I hate my neighbors.

I hate the teenagers who throw trash in my yard.

I hate whoever steals and breaks my holiday decorations.

I hate my upstairs neighbor for allowing her cats outside to poop in my yard (cats are not supposed to go outside here). I hate her for the fleas that slowly but surely seem to be infesting my house. I hate her for flooding her bathroom and not calling the landlord because her house is a sty – the end result being water dumped on my head on my birthday or just a whole week of bathroom fun.

I hate the neighbor who parks next to me because he has a giant truck and parks like an asshole. See?

My landlord has told me now that he is not going to fix the electricity until next week. No matter what he says, I’m not confidant in the power they’ve set us up with and I am not vacuuming or running the blender. I knew this would happen. I knew it! He told me monthly for THREE YEARS that they were going to tent the apartment complex “in a couple of months”. I just know he’s going to drag this electricity thing out as long as he can. But I’ve had enough. I’m fed up. He will fix it next week or I will go ballistic on him.

Today I am fantasizing about moving out somehwere for a few months. That would help us save money as well as get the hell out of here. And maybe teach the landlord a lesson. He likes us because we are clean, quiet, and reliable – we’ve lived here for 8 1/2 years now. He really would be sad to see us go. But he can bite me.

Oy. Update Cubed.

After losing electricty several more times, it finally gave up completely. But not after a brownout or several. I spoke to my landlord during this time and wanna hear his opinion on brownouts? OK, make sure you aren’t gonna wake any babies or anything by laughing. He told me that none of my appliances or electronics would be damaged because the electricity was only either off or on – never in between.

Um.

“Is that why the lights are only halfway on?” I asked him.

He promised to replace any appliances that were damaged.

But that night we came home right at the kids’ bedtime to discover that the power had finally given up. Three hour later we were finally in a hotel down the road. It was a pretty darn nice hotel. Not like the one we stayed in last summer during the tenting. You know, the one that came with free panties? It was just a bummer that we couldn’t enjoy it more.

In any case we are back home and I am just run out. Exhausted. I woke up this morning with my eyes completely bloodshot (rare for me) and puffy. The husband sent me back to bed. I’m still tired. And have no coffee creamer for coffee. Why? Because all the food in thr fridge is bad. I’m assuming everything in the deep freeze is fine (right?) but the fridge food needs to be replaced. So I am off to do that in a bit. Which isn’t all bad because a trip to Trader Joes is in order (and it’s free! paid for by the landlord. This is one aspect of renting that I will sorely miss when we own).

And an update on the camera? Well, I’ll be back later for that. *wink wink*

Update Update

The electrician came out last night after the kids were asleep and dontchaknow he needed in the room where the preschooler was sleeping? It worked out, though. It never ceases to amaze me how much kids can sleep through – power tools included.

We went to bed content with promises of stable electricity. And then woke up to another outage.

Will this entry get posted?

This whole thing has got me so depressed. I think it’s a combination of the unreliability (will I be able to finish in the bathroom before being plunged into darkness?), the fact that I am cut off from the internet world (how cn I find out why my tempra paints went moldy if I can’t get online??) and the sheer frustration of it. I keep reminding myself that I can live – and happily so – without electricity. But then I also have the right to feel frustrated.

Secretly I hope the landlord puts us up in a hotel so we can go on a mini-vacation this weekend.

To top off the low feelings, I got an e-mail last night that my camera is officially on backorder. Yes, I ordered a camera. A Nikon D60. And it needs me! I can feel it calling to me in the night. My fingers positively itch for it. And it’s on backorder. This is not something they have noted on their website so I am hoping it will buy me some free overnight shipping. It’s only fair. Right?

Thinking positive thoughts….. 🙂

Update

The good news is that it’s not my deep freeze. The bad news is that it’s nearly night and it’s not fixed. We keep losing power over and over again and it has to be reset regularly. *sigh*

Living in the Dark Ages

Today has been a lazy day. It’s been quiet and relaxing.

And then the power went out.

On the rare occasion that that happens, it usually comes right back on again. But this time it did not. I imagined it was probably some outside source like when someone drove their car into a transformer on my college campus and classes were cancelled for the rest of the day (unless your professer was a jerk).

The kids were wacky about the outage – the girl child being afraid of the dark (hello? daylight?) and the boy running around to try different switches and to announce which ones didn’t work (all of them). Since we have errands to run anyway (knitting store! knitting store!) I figured now was as good a time as any and maybe we’d have electricty again when we got home from M’s speech appointment (and the knitting store!).

Moral of the story is: call the gas company before assuming the rest of the world is in on it.

When we stepped outside, I saw the neighbor’s porch light was on. However. That doesn’t mean anything because the engineers who constructed this building got creative and decided to put the building on two different circuits. Makes for interesting power outages where half the residents point and laugh at the other half.*

So I called the electric company who said I should go check my breaker and then if I wanted to sit home all day long and wait for someone to come check it out, they would be happy to send someone out. Thanks.

After a quick run to the knitting store (knitting store!), we came back home and the landlord came into my messy, messy abode to check on the problem. The state of the house with toys and laundry all over was nothing compared to the continual state of my closet which is – of course – where the circuit switches are. *sigh* I really should take a photo of it since my dirty secret is out now anyway. This is one of the main reasons I want to own a house. STORAGE. I can be neat and organized if given half a chance. Truly.

Anyway, that didn’t solve the problem, but checking the main breaker outside, apparently did. I was then chastised for having a deep freeze because they, apparently, use a lot of power. Now, I’m no electrician, but this remark seems akin to when my landlord told me that replacing the bent window screens would not stop the spider infestation because – quote – “Spiders don’t come in through windows.”** Yes, my landlord does often take hallucinogenic drugs while on the job. Keeps life interesting, you know. Anyway, I do realize the he’s not wrong in saying a deep freeze uses a lot of electricty, but I’m just not certain it’s enough to cause the whole house to shut down.

So, in the end we have electricity. I think perhaps it was the Universe’s way of gently pushing me to turn off the computer and DO stuff. So I came right here to blog about it.

*This never happened. Yet.
**He’s right, you know They actually knock and quite politely ask for permission to enter.