Rent

I have never been more fed up with renting than I was last weekend.

My husband and I have rented since we got married in December of 2006. Our first place was an apartment in Joplin. The apartment was decent and clean. The manager was great and got things done when we asked. The reason we ultimately left was that the rent increased three separate times in two years. It got to be more than what that place was worth.

While we were there, we had our share of interesting acquaintances. The girl above us vacuumed at all hours of the day and night and it sounded like she rearranged her furniture at least once a week. The old man next to us liked to catch my husband in the parking lot to talk about his prostate problems. We often had to dodge the frat boys that would play football in the parking lot.

It was an interesting place, but it was never the tenants or management that made us want to leave.

Last February we moved to Mount Vernon when my husband got a job with the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department. We rent a duplex owned by a distant relative of my husband’s family.

The duplex was originally a house and was split into two units a few years ago. The house sits on a corner and we are on the east side. The driveway and garage are on the west side of the house. When we moved in we had neighbors on the west side that used the driveway, so we parked at
the side of the street on the east side of the house. It was fine with us.

Then the neighbors moved and we haven’t had any for several months so we started using the driveway. The garage/storage building is ours anyway (it’s ours in exchange for my husband mowing the lawn) so it only made sense to park there when no one else lived here anyway.

Last week we got a new neighbor. She’s a single mom with a few kids and only ONE car. The single car is an important point.

A week before Neighbor was to move in we get a call from Landlord asking to clear a space in the driveway for Neighbor’s single car. That’s only fair. Of course she shouldn’t park in the street. We were more than happy to oblige. We had three cars in the driveway comfortably- my car, my husband’s personal car and his patrol car. So we moved the patrol car to the street, and that left plenty of room for all of us.

So the space for Neighbor was clear and it was even the one closest to the house. How nice are we?
On the morning Neighbor is supposed to move in, we get a call from Landlord telling us that ALL of our cars must be moved to make way for Neighbor. We were never given a reason for the sudden change in plans.

Now my husband works nights and had just been asleep for a couple of hours at this point. It was also the last weekend we had all that snow. Our cars were stuck in the driveway and not going anywhere until some of it melted off. I told Landlord (nicely) all of this and said I would see what my husband could do about it when he woke up.

Well, that wasn’t good enough for Neighbor. She sent Landlord back. Or should I say Landlord’s nutty wife. That was interesting to say the least. I told her the same thing I told Landlord.

This went on all morning, and we eventually were able to move all of the cars just to put a sock in Neighbor’s complaining.

I have never wanted to buy something of my own so badly just to be able to park wherever I please. Sadly, we’re still saving so we can get what we really want.

I can only hope Neighbor learns to appreciate the finer points of our amazing surround sound system.