Um... yay?
Dec. 15th, 2010 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
treefrogSo, Dave and I are moving. Again. Okay, so we're maybe moving again but it's one of those 99% chance type of maybes.
I haven't blogged about the problems we've had with this place. This is mostly because, from a storytellers' point of view, they don't even come close to topping the problems we had with the last place. Nothing, for instance, has exploded.
However, we do have an infestation: a one-woman infestation in the form of our downstairs neighbor. I'd almost rather have the cockroaches back.
It's not that she tries to cause trouble. It just sorta comes naturally to her. We've been trying, since day one, to convince her not to smoke in the house. Part of the move-in contract was No Smoking, so we were within our rights to ask her to knock it off. Neither of us are smokers, and inhaling her second-hand smoke is no fun at all.
In addition to wafting nasty vapors up the vents at us, she has a boyfriend with whom she does not get along. He works in the oilfields and is rarely home. We know when he's home because we can hear her screaming insults at him, usually when we're trying to sleep. One of their fights ended with her breaking the screen door. Another one ended up with her hitting Naomi's car with her truck as she screamed off. She also has a variety of... other boyfriends? Male visitors? None of my business, but we get to hear her having sex with them. Loudly. Usually when we're trying to sleep.
What's truly creepy is that the sound carries best through our bedroom vent. It's scary as all hell to be wakened up at 2am by someone screaming "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!" underneath your bed. Or, possibly worse, having noisy sex underneath your bed.
Worse than the smoking and the noise, however, is the amount of money this woman costs us. She responded to our repeated requests that she not smoke indoors by shoving... I don't know what, exactly, but some sort of fabric into the vents, to keep the smoke from rising into our apartment. That did block the smell, but it also prevented any heat from getting into her apartment (and messed up our vents too). She solved this problem by purchasing a couple of space heaters and leaving them running 24/7.
Which would be fine, but Dave and I pay 60% of the utilities bill, and those things are expensive to run.
Finally, she has what she describes as "dirty clothes phobia". To me, it sounds like OCD. Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not pot-kettle-black enough to get snarky at her for having mental glitches. But she showers constantly (and often with her male visitors, which gets noisy) and makes it so that we have to time our showers so that she's not home. On top of that, she does anywhere from two to five loads of laundry a day.
Two to five loads of laundry. Every day.
Did I mention that Dave and I pay 60% of the utilities bill? Do you want to know what our portion ends up being?
No, you really don't.
Our landlords actually called us up and told us to cut it out, because usually when there's an unusually large power bill, it's the upstairs suite that causes it. Basement suites don't usually have enough in them to rack up that much of a bill.
I regard her OCD(?) with sympathy, but not enough sympathy to shell out hundreds of dollars to support her behavior.
Anyway, our landlords are good folks and, more to the point, old family friends. They realise (fuck you, American spell checker, it doesn't have to be "realize"!) that they can't get this woman to behave herself, and even if they evict her, it will take forever to actually remove her from the premises. So, when they discovered that another one of their properties is coming available, they didn't put it on the market. Rather, they offered it to us.
Now don't get me wrong. They made it perfectly clear that they're not trying to make us leave this house or trying to pressure us in any way. If we stay here, they'll try to work with the situation. But they figure that the new house would solve a lot of problems for us.
For instance, it's only $30 a month more than this one, and they figure that 100% of the utilities bill over there would still be quite a bit less than what we pay here, so it would be cheaper to live over there.
For this decreased price, we would get an entire house, not just one floor. We would have three bedrooms instead of two (with, apparently, some added-on bedrooms in the basement). We would have two bathrooms instead of one. We would have basement space for Dave to do leatherwork in. I could devote a room to my books and my desk.
Of course there would be drawbacks. It's even further away from school than where we are now. And... I know this house. I've been inside it. I've babysat some of its past occupants... because it is directly behind my parents' house. We share a back fence and could, given proper lighting, see into one another's kitchens. This gave me pause, of course, but I know my parents. Whatever else their faults may be, they aren't nosy, nor do they try got get me to mind their business. I won't like being this close to them, but I'd rather have them than many neighbors I've had. They like the idea of us as backdoor neighbors because some fairly awful people have lived in that house and they know we won't do anything too upsetting.
But really, it seems to be worth it. We haven't looked at the place yet, and it's been renovated since I babysat there, but Mom and Dad know the current occupants and have been there since the reno and say that it's very, very nice. We'd have more than twice as much space as we do now and no noisy, money-leeching neighbor in the basement.
So, unless we look at it and see something we can't live with, we're going to be moving. Again.
