of these moments:

After that, I broke down and called those jackasses that call themselves the Better Beach Rentals maintenance team. Fortunately, the A/C pro the sent over came pretty quickly, because by then the whole place was being blasted with hot air and even turning the entire system off–get this–did not stop the heat from coming out of the ----- vents.

But oh man, I had no idea what I was in for when the grizzled ol’ A/C guy rolled up. He insisted on walking me through every single step of his trouble shooting process as if I was his protege-in-training, including having me feel the various copper tubes hooked up to the A/C-slash-furnace system.

“You feel that?”

He would gaze into my eyes looking for a response…which was incredibly awkward, to say the least.

“Uh, that’s…warm?”

“And…”

“And…it shouldn’t be that warm?”

“Bingo! Now let me explain to you what these red and yellow wires are connected to, Young Grasshopper…”

I’m not exaggerating. Except for him calling me “Young Grasshopper.” I embellished that part a wee bit.

And so it went…he would explain something to me in waaaaay too much detail, and then peer into the windows of my soul to see if I was appreciating his wisdom and knowledge on a deeper level. It was exhausting.

Oh, speaking of ‘levels,’ he dragged me and his ladder up to the third level balcony, where he proceeded to have me assist him in climbing onto the roof to get to the actual cooling unit. Because, of course, that’s where they had put the freakin’ thing. The whole time he was up there, I was just sure that he was going to slip and fall 4 stories to his death before my very eyes. Luckily, he made it back down safely.

After that, we somehow got off on a tangent taking a grand tour of Every. Single. Vent. In the. Whole. House. I guess, he vaguely remembered servicing that very unit several years previous, which had the comedic result of him closing his eyes and turning every which way, and then almost shouting as he pointed “Over there! Over there! There’s one hidden under the entertainment system!” …as if he was divining for water or something.

He even made me help him move the huge-ass entertainment center, just so he could have the satisfaction of proving how good his memory was. He was right, by the way–that dude had thermodynamic memory, if you will.

Eventually we made our way back down the first level where the main unit was, and we repeated the whole “Feel this copper tube, my friend” business, with him naturally being pleased as a pickle that he was able to get it back to cooling. If you’re wondering, the system had somehow got stuck in emergency heating mode, and since–fun fact–that either the whole system is either blowing hot air or blowing cold air in any given moment, EC9 had been literally turning into the hell that we were already suspecting it to be.

Anyways, the old dude, quite pleased with his days’ work, eventually left after about another hour of completely unrelated regaling…

“Why is still so ----- cold in here?!?”

I could only imagine that Mom was dropping the f-bomb in her head when, 1 or 2 days later, we discovered that we could simply not keep the cold air from blasting the first level any time we were trying to cool the much toastier upper levels.

“Dangit, I guess I’ll call the maintenance guy again…”

Old Man A.C. had made it sound like I could personally give him a ring should anything go awry again, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) he failed to give me his direct number. So I ended up having to deal with the BBR maintenance chain of command again, and eventually they sent out some young buck from the same A/C company.

After some troubleshooting that was much less involved for me (thanks be to the gods!), he determined that the flap that controls the air flow into the first level was busted. But the way they work, they are open by default, and so it was stuck open indefinitely, causing our personal hell to freeze over.

“No worries, bro! I’ll order that new part and we’ll have you fixed up and all comfortable-like in no time!”

Can you guess where this is going? Yup, it played out just like the “we’ll fix your elevator right away” ball of tomfoolery.²I really wanted to say “tomfuckery” here, but figured I would spare my mother the shame.

Three weeks. Three ----- weeks. They had that long to get what I presume to be a fairly common part, and yet they failed. By the day we finally vacate the premises, they still hadn’t fixed it.

Were we surprised? No.

Were we disappointed? Most definitely.

Again, I’m left to wonder if they ever even actually ordered the part. And judging by all the other evidence that I’ve presented to y’all over the last several months–and some other exhibits I’ve withheld–I’m very much inclined to say that those cheap-ass incompetent nincompoops never did, and instead they just hoped that future vacationers would never be there long enough to really complain about it…

All that to say, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’m no fan of this place that hath robbed me of a little bit of my soul, and the fools that ran it.

So much so, in fact, that when it came time for our annual late summer beach vacation–and don’t you dare try to tell me that those 5 weeks at the beach were a ‘vacation’–the Boss Lady suggested foregoing our usual spot of Carolina Beach, and finding a place in Oak Island.

I had to sit her down and explain to her that thanks to EC9 and the folks at BBR, I was suffering from a bit of PTSD, and that I never wanted to set foot on that god-forsaken island again in my life. I actually don’t understand how she wasn’t traumatized either, but that might have been because she was focused on her work, and unlike me, wasn’t simultaneously being traumatized by handling all our remodeling shenanigans.

But I digress.

The point of the story is, if you’re ever in Oak Island, NC, and in need of a place to stay, for the love all that is holy, stay as far away as you can from a little piece of purgatory on Earth they call Eden Cove.

Come to think of it, stay far away from Better Beach Rentals altogether while you’re at it. I went back and did some retrospective Google research on them fools, and peeped at some of the less than kind reviews (and there were PLENTY). Big mistake…but a highly entertaining one that I recommend you make for yourself…

Content created on: 17/18 September 2021 (Fri/Sat)

Like the pirate with a steering wheel in his pants once said:

“Argh! It drives me nuts…”

Five weeks. Seven Levels of Purgatory. All courtesy of Eden Cove Nine.

