Thank you, come again!

In the ongoing, agonizing struggle to free myself from the townhome that I was leasing (very little of which I've bothered to complain about on here because: provokes anger), I had what I thought would be the final walkthrough tonight with the leasing agent and the new tenants. The new tenants are nice enough, I suppose - although I could really give a shit at this point - but they are the type of very anal-retentive foreigners (you know the type, don't act like I'm the asshole here) that make people from a certain subcontinent look really bad and perpetuate a certain stereotype, which I hate (stereotypes, I hate stereotypes). So, by the time that they're finished with their "walkthrough" an hour later - and what am I even doing there? I'm not the landlord! - they've compiled a handwritten, two-and-a-half page list of "problems" that need to be fixed before they'll move in. Which they then give to me. And the proceed to explain at length how they won't be moving in until I fix these things. Again: not the landlord.

Among the many, many things on the list are the following items:

1) Re-key the locks (I'M NOT THE LANDLORD)

2) They want the showerhead that was in the bathroom when they originally viewed the townhome, which was mine. I explained that the showerhead currently in the bathroom is the one that came with the home and that the one they saw was my showerhead, which I suggested they could purchase at Lowes for $49.99. They didn't seem amused by this.

3) They also want the shelves that I had hung in the bedroom. Again, my shelves. When I explained that they were my shelves, the husband launched into a shrill tirade which went, verbatim: "We agreed to rent this particular unit based upon the assumption that certain items would be retained in the unit and if these certain items aren't included with the unit, then we will be unable to rent it!" So, in other words, you want me to bring back my shelves, rehang them and just flat out give them to you? Sure thing. I'll get right on that.

4) One of the wall sockets in the bedroom was missing A screw. One.

5) The baseboards were dusty.

6) And, finally, my favorite - they were convinced that I had been living - nay, squatting - in a townhome with no electricity and no A/C and they wanted me to fix this immediately. Actually, the electrician that had been out the day before to fix the wiring had accidentally turned off the breakers in the breaker box. But no matter how many times I tried to explain this and the fact that I'd been living in my new house for over a week and not in the townhome, they just kept asking me, "How could you live like this?!?" in incredulous voices as if they were speaking to a woman who'd been found living in a house filled with 57 cats and two feet of feces in every room.

I can't even tell you how incredibly relieved I am to not be living in a rented house anymore. Escaping my lease has been an utter nightmare - a story for another day, though - and I can't wait until we're completely settled into the new house, drinking beers on the patio with the doors open, listening to salsa music on the stereo until the late hours, and then - much later - driving by my old townhome with six dozen eggs and egging it for all it's worth.

I love italics.