My Little Corner of the World

Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2003 | 12:59 a.m. Alaska Time

A Real Jar of Pickles

Whoooweee... The situation I wrote about last Friday has calmed down. C has been behaving well. Part of that may be because I'm taking a week off to pack because we're moving across town. (More on the move later.) I wouldn't say she's been a perfect angel, but at least she hasn't killed the neighbors' new rabbit, smothered anyone, or thrown any tantrums in the car. Knock on wood.

So, about the move... We're still gonna be renting. Hubby found an ad on the local paper's website earlier this month. I didn't look at the ad, I trusted he'd find something. The ad said it was a side-by-side duplex, rent would be $950/month + utilities. So we called about it, took a look at it, liked it, and signed the lease agreement.

Turns out it IS a duplex, but it's a ZERO LOT LINE duplex! In other words, two separate homes that share a common wall. Two owners, two sets of utilities, etc.

Come to find out last Friday that the "plus utilities" part means ALL the utilities. In other words, not only do we pay for the electric and phone as we expected, but we also have to pay for the Gas, Water/Sewer, and Garbage pickup.

In most ads, when it says, "plus utilities," it generally means just electricity and phone. So we got ourselves into a real pickle here. We can't get out of our lease without losing our $950 security deposit. We're screwed.

I guess we should have looked more closely at the lease agreement before we signed it, especially the part about the utilities. That part just said, "all utilities" instead of listing what they are.

Y'know, instead of listing under duplexes, they should have listed it as a ZLL under the HOMES FOR RENT section. DUH!

Currently, we're paying $850/month +phone and electric. In the new place, we'll be shelling out $100 extra for rent plus about $170 more for utilities.

So we're gonna have to tighten our belts, no extraneous spending, buy generic, etc.

On the bright side, it does have a fenced yard, heated storage (I think we'll turn the heat off though), it's in a better, quieter part of town, and paying the utilities now means one more step to getting used to home-ownership.

I swear, our next residence better belong to us.

Back to C's problems... A couple things to try. One, I'm going to seek family counseling and two, I'm going to talk with the powers that be at work to see if we can work with my employment there somehow so that I have evenings off. A few family members (hubby, mom, and sis, I think) have told me I need to be home in the evenings and I fully agree. These past couple days with me at home in the evenings have been better for C.

So, work has a few options I hope they consider. One would keep my job description but move me to the morning shift, working 3:30am-12:30pm. Another would make me the assistant assignment editor, working 9am-6pm. And the third option would be working 9am-1pm doing data entry (archiving file video that's recently been dubbed to DVD) and 2pm-6pm editing.

Or I can quit.

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