I promise, folks, that I am almost done with my way-too-in-depth vacation home rental review of the infamous fun house known as EC9. For those out there unacquainted with old friend EC9, they can catch up on all the fun here.

And for those of you keeping score at home, you will recall that last week I covered Level 6 of Purgatory. Soo I bet y’all have got your hopes up that this week would be the 7th and final level of the Purg’, right?

Um, so, I have some bad news for you then: I got one more light-themed complaint that I need to get off my chest before we can ascend (or is it descend?) to the 7th Level.

Level 6b: A Thousand Points Of Light And One Heart Of Darkness

“A Thousand Points of Light”…besides being former President George H.W. Bush’s favorite catchphrase, I strongly maintain that that’s what they really should have named this place instead of “Eden Cove.”

Though I don’t have another milquetoast anecdote to illustrate my point, this place was absolutely rife with nuanced bits of questionable design, and the lights were no exception to this.

In addition to the master bathroom lighting shenanigans that I spoke of in Level 6a of Purgatory, EC9‘s illumination situation had two main flaws that would only become apparent to a vacationer until it was far too late.

Let’s shed some light on the first one, shall we? Now, take a closer look at the Figure 1 below:

Looks just like a run-of-the-mill place to relax and recuperate, right? Not so fast, my friend!

You may note that there are regularly spaced lights on the ceiling. Well, I actually sat down and counted exactly how many there were on this level, which comprised the kitchen, living room, and dining area.

Not counting lamps, fridges, bathrooms, and stove hoods, there were thirty-six lights on this floor. THIRTY-SIX! Me-thinks that to be a bit excessive, no?

In fact, it makes you wonder if whoever designed this was over-compensating for something–say, the emotional darkness pervading their insides–right?

But! The Heart of Darkness is not merely a random-ass theory I just pulled out of thin air. There is more evidence to support this crazy idea. And that leads me to bullet-point #2.

As if having an incessant amount of light fixtures baked into the design of the condo wasn’t bad enough, the least they could have done was wire them up to the light switches in an intuitive manner.

As foreshadowed by my previous light-related tale, that was most definitely not the case. Like, there was almost zero correlation between where the light was, and the location of the switch that controlled it. This was especially notable in the kitchen, where the kitchen light switches were located more in the dining area, next to the bathroom, and half the lights in the dining area were controlled by lights in the ----- kitchen.

During our 5 weeks there, I spent many a late night at the dining table working on home-reno related tasks. And for about half of those nights I was on baby-monitor duty, as The Younger is prone to waking up in the middle of the night in a fuss, and will need some comforting stat before she wakes everybody else up.

There were countless times that she did indeed wake up and I needed to hastily shut things down for the night, and almost every single one of them played out like a Benny Hinn Hill montage, with me running back and forth in a panic trying to find the right light switch(es) by trial and error.

Given the sheer number of pairs of lights on/lights off sequences that would ensue, combined with the funky sweat smell that I would work up in the progress, and then add in the rhythmic cries of a toddler coming through the baby monitor…and, yeah, the second level of EC9 would basically transmogrify into Oak Island’s hottest discotheque every other night…

…

Okay, well I guess I did have a milquetoast anecdote in me after all. I have to apologize, as the whole “The system is down…the system is down…”¹This pop-culture reference goes out to all of you old-school HomeStar Runner lovers out there. techno beat now playing in my head distracted me from doing what I came to do: reveal to you the theory-of-everything that could possibly explain how such a place like EC9 could even exist (apart from me being stuck in the all-time lowest-rated episode of The Twilight Zone).

Like a seasoned forensic analyst declaring that a crime scene is so gruesome that “it had to have been very personal for the murderer to make such a gratuitous mess”, Mom and I formulated our own hypothesis that EC9, too, must have been an act of personal aggression.

So the point of the story is, if you’re going to invest money in building the most luxurious condos on all of Oak Island, for the love of G0d, don’t hire your ex-husband to handle the electrical engineering…

Content created on: 28 August 2021 (Saturday)

I may not be the best at remembering song lyrics.

But I’m pretty sure it’s “When the lights…go down…in the shitty…”

Aaaaaaand….we’re back! After dropping a few posts about one particular day¹Links to those 3 posts can be found here, here, and here. during the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99, I figured it was time to resume my review of the beach house known as Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9).

Anne Frankly,²Yes, this is a punny reference to the illegal refugees who accompanied as to Oak Island, but whom I can never explicitly talk about. I’m so exhausted from trying to publicly catalog all the weird-ass things about EC9 and Better Beach Rentals, that I’m just going plagiarize myself in the last post with the following disclaimer:

“I assume you know what I’m going on about and jump right in to another round of idiosyncrasies from the 5 weeks my fam and I were refugees at this particular beach house.

In the off chance you are not familiar with good ol’ EC9, then you can catch up on what you missed here. Otherwise, let’s dive right on in…”

Level 6a: The Lighter Side Of Things

“No, Daddy, let me turn out the lights!” Oh, what a deceptively simple request…

We had just finished up bath time and it was time for our 3-year-old, aka The Younger, to head to her adjacently-located bedroom and wind down for the evening. Since she was smack-dab in the middle of her Let-Me-Assert-My-Own-Dang-Independence phase, I wasn’t surprised that she would be eager to turn out the bathroom lights all on her own. Naturally, I obliged and told her to have it.

She headed to the nearest bank of light switches–the ones right next to the tub (which you can almost see across the way in Figure 1), and flipped a few of them. The result? Well, kind of like “two steps forward, one step back,” it was “one more light on, but, hey, two lights off,” with the net result of it being slightly darker in the bathroom.

