I still have my youngest living with me for probably a few more months, maybe a year, as he gets his financial feet under him. It works -- he's hardly here, anyway, so it's sort of like living alone with the benefit of an occasional extra snow shoveler. He sees a great apartment available on, of all places, Craigslist, which is the one place I wouldn't look.
Surprisingly, the place looks good in the pictures, and the price isn't too horrible. We set up an appointment to see it, and I go wild getting my references in order. You know, just in case, right? This place sounds amazing -- small yard, washer/dryer hook-ups, residential area, quiet street, off-street parking, two bedrooms, and (ta-da!) a wood stove.
Turns out, though, to have no parking unless we put our cars on the street-ish, the floors are trashed, the ceiling in the kitchen has clearly had serious water damage and is bubbled and bowing about eight inches below the edges of the room, the grill area is actually someone else's yard (with little kids because their toys are within arm's distance), and the wood stove is probably because the tiny, ancient radiators might not necessarily work.
Then, there is the basement. It is packed with boxed junk. The landlord says, "I've told them to move it, but it's a fire hazard down here. You can store stuff here, though, and the garage is also full of junk." Awesome. A fire trap with a useless garage, to boot.
The piece de resistance, though, remains the landlord's creep factor. He leers at us, follows way too closely, then tells us both that he Googled me and read all about me. Um, say, what? Dude, we never filled out any application. You have my son's email address and you know I'm a teacher. You effing GOOGLED ME?! You don't even frigging KNOW ME.
I know now why I insist that my son comes along, even though it makes him late to a lacrosse game. This landlord guy could be a Craigslist killer.
We get back outside and the guy is at his SUV watching us. I follow my son to his car, have him roll down the window, smile for the creepy guy's benefit, and say through gritted teeth, "Dude. No. Just no." I give him the short version. I don't even mention the rusty, ancient, failing refrigerator that sounds like it's spitting out its last breath, nor the stove from the 1970's that looks like it has never been cleaned. I'll tell him that later after he gets home from lacrosse. He's already on it, though. He totally gets it. He is starting to see the sad state of the Massachusetts housing market.
All we want to do presently is get the hell out of this neighborhood and as far away from creepy Craigslist man as humanly possible, all considerations of downsizing suddenly dashed, filed, and locked away.
