As mentioned before, our apartment building was sold. The new buyers wanted to have a look inside of our apartment, my roommate arranged a key-swapapalooza with the real estate agent involved and they went by today.
Despite how I ended my last entry, I don't actually hate anybody for having the gall to buy our building. It sucks, hard, and it's throwing a massive, chaotic wrench into my life, but I'm an adult and I get that this is how it goes. So do my roommates, and we were trying to cooperate. In fact, this thought actually crossed my mind today: Should I have left them a note saying to help themselves to a piece of the cake on the stovetop?
I'm embarrassed to admit that, but there it is: I wanted to feed the people who are taking over my home. I am like a brain-damaged puppy.
Here's what I should have been thinking:
I hope that the real estate agent doesn't lock anything behind her that wasn't locked when she got there, and hasn't been locked in over four years because nobody has a key. I hope that 411 won't give me bum numbers, and I hope it won't be impossible to find a set of yellow pages to call a locksmith, forcing me to call every neighborhood friend in turn until finally finding somebody at home. I hope that it doesn't take a cajillion years, and I hope that when I get inside, I don't find that the agent has systematically closed:
--the door to the closet where we keep Spike's litterbox (especially since it has a kick-spring to prevent that)
--the door to the living room, where Spike's food and water are
--the door to my bedroom, with Spike inside, scared, screaming, and shitting my bed because he's been in there for hours without any necessities
Spike was freaked out; he could hear our varied attempts to get in, and that only made him more agitated. To state the painfully obvious: Animals do not like to feel abandoned, hungry, or thirsty. And since she was plainly very aware that there was a cat in the apartment--her multi-tiered containment plan makes that readily apparent--it is unconscionably cruel to have done that to him. (To be clear: I don't care if the cruelty was accidental or intentional; the result is the same, and no professional should fall short of the "leave it as you found it" standard.)
And, of course, my duvet is ruined (one can't clean down) along with my mattress pad, my sheets are a loss, my mattress had to be turned, and my duvet cover has to be dry cleaned. This is on top of the massive frustration of being locked out in the first place.
When I called my landlord to give him a heads up about this incredibly shoddy conduct and to ask that these people never be unchaperoned in our apartment again, I found myself using the shaky voice of rage, saying sane things but clearly hanging on to civility by the thinnest thread.
That is not a normal part of my character.
The only other time I spoke that way was five years ago in an argument with my mother, which should say a lot: I haven't even met this woman face-to-face, and she managed to provoke the same degree of rage and frustration that my mom had to work 23 years to elicit.
In short, I feel like this:
Image courtesy of Yorik