“Oh, it looks like you need to turn off the lights over there,” I gently encouraged her, pointing across the bathroom at the switches next to one of the awkwardly-positioned sinks.

Undeterred, she ambled over and started flipping the switches into the “off” position, but befell the same fate as before, turning on more lights than off.

“Hmmm, that’s odd…okay, try the switches over there.” I guess I hadn’t really noticed before that there was yet another bunch of switches next to the other sink.

But, nay, after trying every combination of switchery, she was still no closer to having shut the lightshow down. We were both becoming visibly discombobulated at that point.

“Son of a biscuit, seriously, how are the lights still on?!?”

At that point, I was starting to get a strong escape room vibe, and I was expecting some secret passage to open up once we got the exact right configuration of switch positions. Was this what it took to finally be able to access the elevator, maybe?!?

“Okay, kiddo, don’t give up–we can do this.”

You know, I never really thought I would ever be in the position where I would have to muster up so much fake optimism and encouragement to help my progeny successfully turn off the lights in a single room, but then again, EC9 was proving itself to be a never-ending cornucopia of WTF situations that simply should never occur in this dimension of reality.

I was in the middle of having such an inner dialogue with myself when I spotted yet a fourth ----- set of switches next to the shower.

…and that’s when I lost my sh*t, flying into a fit of rage as I rushed from one set to the next, violently flipping switches on and off, all teaching my child how to properly take the name of any and all Lords in vain.

I was so sick of this purgatory by now that I was eager to just move on to some form of hell itself–and with my little cursing spree, I’m pretty sure I guaranteed my seat in Hades, no matter which religion turns out to be the true one.

Anyways…I’m proud to say that after 5 minutes of tomfoolery, we finally had ourselves a dark bathroom.

Yes, that’s right: a grown-ass man just gave himself and his toddler a Hi-Five for successfully turning out the lights in a room.

Oh, sh*t. Wait just a minute! Did we just officially enter the TwiLight Zone?

Hmmph.

Well, if it is, it has to be the most boring episode ever…

Content created on: 27/28 August 2021 (Fri/Sat)

They claimed they spared no expenses when they built this place.

If only they had spared me their bullsh*t…

I’m going to have to apologize about the lack of foreplay upfront.¹I’m also going to have to apologize for the lack of better analogy than “foreplay”. Sorry, Mom. I’m so exhausted from trying to publicly catalog all the weird-ass things about Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9) and Better Beach Rentals, that I’m just going to assume you know what I’m going on about and jump right in to another round of idiosyncrasies from the 5 weeks my fam and I were refugees at this particular beach house.

In the off chance you are not familiar with good ol’ EC9, then you can catch up on what you missed here. Otherwise, let’s dive right on in…

Level 5: A Real Smorgasboard of Random WTFs

“Three microwaves?!?” Our 3-year-old couldn’t have been more excited to find that our home for the next month had not 1, not 2, but 3 microwaves!

Of course, would you expect anything less from the place that unabashedly bills itself as a member of “the most luxurious town homes on Oak Island“? No, you wouldn’t.

Clearly you would need a fancy built-in drawer microwave in your kitchen, which just screams “luxury!” at you and any of your guests. Also, the bright-ass clock–which you can’t turn off for some reason–makes for an excellent source of light pollution for anyone who might be desperately trying to get some sleep on the couch in the living room, as they take refuge from a vengeful smoke detector.

And what says “I’m so ----- rich” better than completely unnecessary excesses? That must have been the motivation for having a duplicitous countertop microwave in the kitchen, mere feet from the first one. Or–alternate theory here–the first doesn’t work, because hey, it’s EC9.

Lastly but not leastly, is the coup de grâce:²a French phrase that apparently didn’t mean what I thought it meant, but Ima use it anyways the wet bar area featuring–wait for it–another microwave! But this time, with a twist: the plastic trim around the buttons was falling off, and when maintenance was asked to fix it because, hey, you can’t feel fancy with things literally falling apart around you, guess what they thought would do the trick? Good ol’ duct tape. NOPE. I ended up buying some super glue and fixing it myself because it was starting to depress me.

Oh, and by the way, Microwave #3? Never could get it to work. Yet, this turn of events surprises me not…

Exorcising with a screwdriver and a can of WD40:

When we first showed up to EC9, it didn’t take more than one night to convince us all that the place was haunted. Fortunately, it turned out not to be the case, and instead every single door suffered from one of two problems. Either the hinges were squeaky as hell–like, for example, the bathroom door on the kitchen/living floor that everybody used and would open super-slowly by itself if not shut all the way (I’m telling you, “well-maintained” is one word that should never appear in the same sentence as “Eden Cove 9”).

Or, if the door didn’t creak, then it indubitably would look something like this:

That was supposed to be the door to our closet in the master bedroom. But, as you can see from the gap in the upper right, it was not exactly square, and it was ----- near impossible to actually get into it because of that.

The door from the master bedroom to the master bathroom suffered from this as well, but unlike the closet, we really needed to be able to use that door. So halfway through our first week there I made a trip to the local Lowe’s and bought a Phillips screwdriver and a can of WD40. When I got back I set about doing what the maintenance team I guess could never be bothered to do, and did some basic up-keep on the hinges throughout the house.

I was real proud of myself after that, especially for fixing the bedroom-bathroom door. My pride party was short-lived though, as we soon found out that the only thing that had been keeping it shut was the friction with the door jamb when it was off-kilter…when Frank & Anne escaped from their hiding spot in the bathroom and nearly made it out the beautiful balcony doors and onto the roof–OOF!

