Life in the Soon to be Ex-Landlady Lane

For the last 10 months (since August 2011) I have rented a bathroom and bedroom in my house to another person. For the most part this experience has not been a good one. He smokes, he drinks, he lies, he lost his job over 6 weeks ago (and hasn’t applied for unemployment OR any jobs), he’s a user, he’s a manipulator, and he’s a thief. And those are his GOOD points.

I was tolerating all this until he let my cat go outside. The roommate is not allowed to smoke inside the house so he goes out my sliding glass door and smokes on the side deck.

It wasn’t the first time that the cat has ‘escaped’ and I don’t blame him–really–for the cat going outside. Mick loves to go outside, and he’s a sneaky cat LOL. He’s gone out several times with me in control, so again I don’t blame my roommate for his going out. I do blame him however for opting to not wake me up and tell me the cat had gone out.

Why is Mick’s going out such a big deal? There are several reasons. The first one is that he doesn’t have his shots (my roommate has been told this at least 5 times) and the second one is that the park manager (who just so happens to live across the street from me) made it clear back in 2008 when I adopted the cats that they were not allowed outside. By ‘made it clear’ I mean that he said he will trap roaming cats and take them to the Humane Society animal shelter (yes my roommate was told that also at least twice). In addition, I have a second cat that also doesn’t have his shots, so Mick being allowed outside puts not just him at risk but also the second cat.

My roommate cannot guarantee that all the animals in the park (domestic and wild) are disease free. We have deer, birds, and squirrels not to mention other cats and dogs in the park.

He cannot guarantee that Mick won’t get run over either in the manufactured home park itself or out on the major (and very busy) cross street that is close to my house (this is the same street that I refused to walk into/across when the cop in this post http://www.i-dont-think-so.com/?p=1129 wanted to get me killed –run over by numerous vehicles– just so he could catch a stray dog).

My roommmate cannot guarantee that someone else in the park will not ‘adopt’ Mick for their very own, or that someone else in the park will not take him to the animal shelter.

He cannot guarantee that all the dogs in the park like cats, he cannot guarantee that there won’t be roaming dogs that don’t belong here (see the cop/dog story mentioned previously, that dog didn’t live here in the park).

However, what really angered me was that my roommate didn’t tell me for hours that the cat had left. For that matter, he didn’t tell me at all. At 10:45 am he comes in from smoking, and all innocent-like (about as innocent as Mussolini!) asks me if Mick has come home yet. I went to bed at 1:00 am, and he hadn’t bothered to tell me that Mick ran out. How was I even supposed to know that the cat was gone, since somebody hadn’t even told me? I would not have been angry had he awakened me to let me know, but I was furious that he didn’t let me know at all.

The thing is, the last time that the cat went out, he told me. I was in bed, watching TV, and I was in my birthday suit. I wasn’t going to hop right out of bed when he was still in my bedroom doorway. Even if I wasn’t fat, being naked in front of a jackass ain’t my idea of fun.

When I said “I’ll go get the cat in a minute” he said “it’s going to be cold tonight, the cat will come home on his own.” I was furious, who was/is he to tell me what to do? He is/was my ROOMMATE, not my brother, father, significant other, not even a friend, barely even an acquaintance.

But what really tore it for me is that when I did go out to look for the cat, I turned on the outside light. He was in the kitchen at the time but he made a special trip to turn off the outside light while I was still outside. By a special trip, I mean he had to deliberately go over to the slider to turn off the light, it wasn’t a straight shot from the kitchen to his bedroom.

So I am outside in the dark, the grass was wet (dew), my feet were bare, I could easily have tripped, I was already angry about the cat, and there are usually pine needles, pine branches, and pinecones all over my yard and my side deck.

My soon-to-be ex-roommate has the dubious distinction of being the first (and hopefully only) person I have ever SCREAMED “fuck you” at; he probably didn’t hear me but it certainly made me feel better. It was about an hour before the cat came home that time, and the roommate was SO concerned that he went right to bed even before the cat came home.

Most “unauthorized excursions” by the cat have been short and during the day. This last one lasted for hours and was both late at night and during the day. The only reason he wasn’t taken to the shelter was that it was a national holiday and the shelter was closed.

