7 Things I Hate About You

You.

YOU.

You don’t know me, but I hate you.

Don’t look at me like that. You know what you did.

You did it deliberately, too. You did all of it on purpose. And I bet you’re not even sorry.

How do you sleep at night?

Probably better than me, that’s for sure. You made this bed, but I’m the one that has to lie in it.

I just want to know why. Can you at least give me that? Were you drugged? Were you drunk? Were you blind?

WHAT DID OUR APARTMENT EVER DO TO YOU?!?

Breathe, Nutty, breathe…

We’ve been living here for almost six years now. The rent’s not exceptionally cheap, but it’s reasonable by Vancouver standards. I have a covered parking space, we have running water, and hey, we even have a working elevator again! Granted, the new “improved” elevator may not seem any faster or safer than the old elevator, but it’ll at least be nicer to look at in the event that we get stuck in it for four hours or it plummets us to our deaths or something.

So it’s not the worst place to live. We haven’t always had the greatest neighbors, but at least our landlords are in our corner. I strongly suspect our shower is a big fan of Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” while the fridge prefers Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” no matter how much we fiddle with the temperature controls, but regarding the former I guess there’s no real harm in my reflexes getting a bit of a workout as I lather up, and regarding the latter, hey, if our water pitcher is perpetually half frozen then that just means I don’t need to waste time filling ice cube trays anymore.

Still, after six years, certain things start to wear on you a bit.

How many more years, I sometimes wonder to myself, will I have to endure the sight of discount wood veneer chipping off our kitchen cabinets like two-week-old nail polish? How many hours will I stare at the grubby knife incisions on our limited counter space made by people who couldn’t be arsed to pick up a simple cutting board at the dollar store? And how many nights will the fine threads of my socks catch on the haphazard nicks and grooves in our bedroom flooring, presumably made by someone who habitually used ice skates as slippers?

But all those flaws can be attributed to average wear and tear in a rental unit. Even the nicest apartment will eventually succumb to abuse at the hands of tenants who subscribe to the “meh, I’ll just be moving out again soon anyway” school of care and upkeep.

No, my beef is not so much with my home-sweet-hovel’s former occupants – although believe you me, if I ever find out who left that pool of honey in the cabinet above the stove, we will have words – but rather with whatever maniacal mastermind(s) can claim responsibility for picking out and installing its basic fixtures and floor coverings.

You know who you are.

When we first moved in, I was thrilled we had a place to live in at all. Nutty Hubby had had one hell of an apartment hunt while I was preparing to move back from the UK, and after the nightmare tales he relayed to me along the way I was selfishly glad that my only role in the mission was to send moral support from across the pond.

But it’s only a matter of time before that thrill wears off and you finally come to terms with what you’ve really agreed to live with. And then there you are, eyes boring into random inanimate objects, thinking, “Well played, Satan. Well played.”

Don’t play coy with me. You know damn well what I’m talking about.

For starters, what kind of evil do you have to harbor in your soul to pick out this bathroom tile?

Don’t try and tell me this is pretty, because I’ll laugh at you.

I bet you tiled my last apartment too. How’d I know? The salmon pink gave you away, of course; your signature shade, pretty as Pepto Bismol puke. And while I appreciate the effort to include the occasional white tile to break up all that hideous pink, the only thing that really does is leave me wishing all those other godforsaken tiles were white too.

#TileRacism

One question. Did you match the tile to the toilet, or did you match the motherfucking toilet to the tile?

Welp, I’ve already talked about toilets way more than I was ever expecting to on this blog; it was only a matter of time before my own made an appearance.

Either way, thanks for that. I always wanted to drop a deuce in a porcelain throne that looked like the inside of a piggy bank. WISH GRANTED.

Okay, so maybe you just suck at picking out colors. That’s fine, we can’t all be Rembrandt. But can we at least all agree that any kind of bathroom flooring that comes in roll form ought to be laid down in one seamless piece?

Not pictured: sign reading “Mordor This Way”.

Guess not.

Here’s the thing. Bathrooms are wet, steamy places, and often not in a sexy way. There’s a reason every millimetre of a bathroom tends to be sealed within an inch of its life, but I guess you figured we could take our chances with Swamp Thing: Subfloor Edition.

In case you think this isn’t so bad and you’re wondering why I’m making such a fuss, know that this is the only portion of the rift I was willing to put on public display. About a foot to the right is a section I don’t dare show my readers for fear they’ll unsubscribe and never look back. I don’t know what’s breeding down there, and I don’t want to. But if I ever disappear suddenly from the blogosphere, I’d take a wild guess it’s some kind of sentient black mold that got me.

I’d also like to have a talk with whoever you brought in to lay the carpet, because I’m not gonna lie, I’m getting tired of explaining to people that we do not, in fact, have a sandworm infestation.

Now remember, walk without rhythm.

But hey, what’s a home without a few tripping hazards? It makes my Zumba World Party sessions in the living room miles more entertaining, that’s for sure.

Back on the topic of tile, could you perhaps explain to me why you thought these would be good idea for a kitchen? Of all the places to choose from in the apartment, you pick the one that gets by far the dirtiest to put down a surface that is nigh IMPOSSIBLE TO CLEAN.

I never thought I’d have a kitchen that looked like a dried-out floodplain, but I always really hoped.

But that’s okay. Thanks to the subtly marbled color palette of pale ecru and dishwater grey, these tiles manage to look dirty even when they’ve been scrubbed spotless!

By the way, a screw shank nail is still just a nail. I’m not ragging on nails or anything. Nails are perfectly good for some things. A high-traffic transition between two types of flooring is just not one of those things.

When your stupid screw wannabes bridging our mudcrack kitchen floor and our Arrakis carpet aren’t being accidentally snarfed up by the vacuum cleaner, they’re engaged in a collective conspiracy to inch up out of their housings and tear holes in my socks. This is unacceptable. Ruining socks is the dryer’s job. Why do you hate the dryer?

Anyway, I’d really love if you could come over some time for a chat. I’ll make us a pot of tea and you can tell me all about who hurt you and why you decided to turn around and take it out on a poor defenseless apartment.

Don’t bother knocking. Thanks to your genius installation of our security chain, you can let yourself right in.

So close, and yet so far.