I thought to myself that would be no problem, and I could just adjust the hinges a bit more so the door would latch when we shut it. But, like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun, and ended up stripping all the wood out where some of the hinge screws were and made things worse–oh, so much worse! In order to get into the bathroom after that, we would have to firmly lift the door knob straight up with all the might we could muster, then throw a shoulder into it, hoping that we had lifted it high enough and wouldn’t dislocate a shoulder.

I attempted to fix my original “fix”, but that ended up only making things worrrrrrrse, and yes, it eventually reached full-on “fiasco” status…

“We’re from the 80s, and we’re here to help:”

From what I could gather, these “newly constructed” townhomes–upon which “no expense had been spared”–were built sometime around 2014 or 2015. Not “newly constructed”, but fairly recently nonetheless.

Pray tell then, how did this hi-tech bit of home audio equipment end up throughout the home:

Or, how about this very exciting, state-of-the-art piece of home audio equipment:

Now I hope you’re starting to fully understand the Huge Lie that the proprietors/vacation mongers of this insanity-inducing place have been trying to shove down people’s throats: if you’re “newly constructing” a building and “sparing no expense,” then why in the hell are they scavenging home sound systems from early 90’s (at best)? Hmmm? Like, did they run over budget so badly that they had to go hit up the local Habit for Humanity?

Actually, I would like to rescind that comment about Habitat for Humanity. I don’t want to drag their good name into this whole mess. They at least have standards, and wouldn’t accept crappy 90’s tech, much less try to resell it to the public. I mean, I tried to give them our old dishwasher, but they wouldn’t take it…because it was a 2007 model.

Oh, and I need to include one last tid-bit in regards to their paging/sound system. I never could figure out why there was a doorbell just outside the main doors on the first living level. You know, the doors to the balcony. Why was there a doorbell on the balcony?!? Are guests getting drunk and locked out there, and have to ring the bell in order to get someone to let them back in? If you have a better theory, I’m all ears…

Here’s your sign:

One morning I was out for a stroll, and I decided to take a closer look at the big sign just out front that seemed to be promoting the Eden Cove complex.

For your contextual pleasure, I snapped a photo of it for you:

First off: see, I told you they were going all-in on the whole “luxury” angle. Secondly, I hope by now you’re laughing your ass off about them touting there circa-1992 “Centralized sound and paging system.”

But the real fun is when you take a closer look and discover just how on-brand these people are with their half-assery. And lucky you, I took a picture of those-there floor plans on the right, so you can take a closer look for yourself as well:

Now, it is very important that you don’t adjust your television sets. The crappy resolution you see is not from my camera, but exactly how it was on this mini-billboard. It appears that the hapless executive assistant over at Better Beach Sales–sister company to our infamous Better Beach Rentals, took a screen shot or picture of the floor plan, then tried to blow it up to billboard size. And not a single soul there could be bothered to think, “Hey, this might just make us look like a troupe of complete ----- idiots to the outside world. Maybe we should call in someone who knows how to run one of the fancy, new-fangled computers and fix this?”

Nah, why the hell would these nincompoops actually give a darn about details?

Details…like my favorite of them all: take a look back up at that last picture. It kinda undermines their whole luxury schtick when none of those ----- -faces can spell “Bedroom” right. And it wasn’t a singular typo, either–they are straight-up selling 4-“Bedrom” condos over here!

Man, and these guys want you trust them with all your Oak Island real estate needs? Sheeshus funking crust…

Content created on: 31 July/1 August 2021 (Sat/Sun)

I never thought I would be compelled to publicly complain about plumbing.

Yet, here we are…

“D*ck Guillotine.”

No, I’m not talking about the lead singer of the fantastic dumb-rock band, Electric Six. That would be D*ck¹LOL, I can’t actually type out d-i-c-k because of my stupid self-censoring WordPress plugin. Hilarious, I say. Valentine. Though I can see how you could easily mix those two up. Instead I’m talking about the Word Of The Day, brought to you by the fine ----- at Better Beach Rentals.

“Better Beach Rentals?!?” you say. “I totally forget that you were still hung up on that bizarro beach house experience you had…way back in March.”

Okay, so I know that my ongoing review of the shit-tastic fiasco that was our 5-week stay at Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9)–which you can read up, albeit in reverse chronological order, here–has been dragging on for a while now. But I plead with you to give me a break–there were more layers to this stinky-ass onion than I had anticipated.

Plus, you know…I’m kinda long-winded about the smallest of frickin’ details, so there’s that working against me too.

All that being said, we really should just dive right into today’s theme without further context…

Level Four: Plumbing The Depths Of Hell

Shower [Severe-Lack-Of] Power!

So keep in mind that EC9 is very loudly touted as a “luxury experience,” and if you look at pictures of the bathrooms, you would be inclined to agree. Even in person, they look pretty fancy for the most part.

But be not deceived. The all suck butt in their own special ways.

For starters, EC9 boasts 3 and 1/2 bathrooms, including 3 very nice tiled showers. Good luck getting a luxury experience in any of them, though.

Two of them suffer from the same problem, and that is the shower has 3 options: the big shower head, the handheld shower head, and the body jets that shoot out right at ya. The issue is that you really only get to choose which one not to use at any given time, so the water pressure is always split between two of them, therefore you never get any decent pressure from any source.

It may sound like folly to complain about this, but I guarantee you, when you (or your insurance company) is paying for “luxury” and you can’t get a shower with decent pressure–it will piss you off to no end.