The thought of it exhausts me, but not quite as much as the thought of continued dealings with the Basement Pest.
I haven't blogged about the problems we've had with this place. This is mostly because, from a storytellers' point of view, they don't even come close to topping the problems we had with the last place. Nothing, for instance, has exploded.
However, we do have an infestation: a one-woman infestation in the form of our downstairs neighbor. I'd almost rather have the cockroaches back.
It's not that she tries to cause trouble. It just sorta comes naturally to her. We've been trying, since day one, to convince her not to smoke in the house. Part of the move-in contract was No Smoking, so we were within our rights to ask her to knock it off. Neither of us are smokers, and inhaling her second-hand smoke is no fun at all.
In addition to wafting nasty vapors up the vents at us, she has a boyfriend with whom she does not get along. He works in the oilfields and is rarely home. We know when he's home because we can hear her screaming insults at him, usually when we're trying to sleep. One of their fights ended with her breaking the screen door. Another one ended up with her hitting Naomi's car with her truck as she screamed off. She also has a variety of... other boyfriends? Male visitors? None of my business, but we get to hear her having sex with them. Loudly. Usually when we're trying to sleep.
What's truly creepy is that the sound carries best through our bedroom vent. It's scary as all hell to be wakened up at 2am by someone screaming "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!" underneath your bed. Or, possibly worse, having noisy sex underneath your bed.
Worse than the smoking and the noise, however, is the amount of money this woman costs us. She responded to our repeated requests that she not smoke indoors by shoving... I don't know what, exactly, but some sort of fabric into the vents, to keep the smoke from rising into our apartment. That did block the smell, but it also prevented any heat from getting into her apartment (and messed up our vents too). She solved this problem by purchasing a couple of space heaters and leaving them running 24/7.
Which would be fine, but Dave and I pay 60% of the utilities bill, and those things are expensive to run.
Finally, she has what she describes as "dirty clothes phobia". To me, it sounds like OCD. Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not pot-kettle-black enough to get snarky at her for having mental glitches. But she showers constantly (and often with her male visitors, which gets noisy) and makes it so that we have to time our showers so that she's not home. On top of that, she does anywhere from two to five loads of laundry a day.
Two to five loads of laundry. Every day.
Did I mention that Dave and I pay 60% of the utilities bill? Do you want to know what our portion ends up being?
No, you really don't.
Our landlords actually called us up and told us to cut it out, because usually when there's an unusually large power bill, it's the upstairs suite that causes it. Basement suites don't usually have enough in them to rack up that much of a bill.
I regard her OCD(?) with sympathy, but not enough sympathy to shell out hundreds of dollars to support her behavior.
Anyway, our landlords are good folks and, more to the point, old family friends. They realise (fuck you, American spell checker, it doesn't have to be "realize"!) that they can't get this woman to behave herself, and even if they evict her, it will take forever to actually remove her from the premises. So, when they discovered that another one of their properties is coming available, they didn't put it on the market. Rather, they offered it to us.
Now don't get me wrong. They made it perfectly clear that they're not trying to make us leave this house or trying to pressure us in any way. If we stay here, they'll try to work with the situation. But they figure that the new house would solve a lot of problems for us.
For instance, it's only $30 a month more than this one, and they figure that 100% of the utilities bill over there would still be quite a bit less than what we pay here, so it would be cheaper to live over there.
For this decreased price, we would get an entire house, not just one floor. We would have three bedrooms instead of two (with, apparently, some added-on bedrooms in the basement). We would have two bathrooms instead of one. We would have basement space for Dave to do leatherwork in. I could devote a room to my books and my desk.
Of course there would be drawbacks. It's even further away from school than where we are now. And... I know this house. I've been inside it. I've babysat some of its past occupants... because it is directly behind my parents' house. We share a back fence and could, given proper lighting, see into one another's kitchens. This gave me pause, of course, but I know my parents. Whatever else their faults may be, they aren't nosy, nor do they try got get me to mind their business. I won't like being this close to them, but I'd rather have them than many neighbors I've had. They like the idea of us as backdoor neighbors because some fairly awful people have lived in that house and they know we won't do anything too upsetting.
But really, it seems to be worth it. We haven't looked at the place yet, and it's been renovated since I babysat there, but Mom and Dad know the current occupants and have been there since the reno and say that it's very, very nice. We'd have more than twice as much space as we do now and no noisy, money-leeching neighbor in the basement.
So, unless we look at it and see something we can't live with, we're going to be moving. Again.
The thought of it exhausts me, but not quite as much as the thought of continued dealings with the Basement Pest.
