Bitch Pills

 

Not tonight, honey.

I HAVE A HEADACHE!!!!!

What kinds of medications do you associate with "bitches"?

Maybe All RENTERS Are Bastards

Okay, I get it with all of the resource-hoarding and stuff. A lot, if not most, landlords ARE exploitative bastards.

But at a certain point I get sick of reading that stuff when a lot, if not MOST renters are ALSO "bastards". Do you know how people treat rental cars? Okay, that's how a lot of renters treat rental homes.

I might feel especially sensitive about it right now when my mom has cancer, and she did, for a time, rent out her house while she was taking care of my sick and dying dad / living with him (her EX husband). She rented out her house that she put so much love and work into, and GUESS WHAT? She was WAY too nice to her renters, who constantly skipped out on rent AND did shitty things to her house (the house I grew up in).

She wasn't trying to rip them off or make a profit, she was just trying to be able to make her refi mortgage payment while she helped out my dad. Instead she wound up really taking care of her renters ... all while they shat on her home. They took advantage of her, and ultimately cost more than they were worth.

People have so many excellent reasons to bitch about landlords, to push for regulations and laws that that protect tenants, etc. But I'm not listening to anyone anymore who calls all of them bastards and paints every renter like some fucking angelic victim of landlords and capitalism and whatever the fuck. Because a lot of renters are really fucking trash, and it's heartbreaking how many regular people who are NOT rich take a chance on strangers living in their homes only to have them do tons of damage to their property and not even pay their fucking rent.

If you can't acknowledge that a lot of renters are bastards, then go fuck yourself. You're undermining any helpful progress you could make by being so ridiculously one-sided.

Maybe JUST MAYBE part of why it is SO HARD to get approved to rent a place is partly because so many renters have track records as a group of being unreliable destructive untrustworthy shitholes. If you have no empathy for people who in some cases entrust their life savings -- the only thing they have of value (my mom had no savings no retirement NONE OF THAT) -- to some lazy-ass cocksuckers, you are biased beyond rational usefulness.

FIFTY

I'm turning fifty years old tomorrow. And the only thing I'm clear on is that I don't want to be (such) a bitch.

I guess that is not as clear as it should be.

They say indecisiveness is a sign of insecurity. I think that is true. And I think being a bitch is a sign of insecurity, too.

I'm attached to being a bitch, and afraid to let it go. It is protection. Fortification. A shield to keep people away.

I'm reluctant (afraid) to clearly commit to not wanting to be a bitch anymore.

So. I'll turn fifty years old tomorrow chronologically, but I still have a lot of maturing to do. And clarifying what I really want. Isn't that the very definition of a bitch? Complaining and complaining and complaining and never having anything positive to say or hope for or want or steer towards.

The first part of the solution is figuring out what I want: what I want more than bitchery.

Furnished Rentals

Affordable housing is in short supply where we live. There are only a few home rentals listed at any given time, and almost never any apartments. The few homes for rent are often really expensive, and often are only for the coldest parts of the year (fairly short-term, like three to six months). Or there is an eccentric retired landlord who lives on site and wants to communally garden and be up your ass invading your privacy constantly.

But what I'm here to bitch about now is how many of these very few rentals are only offered FURNISHED. So you can pay to live there, but your furniture cannot. Instead, you have to live with whatever ugly decor some old snowbirds cherish and want you to pay extra to "enjoy" while they're wintering in Arizona or New Mexico or whatever. Ugly couches. Ugly art. Ugly ugly ugly. Or even not really ugly, but very much one kind of person's aesthetic but another kind of person's yuck.

I can see how the furnished & "artfully decorated" home rentals might be nice for someone who just wants to live here part time while they look for a new house to buy and leave all their furnishings behind in their own home, or someone who just wants to go on a one or two season adventure, but it really sucks for people who really want to live (and often work) in their own home, with their own big huge functional desk, their own comfortable bed, etc.