Eventually I discovered that the Elder’s shower–the least fancy of the 3–only had one option, the big shower head, and thus could actually provide a decent and comfortable experience.

The catch, though? The handle that allowed you to adjust the temperature was…simply missing. Just not there at all. In time I found that I could move it ever so slightly if I really dug my nails into the exposed hardware and twisted, but nevertheless is sure made for several nearly-scalded-scrotal experiences.

Though the most tolerable, Shower #3 still fell waaaaaay short of “luxury.” I mean, how hard can it be for maintenance to replace the ----- heat-adjusting handle? That can’t cost more than $10!

The Impossible Toilet.

Speaking of easily fixed issues that remain unaddressed, the Impossible Toilet is the one thing that made me say, “Really?!? The management and/or owner couldn’t be bothered to do this one thing right? Me-thinks I might be in the midst of a shit-show…”

What is this Impossible Toilet of which I speak, you wonder? Well let me show you:

Do not adjust your television sets. You are seeing a toilet handle that got installed upside down. And remained upside down. Again, I know how stupid it sounds. But this was the moment that the thought “Oh my god, I rented a ----- fun house” first went through my mind.

As you can see from the video, with the handle pointing in instead of out, it actually becomes really hard to get your hand back there to flush it. And once you do…well, nevermind not trying to rub the back of your hand all over the toilet lid–the human arm was never designed to pull up while in that position. I think I pulled a tendon in my arm every time I tried to use that toilet.

And surprisingly, even if when I was motivated enough to put the lid down just to flush, I found that it still hurt my arm like heck to pull up with my arm twisted around in that position.

Yet another reason to leave you wondering “what is up with this place? It’s just so…weird.”

The Back Breakers.

Of all the 4 toilets in EC9, I don’t recall a single one having a stable seat. That’s right: they were all Back Breakers.

A slightly wobbly toilet seat seems silly, but when you have pre-existing back issues? It’s no laughing matter when you’re sitting there doing your biz, when you go to slightly readjust your position and–WHEEEVP!²Because that is totally the sound something makes when it goes sideways. Your torso remains in place while the seat and your hip region slide violently to the side.

It’s not a joke man. That will jack your back up lickity-split.

A quick errata though: now that I think about it, there was one toilet that was nice and stable. But of course, it had two fatal character flaws: 1) it was the only toilet that couldn’t be accessed from a common space (like a hallway), as it was attached to the room where the in-laws would be sleeping, and so I only got to use it on occasion, and then only in the middle of the day; and 2) it had a vent constantly blowing freezing cold air directly at the king (or queen) upon their throne, so long-term shat-sessions were, shall we say, highly discouraged.

The D*ck Guillotine.

Yes, it is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, in which you finally get to find out what, pray-tell, exactly a D*ck Guillotine is.

Let’s start with yet another visual demonstration:

Growing up, one of my aunts had a D*ck Guillotine in her main bathroom, and it literally GAVE ME NIGHTMARES. And if you’re of the ilk who like stand when they pee, than you should be gravely terrified of these C*ck-Choppers as well.

As you can see from my demonstration, a DG is a toilet seat that cannot physically stay in the upright position. So if a gent goes to take a whiz at a DG, one of three things happens:

1. He has to awkwardly hold the seat in the locked and upright position with his non-aiming hand. Not only is the human back meant to never be in this position, it’s just plain nasty to be touching the underside of a toilet seat. Gross.
2. He tries to out-piss the toilet seat. But c’mon, we all know that you can’t fully empty your bladder in the time it takes for the seat to get to stream-level. This always ends in one way: a violent and ungodly attempt to cut off one’s flow before straight-up pissing all over the toilet seat during its descent. Even if stopped in time, there is the real medical threat of straining one’s urethral sphincter muscle in the process. And nobody wants that.
3. If one is overly-endowed, the D*ck Guillotine lives up to its name..and pinches your peter in a particularly peculiar position. Ouch. So…three cheers for being an “average man”?

In other words, such a toilet is completely ----- useless to any man who doesn’t have the time and/or functioning knee joints to sit down to pee. COMPLETELY USELESS, I SAY!

The Steaming Pile Of Sh*t.

Instead of ending on the high note of penile decapitation, I’ll leave you with how we left the lone toilet we had on the top floor with our and the Younger’s bedrooms: fortunately, not completely full of shit.

With about 5 days left to go of our 5 weeks stay, that toilet decided to stop refilling itself with water after flushing. Often times this can easily be rectified with just a little bit of fiddling, but not this time, no siree, Bob! The fricking handle to the water valve was frozen in place on top of that, and the last thing I wanted was to break the ----- thing off trying to get it to turn!

So we just learned to co-exist with a toilet that we couldn’t take a dump in for those final days. We limited it to liquid waste only, and then after a handful of uses, would use the Younger’s whale bath toy to haul enough water over to manually induce a “flush.”

Now, you may be wondering: why we didn’t do what any renter should have done and called the Better Beach Rental’s maintenance team to come out and fix it?

I’ve already touched on some of the interactions we had with these guys (the elevator, the smoke detectors, etc), while I’ve yet to share other run-ins and fiascos. Let’s just suffice it to say we were rather frustrated with their seeming inability to get anything fixed in a timely manner.

Anne Frankly, we were simply tired of their sh*t.

The End.

…of the plumbing stories anyway.

Why, but of course there is more. With these asshats, there’s always more…

Content created on: 24/25 July 2021 (Sat/Sun)

Being audibly abused is never thrilling.

