day 5 - boring

Days like today are the reason I don't blog every day, and why I'm not sure I'm going to last the full month. Days where a thousand tiny aggravations make me grumpier than Oscar, and about as pleasant to be around.

My landlord is making me crazy. Last Monday night, I tried to do load of laundry - the washing part was no problem, but when I tried to put it in the dryer....no go. The darn thing wouldn't turn on. The power was fine - I heard the timer happily ticking away - but nothing happened when I pushed the start button. I hate it when machinery betrays you like that. So I hauled my wet towels (of COURSE it HAD to be a load of towels, aka the items of fabric in my apartment that takes the longest time to dry) up to my apartment and draped them over every available surface, grumbling the entire while. Because it was late-ish, I left a message for my landlord at his office, for his tuesday morning enjoyment, asking him to look into the dryer problem and keep me posted.

So the rest of my unusually busy week speeds past. No word from the landlord, but neither have I had time to do laundry or go down to the basement myself, so I sort of let it slide.

I had a bunch of housecleaning planned for the weekend. My weekly chance to redeem my apartment from hovel-dom, to catch up on dishes and groceries and other assorted chores that I typically neglect from Monday-Friday...including laundry, which was now already a week behind. I called my landlord last night, but his always-surly wife answered and said he was in bed. (8pm? Saturday? Seriously?) He called me back around 1pm today, and spun me a sad story about how an impressive series of repairmen betrayed him this week by not showing up when they promised. Apparently someone is once again scheduled for tomorrow, but who knows.

Now, like every time I have to ask my landlord for something, part of me feels guilty for holding him accountable for maintaining his property as promised in my lease agreement...and why the eff do I feel guilty? I'm far from a high-maintenance tenant - in the three years I've lived here, I've called for his help maybe five times and two of those times involved large amounts of water leaking from my ceiling.

That's all I have to say really, told you I was boring. I think that is what's making me grumpy, even more than the fact that I will now have to go out of my way to procure clean socks for tomorrow. Does anyone have any guaranteed cures for grumpiness? Favourite songs? Favourite feel-good movies? Reliable and affordable hit men for hire?