Got my driver’s licence in the mail today. I look….incredibly dorky. But it’s still a better photo than the one on my learner’s, and after four years it’s about time!
Anyway, what I wanted to write about today is our landlord. He’s driving us insane! Where to start? His excessive drinking. Which I wouldn’t care about, except he and his friends drink SO MUCH that our bins fill up within a day and because recycling is only collected every fortnight, we just can’t keep up. Bottles and cans fester for weeks. By the time the bins are emptied, and we go to fill it up with all the backlog, it’s full again. It’s DISGUSTING. There are boxes, papers, bottles, all sortsof recycling materials piled up in front of our house because our bin is full. There’s no end in sight. He would literally have to quit drinking for a month or two.
He’s becoming insanely nosy, whiney and bossy. That, and he never does anything he says he will (mow the lawn – he now has a lawnmower; fix our windows that don’t shut properly, change blown lights).
He still hasn’t got our water meter checked out. I gave him printouts from the council site showing what to do and the form for refunds of leaks. I’m sure we have a leak – I’ve done overnight checks two or three times and everytime there has been movement while we sleep. He maintains that our bills are in line with our household. I don’t think he gets how little we use – one of our flatmates is never here, we don’t have a washing machine, and (slightly gross) not everyone has a shower every single day.
The other day, apparently he came around in a grump, told one of our friends to shut up (he was telling a story about someone who cut him off on the road), and then last week came around complaining about guests “talking in high pitched voices”. WTF? Seriously. We don’t have parties. We’re fairly quiet I’d say for a bunch of 20yearolds. Whatever happened to privacy? I get that it’s his house. But we don’t pay to have a parental figure yell at us for stupid things like that. We’re paying his mortgage.
It wasn’t so bad, because all of last year he was rarely here. (Thankfully. Our dodgy agent didn’t even inform us that he lived in the back flat.) Now he’s here fulltime, WITH his mother and sister who are moving here and haven’t found a place yet. He promised they wouldn’t be here long; it’s a temporary thing. Yeah. We’ll see. Ever since, it’s been unbearable, his – and their – constant presence. There’s NEVER any hot water – at its hottest, it’s comfortably, mildly warm – not scalding as it should be. They’ve taken over the backyard – we have a full section which is really why our rent is so high. But now we can’t enjoy it because they’ve taken it over, dumping their junk everywhere, plus their flat opens out onto it and we would feel strange about hanging out there. And this week, a cage of DUCKS appeared out back. Poor things scurry around in a pack, huddled in the safety of the herd. He reckons he’s going to sell the creatures.
Our house needs a ton of work. He’s been laid off as far as I know. Hence always being around, not having had the windows fixed, etc. BF says he told him “I thought once I had a house, I had it made, and I’d be set for life.” Nuh uh. He wants to landscape around the place, tidy it up, and ‘get a loan’ for it. I assume he means borrowing against his equity (which surely can’t be much? He bought start of last year before the huge crash).
Sigh. Okay, end rant.