It just might make a nice guy resort to killing…

By now you may be starting to suspect that I’m dead-set on airing every single one of my grievances I have with a recent vacation property we stayed in, the slowly-becoming-infamous Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9), and the crack team of property managers we rented it from, Better Beach Rentals.

And you would be absolutely right. Though, in fairness, it’s more about celebrating the absolute mind-screw that staying at EC9 was, rather than just ragging on a poor defenseless property and property management company.

So far though, it hasn’t been such a terrible mind-screw…yet. Bear with me, though, as I slowly and methodically build my case. For sake of time, I’ll give you a tl;dr¹That would be short for “too long; didn’t read”. refresh on the first two Levels of Purgatory that I’ve covered so far: too many stairs, and a non-working elevator coupled with crappy customer service. There, consider yourself caught up.

Now let’s get on with this Never-ending VRBO Review of Eden Cove 9…

Level Three: The Tale-Tell Heart, EC9 Style

“Chirp-chirp-chirp!” *Random amount of time passes* “Chirp-chirp-chirp!”

No, we didn’t have a bird trapped in the house. That would have been too easy. Nope, you guessed it: we had a rogue smoke detector going crazy on us. Just wonderful.

The worst part was that it was on the first level of EC9, where my mom’s and the Elder’s rooms were located. And it didn’t waste any time assaulting them either: it started going off-script just as those two had settled into bed on our very first night there.

At first Mom’s theory was that it would chirp every 5 minutes, but wouldn’t you know it, the second she called me down to desperately ask for help, it wouldn’t follow that pattern. In reality, it was merely lulling us all into a false sense of security. After no activity after 15 minutes of mind-numbingly boring waiting, we concluded that it had gone back to behaving, and Mom and the Elder settled back in for the night.

They were finally drifting off to sleep, and then BAM–it attacked again without warning with another vicious “Chirp-chirp-chirp!”

My poor mother was starting to be honest-to-goodness traumatized at this point in time. But at least she had the good sense to flee her abuser, as she wisely grabbed some pillows, and with the Elder in tow, hiked up to the second level of the house where she sought refuge on the couches in the living room. Not that it completely solved the problem; she later told me she could still faintly hear it chirping from all the way up there, keeping her awake.

Nonetheless, I would say that an uncomfortable night on the couch would be waaaaay better than never being able to fully fall asleep, living in constant fear that the smoke detector could beat the living shit out of your eardrums, unprovoked, at any given moment…

I swear to the Higher Powers That Be that this smoke detector was a legit psychopath. Like, evil genius, there’s-a-special-place-in-hell-for-you level psychopathery. All throughout the next day, it behaved itself and didn’t make a peep. But once again, it was all just a ruse in order to take advantage of over-trusting upright citizens.

Around 6:30 pm that evening, that asshole declared his presence once again with a belligerent “Chirp-chirp-chirp!”

“Ah, hellz, no!” I declared to one in particular as I marched downstairs, and with phone in hand. I wasn’t going to tolerate this tormenting of my family; it was time to bring in the professional, so I dialed up BBR’s after-hour maintenance guy and told him to haul tail over there lickety-split!

An affable fellow, perhaps college age, he and I hit it off as we tried to scientifically deduce what the heck was going on, and how to remedy it. However, what made it so difficult was that we couldn’t repeat the error. This is what was so maddening–there was no way to really know we had fixed anything besides just…waiting. Uggh.

After an hour or so of chasing our tales, all he could do for me was change all the batteries and wish me the best. Of course, most of the time dead batteries are the cause of random-ass chirpings, so we were somewhat optimistic that the problem was solved.

“What if…what if it starts beeping again?” I asked, knowing that it was wise to hedge my bets.

He informed me that if it persisted, the only remedy would be for him to replace it with an entirely new one, and that in the meantime, I had his–wink-wink–“blessing” to go nuclear on it and completely rip out not only the battery but the entire unit if it came to that.

Welp.

You can bet your bottom dollar that it came to that. It only took until about 9:30 that night before that little ----- chirped its last “Chirp-chirp-chirp!” before I ripped its throat and heart out and buried it deep in a pile of towels on the second level.

NOW the problem was solved!

“CHIRP!”

It was barely an hour after my rage-fueled dismembering of Sir Psycho Smoke Detector, and it must have been so traumatic I could swear I was hearing impossible things. I wrote it off as attributable to the PTSD that comes when you snuff the life out of something in cold-blood, and went back to researching kitchen tile backsplash options.

“CHIRP!”

Nope, that was real, and was definitely coming from that pile of beach towels. I must have forgotten to take the battery out…

As I got up to finish off the tenacious beast, something caught my eye. Sitting there on the kitchen counter was a 9-volt battery…the very one and the same that I knew I had taken out earlier that evening.²I truly believed that if I had done what I was about to do next–walk down to the beach and heave into the Atlantic Ocean–that it still would have somehow found a way to make it back to the house and chirp at me, its ruthless killer.

You have got to be ----- kidding me.

Good god, have I moved my family into the Haunted ----- Mansion?

(Tune in next time to hear more…)

Content created on: 24 June 2021 (Thursday)

Now, if you’ll turn in the Good Book to Proverbs 20:17:

“Stolen bread tastes sweet, but it turns to gravel in the mouth…”

“Guess what kids?!? Your Pops just won you a free five-week stay at the beach!!!”

Yep, that’s right, we’re still talking about that one time I outsmarted our insurance company and subsequently found myself and my family taking refuge from our home remodeling project at a beach house in Oak Island, NC.

