The Insanity Continues

My parents have finally talked about the decisions I made today. Instead of calling and telling me they're proud I finally acted like an adult they yelled at me for not talking to them first.

I don't get them. In one breath they're telling me I need to do these things on my own but then in the very next breath they're yelling at me for not talking to them first.

I mean, c'mon! Make up your fucking mind about whether or not I'm allowed to be an adult.

I don't get it, I really don't. They say they want me to stop relying on them so much but whenever I do they get upset that I didn't get their opinion. I tried calling them both several times during the day and they either didn't answer their phone or it went straight to voice mail.

I made the decision to have the repair shop go ahead and fix the car, requiring me to pay them $500, and to extend my rental from one week to two, which has me paying another $500 to Avis.

My mother called while Vic and I were out getting dinner and she flipped when I said that I told the repair shop I couldn't pay for two more weeks. She's under the impression that they won't hold my car for two weeks. Well, they will. I know this because I asked, while making the fucking decision on my fucking own!

She also freaked over my having to have the rental for another week. Is she going to change her work schedule so that I don't have to go to work an hour early? No, I don't think so. So since neither she nor my father are willing to sacrifice so that I don't have to sit outside in an area I'm really not comfortable in while it's dark outside, I made the best decision, or so I thought, and extended the rental since I'll need a fucking car.

If they had only answered their phones or if she had fucking called me back on her lunch (when I called earlier this morning I left a message, her phone rang and then voice mail picked up so she would have seen she had not only a missed call but a message) then we could have avoided all this because she would have offered to buy me a car and I wouldn't be in this fucking mess.

This all started several weeks ago.

The apartment management put a notice on everyone's doors notifying us that the city is scheduled to inspect the property February 2. I was already in the process of cleaning my apartment, a very slow process since I hate to clean and my apartment reflected that. The manager and one of the maintenance men came to 'inspect' two Mondays ago. The manager handed me a pink piece of paper with four things written on it. I'm guessing they're the things she found 'wrong', but since two of them were things I can't fix (replacing the air filter and cleaning the air vents) I'm not totally sure. Two of them were things I can fix (take the foil off the drip pans on the stove and the trash bags that were waiting to go out).

The next day I was woken by a rustling noise outside the front door (my bedroom is right next to the entrance) but when I looked I didn't see anyone. It wasn't until much later that I found the note tucked between the door and the frame, on the side opposite where it opens. I'm not sure why they put it there instead of clipping it to the clip that's attached to the wall next to the door for just that purpose (something the complex did for all units, not just mine). The notice said that I was in violation of Article 19 of my lease agreement and was going to be reinspected in forty-eight hours and if it wasn't to their liking I'd be given sixty days to vacate.*

I got Vic to finish cleaning the kitchen and began working a bit harder at cleaning the rest of the apartment but I knew it wouldn't be as clean as they probably want it.

I figured the forty-eight hours meant they'd be by sometime Thursday and did what I could do but I was starting to get sick. Thursday afternoon I stopped in the office to renew my lease and the assistant manager said she'd be by later to 'reinspect'. She never showed.

Friday I was coughing pretty hard and felt like I'd been hit by a truck so nothing got done over the weekend.

Monday one of the maintenance men and a contractor arrived to look at Vic's bathroom, I've been telling them for months that there's a leak somewhere around the toilet and they haven't believed me but now that the apartment behind me is complaining too... The manager was called to hear what the contractor had to say and I found out that it's actually the tub in the guest bathroom in the apartment behind me which is why they never could find a problem in Vic's.

Tuesday the assistant manager arrived to 'reinspect'. She asked me if the manager had told me of any problem areas. I said no but that I thought the problem was just the kitchen and the fact that they came while I was in the middle of cleaning and so there were several bags of trash waiting to go to the dumpster. She said it was everything. She happened to 'reinspect' when Vic's room and bathroom were a mess due to her spraining her ankle Thursday at dance. I told her that we were doing the best we could considering Vic was injured and I was sick with an upper respiratory infection. She didn't seem to care.

I called my mother and agreed to let her come over to help me clean.

Tuesday night I was allowed to 'be sickly' and only go through bags and boxes from The Flood of '08.**

Wednesday I was feeling somewhat better but was having a bad breathing day (even the simple act of getting off the couch to go to my room to fold clothes would leave me wheezing which would lead to a major coughing fit) and so I didn't get as much done as I wanted. Mom dusted my room for me and had me doing other stuff. I truthfully cannot recall exactly what I did beyond argue with my mother and dust the shelves I have my DVDs on.

Thursday I finished folding and putting away all the laundry that had been on the couch and the dryer, with the exception of Vic's.

As of right now the only things left to do are dusting the TV, TV stand, cleaning the pass-through, vacuuming the entire apartment and mopping the bathrooms and kitchen. Oh, and there are two large boxes in my room that need to be gone through and several smaller ones in my closet, not to mention the coat closet in the entrance. Maybe I'll go through the boxes and the closet this week.

I watch two hoarders shows (A&E's Hoarders and TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive) and have determined I'm most likely a level one hoarder and that my dad's one too, although living with my mother keeps his in check. To help myself with that I'm doing one load of laundry at a time, putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher (which means we have to keep it empty) and cleaning all spills immediately. I'll also be cleaning one room at a time, so I can take my time, starting with the living/dining room. Now that it's back to a 'spotless' state it should be very easy to maintain. And since I want to get used to not being able/wanting to clean during the week once I get a job, I'll be doing all my cleaning on the weekends.

So, that's the state of my life at this point.

*When I renewed my lease I glanced at Article 19 and it was about 'Conduct', not the conditions inside my residence. In fact, I didn't see anything in the lease that stated I have to keep it to a certain level of cleanliness. The only mention of 'cleaning' is in the section titled 'Moving Out'. Back to text

**For those that don't know: back in 2008, I went to East Texas with my parents for the day the Saturday before Christmas Day to have Christmas with my mother's side of the family. When I returned home late that night it was to find the smoke detector in my bedroom blaring and the sound of running water coming from the hall leading to Vic's room, the kitchen and the guest bathroom. When I went to see what was going on, I stepped into a puddle of water and knew something bad had happened while I was gone.

I called my parents, who were spending the night with his mother because she had fallen a few days prior and broken her ankle and elbow.

Mom told me to ask my neighbors for assistance and to try calling the apartment office. I informed her I'd been trying since I discovered the problem but there was something wrong with the machine.

Luckily one of my neighbors knew where one of the former assistance managers lived and went to get her for assistance.

The people who lived above me at the time were also gone for the day but my neighbors said they had seen them come home for a bit in the early afternoon.

It was determined that there was at least an overflowing toilet involved. My dad thinks that there was either a broken pipe or they left a faucet running in addition to the overflowing toilet, especially since they were charged with all repairs to both apartments.

I had to spend the entire week of Christmas at my parents', listening to them degrade me 'behind my back' and being physically sick.
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