the crime i didn't commit (but mostly did)

This is a story about the crime I didn't commit. Well, not really. Okay, yes, I sort of committed it but nearly as bad as the wicked witch thinks I did. Mean, mean wicked witch.

The house we lived in for a year before we moved to Willacy was a rented house. Now I should clarify. It wasn't a rental. It was a rented house and this is the difference. The lady who rented it to us was trying to sell it and couldn't. She's a super anal retentive woman who has no patience and wants what she wants when she wants it. She is also a perfectionist which doesn't bode well for me.

She is not smart in the fact that she keeps building bigger better houses before she can sell the one she lives in and this is stressful for her. She built this house and spent more than it's worth making it nice to her standards which, when she tried to sell it, meant she was going to take a huge financial hit.

She rented it to us because I told her that we were not 'renting' people. We were home owners who needed to rent for a year. She believed it, because it was true, but what I didn't tell her is my family tends to trash houses. Not in a bad, disrespectful sort of way. Just in a lots of small children and foster children and minor garage stuff hoarding husband sort of way.

So for a year I yelled at kids if they touched walls. I patched walls sooner than if it had been my house and when I moved out I patched and painted and stressed about the state of the house, which I wouldn't have done if it had been mine. And, I will also mention that during the last three months we lived there she had her stupid not selling house for sale which meant it was clean and pretty ALL THE TIME. Even though I was busy with the reno and couldn't have cared less if her house was show home clean and ready to sell. Stupid stupid Cochrane house......

Most of the damage done was actually done during the move in and the move out which is super annoying but what can you do when your furniture weighs a ton and you move it around every year?

So after we moved out I went to do the walk through which my gut told me not to bother doing. I knew she was going to use every penny of my damage deposit to make her house perfect again. I took sick pleasure in the fact that it didn't sell and she had to rent it again and as of the day we moved out it wasn't rented. I know, I am a deep down bad person.

Five minutes in and I wanted to run screaming from that place. She pointed out every tiny little thing she could find and demanded to know what it was from. I had vowed, previously, to myself that I wasn't going to fight her on anything. If she wanted perfection, she wasn't going to get it from our family and there would be no point arguing it with her. I so badly just wanted to be done with the whole renting thing. I told the man the night before I wasn't going to say a word. I was going to take it like a man and get in and get out.

I had told her that she may as well hire someone to clean it. I knew that if I spent all my time cleaning it, it still wouldn't be good enough. Glad I did. Although, I think I would have done a better job. I wasn't impressed. She kept pointing out things to me that the cleaners just simply couldn't get clean. No matter how much they scrubbed and scrubbed. This is when I piped up. Ridiculous, I told her. If you use the proper stainless cleaner on the fridge then it gets clean. I told her her cleaning people should know that. Interestingly enough, I didn't get charged for that.

Didn't matter though. She managed to get the final bill to be $238.08 more than the damage deposit. She bought a new front door, a new vacuum, new knobs for the cook top. She had a door re-sprayed and she also had the stub wall cap sanded and stained. She spent $24.11 on removing a stain from the storage room floor. (A stain I pretended to have no idea about but I actually put there myself.) She even charged me to have a landscaping company come in and re-edge her flower beds.

Ridiculous. And anyone who knows me knows I am willing to fight at any time. She made me so mad I wanted to deck her. But I wanted to be done with her more so I am eating the fact that my damage deposit, my HUGE damage deposit is gone forever.

I will never, ever rent again. I am a homeowner and I take pride in trashing my own homes and much prefer it to trashing other people's homes.

It's more fun when it's your own .....