It seems like all my relationships are changing lately, be they platonic, work or romantic. Nothing stays the same, I realize that but sometimes it’s a little jarring. So you can understand why the relationships that are constant are a comfort to me. And one that I don’t always say thank you to, but that means a lot to me is the one between my apartment and me.
I know that it will be there every day as long as I pay the rent (please Mr. Landlord wait til Monday to deposit that check). It lets me just lay there and zone out and doesn’t get mad when I blast bad music and sing in the shower. It also never judges me for the clothes I leave on the ground or the pile of dishes in the sink.
And every month my apartment will try a new way to murder me while I’m not paying attention. So maybe it is judging me for my slovenly living conditions.
It started off innocently enough with my apartment just trying to annoy me by locking me out or randomly turning all the power off while I was drying my hair. (OK, maybe I shouldn’t have tried to run the microwave, TV and hair dryer at the same time, and maybe I should have learned after the thirtieth time of blowing the circuit breaker, but I’m pretty sure it’s the apartment and not me.) I could live with this, I just gave out my keys to friends and kept my slippers near the door so I could quickly walk down the hall and flip the breakers.
It them moved on to trying to drive me insane with its thin walls and constant low battery beep from a neighbor’s fire alarm. For a good month, every two minutes a chirp would emanate from a neighboring apartment, and mariachi music would waft from lower levels around 2 a.m. on Mondays and Tuesdays. But these too, I grew accustomed to.
But lately my apartment has been less subtle; it has really stepped up the attempted murder. It puts wires out in the middle of the night for me to trip over. It randomly opens cabinet doors for me to walk into. My knees and ribs are a constant lovely shade of blue; I look like a crack whore.
But probably the most obvious attempt at murder is that the oven turns on late at night to kill me via carbon monoxide poisoning. I wake up to an apartment that is a little too warm. Then I have to run around and open all my windows and stick my head out trying to get some fresh air. This gives the guy across the way with the ’80s Sport Illustrated calendar on his fridge and the stained wife beater the impression that I’m flirting with him.
Sure, you may think that I leave the oven on after I make some of those ready made cookies late at night, but that is just not true and slightly libelous (slander really never applies, or at least it is much harder to prove). I’m not crazy enough to leave the oven on three times in one month.
Although I would like to think that I am not that flaky, that probably just isn’t that true. After all in the last week I’ve left my credit card at three different bars. You’d think I would learn after the first one.
But the truth of the matter is I’m very flaky about small things. I’m pretty good about keeping the more important things in my life in order, but the smaller things like not locking my keys in my car or turning off the stove kind of get looked over.
Damn, I’m gonna Darwin myself out soon.