But not just any beach house! It was the one and only luxurious Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9), managed by none other than the soon-to-be-discovered ironically named Better Beach Rentals. And, today, friends, we shall continue our voyage of discovery as I continue my extended review of the whole EC9, um, “experience”.

First, recall from last time how I shared our initial encounter with EC9: all those ----- stairs. Now, “vacation house has too many stairs” is really an unfair complaint for any beach house. But leave it up to Better Beach Rentals to take a minor inconvenience to–and pardon the pun–a whole new level. Level of Purgatory, that is…

Level Two: The Mystery Of The Moving Closets

“Honey, have you been able to get into any of these huge coat closets? The doors seem to be jammed.”

Since we had brought half our belongings with us to our Oak Island home, I was rather appreciative of the idea of having ample storage space on each of our three living levels, but it wouldn’t do us any good if we couldn’t get into them.

Even after pressing the button next to each door, nothing happened. They didn’t appear to magically unlock them as I had hoped. Nuts.

But after briefly trying and then getting on with settling in, something odd kept banging around in the back of my mind. Back when I was trying to decide whether to rent this place, I had read several reviews for this unit and for some of its Eden Cove brethren. In passing some previous patron had lamented that it was “a pity that the elevator was out of order.”

Holy shit, Batman.

How could I have been so dumb? The VRBO listing wasn’t kidding around about all the luxury that awaited us during our stay at Eden Cove. What is even more luxurious than huge coat closets? That’s right–we had our very own elevator up in the place!

I admit that it took me an embarrassingly long time to put the puzzle pieces together, but there was no doubt about it. That was definitely an elevator.

This realization came at the end of our first day there, and while we had moved most of our stuff in already, we still had several bulky items such as desks that still needed to be hauled up to the top floor. So an elevator was a sight for sore calves indeed!

Of course it couldn’t be that simple could it though? For the life of us we couldn’t get the dang thing to work. The only call button that even lit up when pressed was the one on the ground level, but then it would just flash at us and proceed to do exactly jack squat.

Now, for completely unrelated reasons, I shortly found myself on the phone with BBR’s after hours maintenance guy, and after he solved my problem, I happened to casually ask if the elevators were supposed to work. To my delight, he said that the owners had been making an effort to get them in working order, and that he would happily put in a work order to have it fixed!

Oh boy, Monday couldn’t come soon enough! That night I could barely sleep due to the anticipation of having access to private and convenient elevation. ‘Twas indeed a night filled with elevator repairman fantasies–of the PG kind, of course…

Have you ever sat around and waited for the mail all day? Or otherwise found yourself in a holding pattern while you waited for something important to happen?

So then you know what my Monday was like. Expecting the elevator guy to show up any minute, I put off any task that involved my focus for more than 10 minutes, including important things like going on a grocery run so my family wouldn’t starve. Or fun ones like enjoying with the girls this beautiful oasis that awaited us just out the back door:

It also didn’t help that we were harboring two pets that, if discovered, may or may not have gotten us kicked out onto the street with no refund. Thanks to the presence of Frank and Anne,¹Not their real names. the prospect of a stranger coming into our new home had us all on high alert, and I had to constantly be prepared to hide them and all related paraphernalia in the attic at the slightest hint of someone coming to visit.

Anyways, come 4 pm Monday afternoon, and still no there was no sign of the elevator guy, so I called up BBR and asked them what the dealio was, yo. They seemed to be very helpful, and said they would follow up and give me a call back. “What great customer service!” I thought.

Well, come Tuesday around noon–and another morning wasted waiting–and still no call back from BBR. So I had to call them up again to see what the heck was happening. They apologized and informed that the repairman was scheduled to come sometime in the morning the next day, and that, per my request, would call 15 minutes ahead of time.

At this point, I don’t think I have to tell you that I wasted another half day Wednesday waiting for this ----- guy to call. Finally, around 2:30, I called BBR out of exasperation, only to be told that, actually, he had already came and went.²The elevator on ground level is open to the outside, so it is perfectly plausible that one could work on it without ever setting foot inside. The diagnosis was that it needed a new control board, and–good news! The order had already been placed! Now, it just a matter of waiting for the part to come in.

More waiting. Of course, it was more waiting…

Fast forward to our last few days there, approximately 4 weeks later. After having the convenience of a working elevator to make moving all our stuff out a breeze, The Boss Lady and I couldn’t stop gushing the whole ride home about what an amazing, pampered, living-in-the-lap of luxury, 5-star, first-class service that Better Beach Rentals had really delivered!

…

Of course I’m J.K. Kidding.

No, not once did we get to ride in the elevator. Not a single ----- time!

Remember, I asked them to fix the elevator on our very first night there. They had 5 weeks to get the job done. What kind of shit-show ass-clown circus are they running over there anyways?

Though, by the end of our time there, we concluded that like hell we would ride in it had they got it working–no doubt we would have ended up either trapped for a week (best case scenario) or plummeting to the bottom in a manner that most people only have nightmares about.

“So why did it never get fixed?” you might as well go ahead and ask.

Well, I think maybe once in the interceding weeks did I try calling and following up on the “part” that was supposed to be coming in. But, about a week and half in I realized a cold hard truth: they had just been blowing smoke up my ass in hopes that I would either forget about it or get tired of waiting.

There was no part coming. Hell, there probably wasn’t even an elevator repairman. Wait…was there even an elevator in the elevator shaft?!?

I could feel the creeping suspicion that something was off about this place.

