Our Rental Home

Prissy loved the kerosene heater...

We had, to the wonder of Shawn's parents, stayed in their home for about a year. Living without the stress and hard work and under the influence of Shawn's mom's cooking, I had packed on a few pounds.

I worked at a drug store where people screamed at me all day long about their photos having thumbs in the corner. My boss yelled at me for just standing there when there was no business and I had already cleaned every inch of my surroundings.

After a year we found a cute little house with super low rent. We planned to rent cheap and save up to buy a house. The house was located behind another house on the same lot. Our house number was 1310 1/2 so you can imagine how fun it was to order pizza. (it usually took about an hour)

The house was built strangely. It must've been a garage renovated to appear to be a house. We had an odd shaped living room. It was exactly the shape of the letter L. We crammed our hand-me-down couch and TV into the lower section of the L. There was a stairway about a 1 1/2 feet wide and to the right of that, the kitchen.

Ah, the kitchen! The kitchen was teeny-tiny with a non-working oven (see Cooking Disasters) and a leaky fridge. We found a HUGE rat trap in the cupboard. The backdoor was somewhat rickety and the window sill above the teeny sink was rotted.

Upon entering the kitchen, you faced a closet. Upon opening the closet, you found...
A toilet!
I am not kidding! We had an actual toilet in our kitchen. There was no light and no sink or anything. You had just enough room to sit down and close the door! The closet forever reeked of stale water and no matter what manner of chemicals I dumped in there, the smell never went away.

The stairs were not a grand winding entrance to the second floor. It was teeny hallway that curled around. Upon reaching the top and looking to the left was a small cubby-like open space with a closet rod and a shelf. That was our closet!

The bathroom was a full-on bathroom with a sink and everything but it was the saddest bathroom I've ever seen. If you sat on the toilet, you might hit your head on the sink, which was RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. The bathtub was DIRECTLY to your right hand side. The tub was disgusting looking and the wall behind it was rotten. There was window there so when you showered, the whole neighborhood could make fun of all your flaws! I hung an old shower against that that wall. I don't know what it is about old homes having windows in the shower! The window sill was extremely rotten and crumpled to the touch.

Oh, and also...
There was no heat. We lived there for three winters with no heat. We had a small kerosene heater that was given to us and we spent a small fortune on fuel. We slept under ten pounds of blankets and layered our clothes as much as possible because we didn't dare sleep with that heater going.

We skipped showers as often as possible because it was frightfully cold at night. We burned up about 2 or 3 hairdryers. We couldn't even turn on the oven for heat because it didn't work! When we got our dog, I piled blankets on top of each other to make a bed and keep her warm. When the heater was going, she'd lay a solid inch away from the base and bask in the glorious warmth.

But the rent was cheap and it enabled us to save for a down payment. The landlord didn't really bother us and we adopted a stray cat that's really weird. I think she may have been used for some scientific experiments at one time or another. She moved with us, but has always remained an outdoor cat. I REFUSE to keep a box of dirt and poo poo in the house. Yuck.

So we got our cat, our dog and out pounds of blankets and we saved our money....

to be continued...