My Landlord Is Criminally Insane

That�s right. When I first agreed to sign the lease on my very cute (and ridiculously tiny) condo, I ignored all of the signs. Not only was my landlord a flight attendant (insert slut/gold digger/flaky blond joke here), but she seemed unsure of whether she was still a flight attendant or if she was directing a nonprofit company. She said she was a flight attendant who was no longer working and was moving to Wyoming to start some kind of ranch for troubled or needy or whatever kinds of city kids ride the short bus. First, does Wyoming even have troubled kids? It�s all tumbleweeds, gas stations, and the NRA. Maybe she has the rugrats bussed in from Cabrini Green. I don�t know. But I would have bought it had she not continually mentioned having to fly this weekend or that weekend. I mean, it�s kind of hard to provide therapy from a distance of 3,000 feet. But I ignored all of this because the kitchen had maple cabinets. You have to prioritize and I admit that I was blinded by my fantasies of glorious Saturday parties, where I would pull martini glasses from my maple fucking cabinets to the oohs and ahhs of the crowd. (Real parties at my house: Mandy brings over Crossroads and we get drunk while critiquing Britney Spears�s underwear-dancing lip-syncing performance. I think we ate brownies and drank apple pucker straight from the bottle. God, the trashy pregnant girlfriend in that movie is a brilliantly written character, I tell you this.)

My landlord has not said two words to me in one year. No Easter basket. No Christmas card. No Hanukkah dradle. No postcard from her honeymoon (she was divorced and remarried in something like 9 months). No acknowledgment of receiving a rent check from me�ever. She didn�t even thank me for the �winter holiday� cookies I sent to her. But she deposited the checks, oh yes she did. And did I take offense to her lack of landlordly courtesy? No, I did not. She was helping the children, dammit.

After asking her if she would be extending the lease, I thought I might get a Post-It note mailed in a second-rate envelope (book rate). Silly me. Two notes, four messages on her answering machine, and over a month later, she called me to tell me she was thinking about selling her condo. Then, she showed up and started bawling about not knowing what to do. She was just so unsure. I (potentially homeless) understood her horrible predicament (emotional instability). Four days later, she called me at work and wanted to know if I could come home in under two hours to meet with her realtor.

Now, I like to think of myself as a reasonable person. I�m not happy about complete strangers touring my house and manhandling my possessions, but I�m maintaining a degree of sanity about the whole thing. I made only one request: no lock box on the door of my (soon to be no longer) home. Perhaps this goes back to my irrational fear of serial killers breaking into my house and stealing my jewelry. But irrational fears aside, it was a small and well-justified request. No crazy teenagers picking the lock and stealing my pornography. No wacky neighbor breaking in so he can try on my skirts while his wife is at work. No. No sir. Not for me.

The official meeting occurred this Saturday. We all sat down (landlord with brand-new 80-year-old husband in tow, my roommate, and the realtor) to �make sure we are all as comfortable with this situation as possible.� The outcome of the meeting can be summed up as follows:

1. There is now a lock box on my door. (Never mind that we know the code and took the key out of the box�I know, it�s so pathetically passive-aggressive.)

2. Every other Sunday for the next month will entail my packing up and leaving the house so strangers can ooh and ahh over my maple cabinets for themselves (then laugh hilariously at the $215,000 pricetag).

3. My landlord can�t pay her mortgage once I move out.

4. I have to start doing my laundry and actually hanging up my bathroom towel after showering.

5. My landlord�s skin might actually be leather.

The landlord and hubby-gramps leave me to show the realtor around. I overhear her telling the realtor that �the second bedroom has a washer and dryer in it� before she leaves. Now, this is funny to me because we do, in fact, have a washer and dryer in the condo. But we do not, in fact, have a second bedroom. You should have seen the realtor�s face. He was trying so hard to think of a way to ask where the second bedroom was without sounding like a moron. When he finally asked, I thought he was going to pass out.

So, my landlord is not just the standard-variety insane. She�s so nutso that she lied to her own real estate agent. She said with a straight face that she planned to make a $70,000 profit by selling the condo in one weekend. (Apparently, she sold the second bedroom right off the bat.) Well, cheers to that! And after she sells the condo to the Incredible Hulk, I�m going to take her to dinner at Neverland Ranch with Ivana ex-Trump.

So, I�m several weeks from official homelessness and frankly, I couldn�t feel better. I have a feeling that my landlord is so financially screwed that she�s going to try to swindle me out of my $850 deposit. Maybe we�ll have two Hooters girls Jell-O wrestle for it. We could have a hamster race or I could shave my head to prove how dedicated I am to getting my money back. If you have any ideas of how to settle the sure-to-be dispute, make sure to e-mail me.