Home Is...

Some progress on the home-front. Praise the Void.
Once more I have had strange men in my flat. Fear not. All professionals of the building craft.
Waterpipes have been changed, would you believe it.
The corridor is now "plus ceiling".
Walls still pretty much the same, i.e. they do not bear looking at or writing about.

Flat-hunt: not going too well.


Am determined to stay optimistic.

Fa la la, la la la -freakin' la

Nothing feels more like Yule Tide Treasure than a flat after the builders have been. Believe me.
Joy To The World sort of sprang to mind but I could not quite get my nervous system to get over the urge to simply scream.

And as for decking the halls etc etc - well, there ain't much of a hall left, to be perfectly honest.

So I get home after work, the builders had left hours earlier and, well - the flat looks butchered like a body after open heart surgery. Read OPEN. It's a miracle my neighbours cannot wave to me through the ceiling. And the walls I am afraid to touch for fear the slightest impact sees them tumbling down.
Of course, people will say I exaggerate.

FYI - I have to live here and I feel like I have been permanently locked in a cellar that was once used as a bomb shelter in WW 2 - because that is what it bloody looks and smells like in my flat these days.



Not to mention the dust and the debris. AND the plaster that rains down as soon as somebody above me moves so much as an inch. Alright, my upstairs neighbour never really just moves an inch, he stomps around and is known to throw fits or tantrums or both on occasion. But that is another story. Anyway, there is a lot of plaster raining down in my flat.

But I digress . . . because the REALLY fabulous and thrilling news this week so far were this:

the work cannot be finished. Because there would be no point in drying up the walls and covering them up again and making everything look like sort of back to the way it was, since - wait for it - the leak in the upstairs drain is not fixed yet. It would be a waste of everybody's time and money, really, to fix the walls withouth having fixed the underlying problem, as it were.
Uh hm... I know. Me speechless, too...
My landlord, the DRIP, knew about having to change all the drains in this house for MONTHS. Why he decided to go about the whole thing backwards, I really cannot fathom.
Arrgh, it does not bear thinking about the whole sorry affair.

Basically my life looks like this right now: I work at a place that is still pretty much a building site. And BONUS! I come home to a building site. It's on a much smaller scale, of course. But that is beside the point really. Because everyone who has ever had work done in their appartment or house knows what it feels like when you are not "at home" at home.

Am I miffed? Of course.
Especially since this did not happen because I could not get the right people to fix this or did not want to spend the money for the work to be done ASAP. This happened because the person whose job it was to get this organised and done simply cannot be bothered.

Am I ranting? You betcha!!! Naturally I am ranting. If it did any good I'd be raving, too.
But really - what is the point?! I know this is not going to be fixed. No one's in a hurry, especially not before Christmas. ESPECIALLY not before New Year's. So what am I getting my knickers in a twist for?
It is indeed pointLESS.
Yet every single time I stand there and have to look at the walls open like that, the wallpaper ripped to shreds, the beams exposed, the traces of mould that have eaten into the building, I get upset.

And yes, I feel sorry for myself, too. Why does it have to be my flat? Why does it have to be Christmas?
Is somebody trying to tell me something?

IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE A LESSON?!

Well, if nothing else, at least I know what to put on my Resolution List for the new year - not that I did not know where to start in the first place OR needed any help finding resolutions:
Be prudent!
Find a new place to live!
Also: MAKE LANDLORD'S LIFE HELL. Alright, fine - IGNORE landlord. Concentrate on things I can change. Concentrate on points 1 and 2, that is.

Some Newsflash!

Not sure whether I should feel excited, ecstatic even or just freaked out and a little scared.

I have had the news that after over 3 MONTHS of waiting something will finally be done. 

Waiting for what?

Done about what? 

Well, listen closely - at the end of August, water began to mysteriously run down my wall in the toilet. On and off I should say. But really - it's never a good thing when water flows outside of pipes and drains, especially in houses and flats. My landlord is of the Let's wait and see-variety which is always helpful, but especially so in situations like these. 

A pipe had burst in the flat above me and at some point the leak was found and covered. However, it turned out that it was the wrong leak apparently. Because I was still experiencing some weird feng-shui-like water garden show in my loo and oh, yes - boy, the wild swirling patterns of mould forming on the ceiling and walls of my bathroom and in the corridor. Kinda made me feel like I was in a continuous Rorschach test.
So the water-people returned and then fixed the RIGHT leak. (Makes you wonder how they test for leaks in the first place. IF they test. These guys, it seems, just kind of took a random guess the first time they were here.)
Praise the lord! The water stopped. Not to be blasphemous but that's what Noah must have felt like. 

Seriously, I am sooo over this whole thing. 

Anyway - cut a long story short (plus, I have been living this nightmare now for, wait, that's right, too flippin' long and I simply cannot recount all the silly details, excuses, heartache, and sheer and utter, tearing-out-one's hair-kind of frustration) coming MONDAY (12th December) builders will come to open up the walls and ceiling in the corridor, bathroom, loo, kitchen. 

Yup, that is right - I will be living in a war zone. Just when I am sort of settling in at work and the building site is slowly turning into a nice working environment, I shall be returning home every night to utter mayhem. At least that's what it already feels like to me. 

Don't get me wrong - I am not complaining.
I could just KILL my landlord for doing this NOW and not having done anything earlier. 

I just hope the whole house is rotting from the inside out and costs him all his money. Because that seems to be the only place where it hurts him.

I am not sure how I could possibly be zen about this. I am all worked up and I feel knots forming in my neck muscles already. And I will get an ulcer from this, too. I just know it. 

But seriously, though... I mean, I cannot avoid this right now. I shall carry on regardless. Right!
Right?

I just have the sneaking suspicion that my landlord wants to get rid of me and that therefore he does not really give a flying fig whether the work starts now or in the new year or never. Kinda like he is testing my "patience" or should I say stamina.
"Let's make the living situation the worst possible there is and she'll eventually leave" 

That is not a very Christmassy thought to have, I believe. 

But you get the picture. What we have here is a kind of a Scrooge. 

And really, I am not that much of a Tiny Tim to still think good of him, to still go all "peace on earth and good will to men". 

I really REALLY resent this fellow. 

Odious man. 

Insufferable creature. 

(And I am turning into a Jane Austen character as I am writing this. Dear!)

But what is one to do?

I feel like the fates have dealt me a bit of a shit hand here. 

So now what, I go and make lemo-freakin'-nade?
(Hm, it IS the season - so it should be mulled wine really, I guess - but that is beside the point.)

How do you make lemonade out of mildew and crumbling walls and no proper heating in your flat? 

Thoughts anyone?

(Moving springs to mind. Yeah, I have thought of that one already. Now THAT is daunting, indeed. Why is that, I wonder... Hm, maybe because I could end up with another super-jerk for landlord... But I also think: anything is better than THIS right here.) 

Watch this space, as the kids have it. 

I feel a project a-growing.