I live in a basement apartment. My landlord and his wife live upstairs in the main part of the house. I do like some things about it. It’s a great layout, more than enough space for me, and in a great location. But I’m starting to hate it so much that it’s driving me mad, and I need to rant.

• Infested with spiders. Including fucking hobo spiders (Google it, if you’re brave – I’m not finding a link). I’m an arachnophobe. This is not good.
• My landlord pops in constantly, and will even unlock my door and come in. I know this because he’s come by when I’m in the bathroom or getting out of the shower and not able to answer the door, and suddenly he’s coming in my apartment. What the fuck. I basically haven’t been able to watch porn since I moved here because I don’t want my landlord randomly popping in. Do you know how serious this is? I can’t watch porn!
• Something was fucked up with our water, and he said he’d warn me when the repair people were coming later in the week. Instead he starts banging on my door at 7am to shut off my water. Guess who didn’t get to shower before work?
• He and his wife apparently leave for California for 3 months out of the year, and they didn’t warn me at all. What do I do if something breaks?
• I can’t reset my internet when it’s down (which is frequently, fuck you, Comcast) because the router is upstairs in his house.
• And on that note, I have no control over the heat. I’ve been freezing my ass off all winter, even with a space heater. And when I told him that, he laughed and commented on how is female tennents are always cold.
• I discovered I have a “No Parties” clause in my lease (my fault – didn’t notice it until I had already driven 2,000 miles to Seattle and was committed to the place). But his son or grandchildren who occasionally housesit for him play music loudly and dance and have parties until 3am on school nights.
• He and his wife pay for 2/3 of the utilities, while I pay for 1/3, even though they use much more heat and electricity because they have a much bigger house.
• He and his wife only pay for 1/2 of the internet/cable. “Why not 1/3…?” “Oh, it doesn’t depend on usage.” I’m sorry, but if we’re splitting things like roommates, it’s per person, not per household. Everyone uses it, everyone pays for it.
• And now that he’s been away for a month, he says he and his wife are only paying 1/2 the utilities instead of 2/3 since they haven’t been using them. What the fuck? Do I get to log every day I’m out of town and not pay for those? How about the fact that I’m not here from 9am to 6pm, but he is and is using the heat and electricity then? Again, I’m fucked and it’s my fault – the lease just says we’ll split the utilities, but doesn’t specify how. Fuck.
• Cherry on top: He’s a creationist, and he found out I’m an evolutionary biologist, and proceeded to awkwardly try to debate me for 20 minutes after giving me the Comcast bill. I can only imagine what he thinks when sorting our mail and seeing all my stuff from the Secular Student Alliance and Secular Coalition for America.

My landlord is nice and grandfatherly, which sort of makes it worse because I can’t just channel all of my rage at him. He brought me oranges and invited me to Christmas – rage deflected!

But I’m not even sure I can wait until the end of August to move out. Technically I can get out of here if I can find someone to sublease it… Guess who needs to find some unwitting summer intern?

Lesson of the day: Don’t lease from something you randomly saw on Craigslist even if you’re moving across the country, and read your lease carefully.