Thursday, July 14, 2005

I am Afraid of Landlords. This should be everyone's biggest problem.

Fortunately, we're almost done with our last one. She called last night. At a quarter to ten. This is early. Usually it's 10:00 PM on the dot, leading me to panic mightily as I grab up the phone. "Oh my God! What's UP? Oh. It's you."

She's decided to keep our cleaning deposit to pay for the stained rugs and the trouble of cleaning up the backyard. I feel that after nearly a decade of landlordish neglect, this is vaguely inappropriate, but frankly, I don't care enough to argue with her. She is, however, sending us the last month's rent, which is what I really cared about. So, we're happy.

Unfortunately, today I HAD to call our new landlord to ask about moving the blasted refrigerator. He explained that he moved the refrigerator back to 'where it belonged' because the tenants had moved it, and they'd used the wrong kind of hookup for the icemaker. I explained that I did not CARE about the icemaker, I wanted the fridge moved.

He seems sort of confused about this, but genially agreed to come by today or tomorrow and see if he can cap off the line. So now he's coming by. And there are half-empty boxes all over everything, and OHHHHHHH, stress, stress, stress, the landlord wants to get into our house, AAAAACK, er, help. What if I've scuffed the floors? What if he sees that there are clothes on the floor in the bedroom? What if he...

Yes, really, I'm thirty two. I'm a professional. Really. Honest. But, ummm...I have trouble with landlords. OK. Look, we're moving in. I signed a lease that said I wouldn't set the place on fire or paint the walls aqua, not put everything in the house neatly away as soon as I moved in. But I am still stressed, stressed, stressed--but I need the fridge to move.

The fella thinks the landlord is convinced that the fridge belongs in this weird spot because there is an overhead cabinet there, and normally, you'd stash the fridge under in. That's possible. But DARN IT, I need the counter space.

Out in the world of People With Real Worries, a mortar hit the undisclosed location of the undisclosed brother-in-law of my undisclosed boyfriend, somewhere in Afghanistan. (It's not as secret as all that, this is for privacy, and also because I don't really know.) The Undisclosed Brother-In-Law was forced to make his way to a bunker wearing bedroom slippers and Vlassic Pickle boxer shorts, but is otherwise fine, thank God.

And now I'm down to 10 Teacher Induction Program past-due homework assignments to go this summer.

1 comment:

Eliyahu said...

Tell the landlord, that, yes it's really unfortunate that the last tenants used the wrong hookups, but that it should be relatively easy to move the fridge, and use the right hookups, and then it will be where it belongs. after all, it's only 1/4 inch copper tubing, how hard can that be?