“Viva” Las Vegas.
So. Here we are, back in my hometown.
So far, I have to say, it has pretty much sucked donkey balls.
Let’s start with the apartment.
What we were promised:
A condo, rent free, until we were employed and able to pay rent. Alone. Much was made to do about how awesome the place was, how we were going to love being on our own, yadda. The apartment is furnished and has all of the cooking/eating supplies we would need, so we didn’t have to wait for the snow to stop in Colorado (the highways out of CO are the problem.) to get our things because there was plenty here!
The Reality:
SM’s brother D still lives here. He has been smoking in his room and on the balcony. The smell was overwhelming. He is a slob and a know it all, so we get to deal with the messy coffee spills in the kitchen (along with sprouted onions and brown garlic and BONES on the counter tops), the questionable gunk in the fridge which may or may not be strawberry related, and his constant “mansplaining” everything under the sun to me. SM’s Mom has successfully yanked the rug out from under us and doesn’t seem to understand why we don’t want to live with D. She said he would be leaving at the end of January, then took rent money for February from him and is saying things like, “We’ll just see how it works out…”
We were told, to our faces, that “Half the rent is better than nothing!” when we pressed as to when D would be leaving. So basically unless we can start at least paying half the rent, they don’t see why D should have to leave, even though THEY (SM’s Mom and her boyfriend) have complained to us about D for months.
D has trashed several things in the apartment – including the TV, the filter for the kitchen faucet, the trash can in the kitchen, and somehow got the remote for the gated entry “stolen” because someone cut a hole in his rag top. A small little hole they apparently stuck a tentacle into to get the remote out. He also asked their Mom why *he* had to move out, and why couldn’t SM and I just find a place.
Pots and pans? What? Dishes? Oh yeah, paper plates. Random drinking glasses that are probably dessert dishes in their day jobs. The dryer doesn’t work. Well, it does, sort of. It goes around, but suddenly won’t dry anything in a reasonable amount of time ever since I put the vent hose back on after SM’s Mom knocked it off and didn’t tell anyone.
The furniture is stained and dirty and obviously just whatever they didn’t want to take with them to their new place. Also- we were told the landlady knew we were going to be living there, then were told to keep it on the down low and if anyone asks we’re just visiting SM’s Mom.
Other irritations:
The apt is situated so that both of our rooms are next to each other, instead of in the “room mate style” that we were told was the lay out. This means that whenever D leaves his room, he has to walk right past our door and can see directly into our room and specifically at us sleeping on the bed. While we were solving this by keeping the door shut, we realized quickly that Murphy is too much of a cat box diver to have Ernie’s facilities in the same room with us. (Also – that cat has a toxic ass) So we moved the cat box out to the laundry room, figuring the cat would be okay in the closed room all night since he wasn’t using the box in the middle of the night.
Well, I’m up at 5 AM because the cat needed to go out. Little did we know, but D had not only dumped our still damp laundry on the couch, but he closed the laundry room door so even though I tossed Ernie outside of our room to do his business, he still couldn’t get to the box. Our new solution was to take down the ugly curtain in our room and put it up across the door. Which would work fine except that the rod is too long so it sits at a weird angle and it has already fallen on my head.
SM’s Mom still has a key to the apt and to the mailbox. She comes by and picks up the mail every day, and we are just supposed to trust that she’s not taking our mail with her. I see a PO box in our future.
I am really stressed out and have been operating at an anxiety level of about 8-9 on a scale of 1 – 10. The smell and the filth on our first night here resulted in a melt down of epic-ness in the parking lot of WalMart, of all places. Shaking, crying, and general “Oh Goddess what have we done!?!?” feeling of total, utter, mistake. I couldn’t believe my poor cat had been living here for over a week in this, walking on the awful carpet.
I feel stupid for believing that this time, this time SM’s Mom wasn’t going to pull a fast one on us. I feel led on and lied to, and just generally depressed about our situation. The sad reality is that we blew our money getting here, and had barely enough to buy food after having to buy cleaning supplies just to be able to sleep here the first night. I feel trapped and stuck and more than a little panicked about that.
I don’t blame SM for our situation. She is just as frustrated and unhappy as I am and is on her Mom like white on rice trying to get her to fix the situation. It is just really hard for me to even think about doing anything but hiding under the covers and crying when I feel like this.
I was outside walking Murphy this morning when he wiggled out of his collar and took off after a pit bull. Lucky for me, the dog was friendly and the owner had control of him. I was embarrassed that I had lost control of my dog, and gave him a stern talking to as we walked back. When I walked in and saw our laundry dumped on the couch, and then realized it was still damp, the first thought that hit my mind was that I was sorry we ever left Texas.
I don’t really know what to do with that.
That situation was bad, but this feels worse.
I feel like we jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.