“This place is fancy af. This place is fancy af. This place is fancy af…“

That much was clear from the online listing, and I just had to keep repeating that to myself. Then it would have to be true, right?

Unless there more evidence emerged that suggested otherwise…

…

Yeah. That was indeed a foreshadowing of many installments of The Better Beach Rentals Review: The Extended Director’s Cut.

In other words, stay tuned…

Content created on: 17/18 June 2021 (Thurs/Fri)

To say that it was “A Vacation From Hell” might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Just barely, though…

“Here at Better Beach Rentals we are working to be better everyday. In order to get better, we need your help. Please take a few minutes to review the home and your Better Beach Rentals vacation experience…”

I sat there staring at my computer in disbelief. Before me: an invitation to leave a review for Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9), the beach house in lovely Oak Island, NC, in which we had just spent 5 weeks living in while our regular home was being repaired and renovated.

Did they really want my honest opinion of my experience to be shared with others? I grinned wryly to myself, as I couldn’t help but think that they might just end up learning a little life lesson about “being careful what you wish for.”

Frankly, though, the breadth and depth of things I had to say about our experience with these asshats was so immense, I realized there was no way I could ever write an appropriately succint-yet-thorough enough review. At least not one short enough for the attention span of unwitting potential vacationers who would otherwise be blissfully unaware that Eden Cove 9 is, in fact, quite possibly a Gateway to Hell.

So instead, I turn to you, Dear Reader, to spread the EC9 anti-gospel. Though to convince you, be fore-warned that it’s going to take several sessions…

First, some context though: one must recall how we ended up in such a luxurious beach house for such a long period of time in the first place. The overly-long version can be read here, while the brief version is that I was clever and mischievous, and forced our home insurance company to let us stay in “absolutely the most luxurious town homes on Oak Island” instead of some milquetoast property closer to home, much to their chagrin. And best of all, good ol’ Amica Insurance was footing the bill for our month-long semi-vacation at the beach!

In other words, we were going into it brimming with excitement that were about to live fancy af for a little while. It felt like we were at the foot of the Mountain of Purgatory, and the only way to go was up. “Could this be the beginning of Heaven?” we wondered aloud to ourselves…

Level One: I Guess I’m A Drug Mule Now

Since we have a lot of ground to cover, and I don’t want to take up your entire Sunday afternoon, it’s best that I ease you in gently to begin with. I’ll start off with a rather boring topic: stairs. But oh, were there so many ----- stairs.

Now this one is probably on us. You see, we’re what you might call “Flatlanders”–folks who live in a ground-level single-story home, and the most stairs we have to encounter in one day are the two steps from the sidewalk up to our porch. Yeah, maybe it was foolish of us to rent a place with pictures like this in the listing:

“What a wonderful view!” you might say. Yes, indeed, but did you ever consider the price you might pay to enjoy such a view? We sure didn’t–but we know the exact cost now: 3 excruciatingly long sets of stairs.

And if you’re wondering why you would need 3 sets of stairs for what is apparently only a 3-story townhouse, it’s because what the trees in the picture are hiding is all the carports that comprise the ground level. That’s right: we had to traverse a steep-ass set of stairs just to get in the front door.

Further exacerbating the situation was the fact that they put the kitchen and living room on the gosh darn middle level, meaning that any time we got groceries, we had to heave-and-ho them up two ----- flights, all the while trying avoiding tripping, slipping, and breaking our necks.

Now all of this might have been fine and dandy if we were only there to have a relaxing 1-week vacation. But oh, no, it could never be as simple as hauling a mere 5 suitcases up those stairs. Were we there to relax and relate? Heck, no! We were there to work and live on a semi-permanent basis.

That meant we needed in-house childcare, so at all times we had at least one grandparent living there with us, too. So even more possessions to haul in and out and up and down! Oh joy!¹For the record, their contribution to the quantity of said possessions was actually negligible.

In total, there were 3.5 adults, 2 children, and 2 “dogs”²For legal purposes, we can neither confirm nor deny whether or not the pets staying with this were or were not actually of the canine variety. living there at any given time. In other words, we had a lot of shit to move in, and once you throw in the work and school desks for those of who still had to work remotely and attend virtual school…

Well, you probably get the gist already, but let me throw in a visual aid for good measure. Around the time we moved in, my go-to attire for below-the-waist were Adidas jogging pants that had zippers at the ankles instead of elastic bands. Well, the morning after we moved into our new accomodations, I went to put them on only to find that I couldn’t zip them down over my swole-ass calves–nearly busting the zippers in the process!

I couldn’t help but immediately think of an infamous comment³https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/steve-king-and-the-case-of-the-cantaloupe-calves by the dishonorable⁴The guy got disowned by the Republican Party, for fuck’s sake. So I think it’s safe to objectively state that he was a bit of piece of shit, regardless of your political affiliation. former Congressman from Iowa, Steve King, making a case for keeping any and all Mexicans out of the U.S.:

For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another hundred out there who weigh a hundred and thirty pounds—and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling seventy-five pounds of marijuana across the desert…

Politician who somehow managed to be too racist for the Republican party

Well, what a pleasant surprise! I went into this with zero expectations of achieving my life-long dream of developing calf muscles that could scare the shit out of raging bigots, but alas, here we are…

Logically, this leads to one of the topics of the next installment of Eden Cove 9: The Extended Vacation Rental Review: “If only there were an elevator…”

Believe you me, I’m just getting started, so stay tuned!

Content created on: 9 June 2021 (Wednesday)