TK appears to be down hard at the moment and I need to talk.
The Dog's death has freed up more than 2 hours every day, 7 days a week. Given me more flexibility to go out, do things around the house that would upset her (curse, use an alarm clock, etc). But LaffTV has been showing "How I Met Your Mother" in 3 hour blocs, 7 days a week, right around dinner time. They don't have a commercial break between episodes--they run straight from the end of one to the beginning of the next--with teasers for the next episode during the commercial breaks. This makes it very easy to burn up all the free time I've got with The Dog being gone. But yesterday they moved it to, like, 11pm. So suddenly I have 8 to 11 to get things done (and obviously I don't watch TV at 11pm). This has made me realize I really don't want to do a lot of the things that I haven't had time to do.
Years ago, a teacher said "You're the star of your own movie." The unspoken part of that is that everyone else is the star of *their* own movie, in which you are but a supporting character. So I try to keep that in mind and when I can, make them feel like the star. I'm probably not nearly as successful at it as I'd like to be, but that's another story. The other thing is...even the Bad Guys think they're the star. I recall Ricardo Montalban saying that was how he played Khan--as the hero. Shit, when Hitler got up in the morning and looked at himself in the mirror, I bet he didn't go "Geez, I'm a fucking evil monster." I bet he went "It's amazing, the sacrifices you've made to save and protect your people." Which brings me to the other side of *that* coin: Sometimes you're the *villain* of someone else's movie.
I forget if I mentioned it here, but my first renters broke their lease. One of their investors backed out and they were cutting costs to try to save their new bakery. So they were going to move in with the hubby's parents. They did not give me the 60 days notice the lease requires, they broke the lease at the worst possible time--mid-September. Finding quality renters in the winter is hard, I'm told. I'm also told I can hold them accountable for rent for every month the place isn't rented during the remainder of their lease, but I decided I wasn't going to do that. People have let me out of contracts when I was young and I could afford the loss of income.
Indeed, I've gotten shanghaied into working for my college friend again. It was supposed to go until September, at the latest, yet here we are, well into October with no end in sight. Kind of hard to work on getting a house cleaned up and rented out when you're stuck at a computer every hour that you aren't working your other part-time factory job (or binging nightly on 21st century sitcom reruns). And they did pay their rent on time every month with no hassles.
All that said, they didn't take great care of the place. They never changed the furnace filters. They used the fireplace--even when I'd told them the fireplace wasn't usable. Indeed, it doesn't have a grate for logs and the glass doors are painted black and don't have any handles. They never cleaned the gutters and the brand new stainless steel refrigerator I put in the kitchen has 3 pretty noticeable dents in the freezer door. There was also a dent in one of the doors that they told me they made while moving out. That's pretty easily repairable. Just build it up with Bondo and paint it. You really can't do that to a stainless steel refrigerator door. Well that door is discontinued but I was able to track one down from a third party vendor. With shipping and handling, it comes to something like $529.
Initially I'd considered using their deposit in lieu of charging the required October rent, but the more I thought about that, the less fair it seemed. But at this point it looks like I can honestly bill them for items that will use up the entire deposit. This is objectively fair and right and by the lease terms, I'm the injured party. But humans aren't logical. So while my move-out charge sheet clearly says $200 per load of trash left behind (for example), that charge sheet wasn't part of the lease paperwork (and even if it was, I'm sure they'd forget it). So I sit here and think about how, when they lose their deposit, they're going to just think I screwed them and put in inflated charges to eat up their deposit. If they hadn't scrambled to get out by mid-September they could've done a better job cleaning the place up. (Mid September really didn't do anything for me but that's neither here nor there.) In their movie, I'm the bad guy.
Of course maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they'll be happy anyway, but somehow I doubt it. I don't know. We'll see. At any rate, I shouldn't be on here whining, I should be putting together the bad news and sending it along. Rip the band-aid off and get it over with.
Still, you want my goodwill? Don't start fires in the fireplace I told you not to use. Change the furnace filter when it gets dirty (not when the HVAC stops working). Clean out the gutters when they get clogged. It the place had come back to me rent-ready, I could've had a chance to rent it this month instead of having it empty over the winter.
Oh, and I forgot to mention it earlier and I'm too lazy to try to fit it in now: While I'd rather be working on my real estate investing--and would absolutely NOT like to be working support or enterprise level accounting for a multinational corporation--I make more, part time, in a week, working for my friend than a month's rent. This has bought a new AC for my house, furnished the new bedroom, put a new roof on the now-vacant rental, will be replacing the thermostat and water pump gaskets on the Mustang, and still allowed me to sock away some cash to potentially allow me to own my next rental free-and-clear. That said, the real estate market has been crazy. When I moved here, 4+ years ago, you could buy a reasonably nice house in the War Zone for $10-12K. That is not a typo. Yes, 75% of the houses on that block would be vacant and boarded up, but you could literally buy a house that was ready to move into for less than a decent used car. Now there are actually houses in the War Zone that are outside my price range (that I'd pay for a nice 3/1 brick ranch with a detached 2 car garage in a quiet blue collar neighborhood). I was able to find 1 for $15K that didn't look like it needed TOO much work, but it's definitely not like it was in 2017.
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Oh. And I'll say prior to, say 42, I didn't really cry. Cried a month or two after my Dad died. But at some point I'd get emotional over even little things. And The Dog just blew the fuse on that. Now I cry watching TV shows. I cry driving the car or at work. It isn't as much as it was back when it happened, but every once in awhile it sneaks up on me and I think about her looking up at me and smiling as we were on some adventure together and the feelings come back.