The Landlord Has Just Left

I haven’t seen our landlord since last summer until this week and now I’ve seen him twice.  He’s thinking of selling the place and prospective buyers and an inspector are coming to look at it on Friday and Saturday.  He wants to be sure the units are presentable.

America, let’s just talk about bullshit here for a second.  I live in a small two-story town-home-y duplex box between the interstate and the railroad.  There are two other boxes just like ours, each owned by a different person.  Rent is between $750 and $800, which is cheap for this part of town, but it’s because we live at the end of a dead end between the interstate and the railroad.  The neighborhood doesn’t look particularly grand and the trains come by so loudly that they’re shaking cracks into the walls and knocking the doors off plumb.  Also, when one of these units goes vacant, it takes between four and six months to fill it.

Since I’ve been here, three years now, I think, I’ve seen every unit in all three buildings turn over except the woman who lives across the lawn from us to the south.  So, I would say that people live here on average a year or two and then the units stand empty for a quarter or half a year.  And the buildings are slowly falling apart.  And they need new roofs.

Directly across the interstate, folks are tearing down old houses and putting in four or six story apartment buildings or condos. 

You cannot get me to believe that anyone is interested in buying this place to  continue to rent it out for very long.  Anyone who would buy this building without plans to tear it down and put up something they can sell for a quarter of a million dollars is an idiot or just doesn’t see which way the neighborhood is changing.

Anyway, so, for the first time in six months my landlord comes by to finally trim the bushes and weed and pick up a little bit.  He’s also very worried that our place will not be cleaned up by Friday.  To which I’m dying to say, “No, it probably won’t, just the same way the plumber never came when the house flooded, just the same way you cut down all the beautiful trees because one limb fell onto the back stoop, just the way you never mow the lawn, etc.  Just like all the ways you let us down, I will let you down.”

But I did not say that.  Because I really want the Butcher to clean some.  And because of this–we have two cats and a dog.  Where the fuck are we going to move if he decides he’s pissed at us?

The Butcher’s all like “We should buy a house.”  And I’m all like, “Who’s this ‘we’?  You have some friend with a down payment? Because that friend should have bought your ass a car.”

Y’all, what I am about to say is so petty and ridiculous that I hope you won’t hold it against me.  I do not want my parents’ money.  They don’t even have any money to give me, if I did want it.  But they’re paying the recalcitrant brother’s child support and his phone bill and, sometimes, his car insurance and have been for a while.  When I think about the thousands of dollars they’ve given him over the years and how much it would mean to us to have a place of our own–just the emotional security of it, god!–I’m really, really jealous, in ways that are not very becoming for a grown woman.

If we have to move, I’m sending the cats to Mom & Dad and, if he complains about it, the Butcher is getting boxed up and left on the Yellow Brand Hammer Co.’s front doorstep.

Ha.

Anyway, anything having to do with housing always makes me anxious.  And here it is, 9:14 and I’m not motivated to go to bed.  I am going to go try to lay down, though, even though, I guess, I should be mopping or something.

I don’t know.  Normally, this would be one of those times when I bitched and cried about how lost I felt and how I’m trying but I just can’t get things together in any real meaningful way, but I’m kind of past that.

That’s been another interesting thing I’ve learned this week–that there’s a place past pissed off or fearful or hurt or lonely and it’s this kind of quiet, calm place where you might cry a little and then you stop, because the sun hits your face and it feels nice and so you smile until you realize that you’re not.  And the things which usually make you happy don’t and so you do other things and they don’t suck, so you keep doing them until you find something else to do. 

I’m probably not explaining it very well.  I’m drifting.  But I don’t care.  It upsets me or it feels full of possibility or I’m angry or I’m totally feeling the love.  Whatever.  Whatever happens, I guess we’ll deal with it.  Or I’ll deal with it and the Butcher will do his thing.  Or he’ll deal with it and I’ll go to bed.