The cat came home within 2-3 hours of my finding out that he was gone. He was hot, dirty, exhausted, and very very thirsty. Within 2 hours, I’d told my roommate he needed to move out and that I wasn’t going to put up with this any longer. I think he was planning on leaving with no warning anyway because he was just totally calm when I told him he had to leave.

Now, before you start thinking that I’m some wierd cat lady that thinks cats are worth more than people, this man has done nothing since he moved in other than eat, smoke, drink, sleep, and watch TV. When he was working he was working 27 1/2 hours a week and doing absolutely nothing around the house other than dirtying it!

He removed the doorknob from his bathroom door without a word to me. He broke the handle off a vegetable brush and never mentioned it to me. He ruined a brand new scrubby sponge the first and only time he deigned to clean the stovetop, and refused to clean up after himself after I didn’t run right out and buy more scrubby sponges.

Later, I bought a 6 pack of scrubby sponges, and he was mad that a wet, dirty one was in the sink. He put in the package with the clean dry ones. They weren’t clean and dry for long.

He lied about his drinking in the first place. He said that he drank only on special occasions—I guess getting out of bed in the morning is a special occasion.

After he lost his job on April 20 2012, he didn’t apply for unemployment OR even one job. All he has done since he lost the job is smoke MORE, drink MORE, watch MORE television.

He stored dirty dishes, garbage, massive quantities of empty beer cans, dirty glasses, and dirty silverware in his room even though there is a working dishwasher in the kitchen.

Nearly every night he would go in the kitchen when I was trying to sleep and be noisy as 10 herds of cows (the kitchen wall and my wall for my bedroom are adjacent).

He refused to mow the lawn even though that was part of the agreement even before he moved in. I finally — after 6 weeks and a threat from my park manager — had to hire someone else to mow the lawn at a cost of $15.00 per week.

Before he even moved in I had asked him to take a look at my dryer (it hasn’t worked since October 2010), hang a shower rod in my bathroom, and fix my back door (missing doorknob). He said yes he’d be happy to do all that. Those requests were July 2011 and August 2011, this is June 2012. He hasn’t looked at the dryer at all, he hasn’t hung the shower rod, and the back door still doesn’t have a doorknob.

He had windows open in his bedroom in 42 degree weather (presumably because he was smoking in the house while I was gone) while the heat was on.

When I lost my job, he had the nerve to lecture me about ‘we mustn’t let the electricity get turned off.’ He never realized that the electric heat got turned off due to his own actions….because I don’t pay to heat the great outdoors when the temperature is 42 flipping degrees. In addition, what did he think I did for 52 years without his condescending comments? My electricity has NEVER been turned off and I have been on my own for numerous years. If he was so concerned about the electricity he wouldn’t have had the windows open with the heat on and he wouldn’t have left the lamps on in his room nearly 24/7.

Then there’s the safety issue. He has left the oven on multiple times and he has turned on the stovetop burners and left them on several times.

And let’s not talk about the fact that for the last 10 months I have had to literally HIDE my food and most of my belongings from this man because in his world, if I am not actively using something it is his for the taking.

In addition, he threw every last one of his empty toilet paper rolls in a big pile on his bathroom floor. Mind you, there are a minimum of TEN garbage cans in this house. And he was working as a janitor so there was no way he thought that what he was doing was acceptable.

Here’s even more complaints, or really same old shit, different day LOL http://www.i-dont-think-so.com/?p=1132

I do plan on getting another roommate, but I’ve learned my lesson. NO smoking, NO drinking, a specific lease period, rules, rules, rules LOL. I plan on running a real background check on the next roommate candidates, and they must have 3-5 references (would prefer employer or church references, as one of this man’s references lied for him to help him get out of the homeless shelter).

I agreed to 2 extra days because the person helping him is on jury duty. Supposedly he is paying me for those two days. But money or not, I am sorry I agreed to the 2 extra days because all it did was make him even more lazy. One load yesterday, one load today, beer drinking, watching LOUD television, lots of smoking.

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