My name is Andrea. My roommate's name is Alex. He's pretty great - super easygoing, clean (and not just for a boy), and a lot of fun to drink with. And he gave me the big room (#yourethebest).
Alex and I go to school together. We're about to go into our final year of law, and we're both working as summer students at law firms in the city.
This is the story about out slummy summer sublet.
Let's go back to the beginning. We found the place online, but we go to school halfway across the country, so we didn't fly out to see it. We just decided to go for it.
Day 1:
I show up to my new apartment in a new city for a new job. It's a warm, sunny day and I CAN'T WAIT to see my new place.
(*NOTE* Alex had tempered my excitement by telling me some of the downsides about our apartment (eg: not having laundry), bit by bit, in the weeks leading up to my move in. That being said, I was still excited.)
I walk in to our cute, semi-basement apartment, look around and take a deep breathe.
And immediately regret it.
Something in this place smells like dead cat. But it's not dead cat. I'm allergic to cat. So now there's this riddle going through my head as I look for my room (and a window): what smells like dead cat, but is not dead cat?
I open all the windows I can reach and the smell starts to fade. Ok, I think, so our apartment doesn't like to be shut up tight. But still! my room is big, the furniture is good, and the carpets are...wet. Well, shit. I guess that solves the riddle (the answer is mold, for those of you playing along at home).
No problem. I'll put on some music, start to unpack, look up directions for groceries/ laundromat. No internet? Whatever, I need to unpack anyway. I open the broken sliding door to the closet and get showered with 1,343,560 push pins. I open the blinds to get some light in my room find the push pins that now litter my carpet. In true Murphy's-law-fashion, the blinds come crashing down on me.
Alex comes home from a camping trip about an hour after I get in. He gives me a big hug, and after we chat for a while he says, "I'm so sorry to do this on your first day." He walks to the bathroom, and barfs. "You might need to figure out where the grocery store is on your own."
So I do. I do laundry (dropping all my clean bedding on a major city street, in the process) and do groceries. I come home and finish unpacking.
Alex is a super trooper. He gets it together and decides to take me on a tour of the Market (the drinking district of the city). And he's a great tour guide. We go out and have a few beers, come home, make dinner together, and swap stories.
We agree that we need to get a wireless router so we can get internet in more than just the living room...for science.
I've lived here for a week.
The carpets still have wet spots, there's no vacuum (and maybe the rentees took the vacuum and the toilet bowl cleaner with them when they took off to the summer, but judging by the carpets and the toilet, they have never heard of either of these items), and we our hot water tank broke and flooded 3 days ago. It's not that we don't have hot water, it's just that it's all over the floor and not in the pipes. Landlady? Gone. Maintenance man? Gone. Cold showers in the morning? Oh baby.
But! my blinds are balanced (Alex admitted the blinds-fiasco miiiiiight have been his fault), my bed is super comfy, the apartment is in an amazing location, and our hot water might even get fixed this week!
This is going to be a summer of antics, inebriation, and broken pipes. It's a damn good thing the two of us have solid senses of humour. We're going to need them.
Side note: as I was writing this, Alex was trying to turn off the hot water tank. And then I heard him yell. And then he walked into the living room soaking wet. My hero.
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