Man, the mutilation of the tree outside my balcony is still pissing me off. I couldn't get to sleep because I kept thinking about it. You know, if I were the type of person to sue, I bet I'd have a case against them - both actual and punative.
First, there's the actual. I picked that apartment because of the shade and the privacy accorded by the trees. My power bill will surely go up now that there is direct sunlight hitting my living room all day, whereas before, I was always shaded. (One of the reasons we moved from the old building to the new was that we got the brunt of afternoon sunlight at the old one and it kept the apartment sweltering. We wanted something cooler and something easier to maintain the climate controlled temperature.) The apartment's actual value is lessened by the butchery to the trees, making it not worth what I signed the lease for. My lease included the trees, not stumps. They've de-valued the apartment with their actions and yet are still charging me based on something that no longer is being honored by them - the shade and privacy of the trees.
Then there's the punative. My faith holds that all of Nature is Divine and Holy. That Nature, in and of Herself, and in all Her forms is to be cherished. I am damaged emotionally and spiritually by the site of a mutilated tree outside my window. It honestly causes me physical distress to see a stump where once there was a tree. It is akin to forcing a Christian to stare out their window at "666" or an inverted cross each and every day. It's distressing and is in offence to my federally protected freedom of religion. Each day I have to look at that butchered limb, or, be forced to close my blinds completely and be denied a view at all.
Let's not even get into the fact that I have unobstructed parking lot view now - both me looking out and everyone else looking in. There is nothing left to keep someone from openly gawking in my window if I open the blinds to the sliding glass door (1 full wall in my living room is the sliding glass doors leading out to the balcony, which in turn, used to be covered by the tree.) I can't tell you how frustrating it is knowing that I, as a woman alone for much of the day in the apartment, can't open the blinds at all for fear of having some creep watching my every move. I feel less safe and less secure in my own apartment.
I know it probably sounds crazy, but I really am fuming over their insensitve actions. And they're lack of interest in how wrongly they treated both that poor tree, and me as their tenent. When I get home, I'll upload the pics from my camera and let you see how bad it really is. Half the tree is gone and it was viciously and carelessly done - and it didn't have to be. This wasn't a pruning or trimming of branches, it was the butchering of two major trunks of the tree itself, leaving half a tree and open stumps. It's bad enough that it's been weeks of enduring demolition, construction, painting, washing and related (with no word from management, and no idea what's going on until there's some massive noise, vehicles or strangers wandering the grounds and coming onto your patio/balcony), but this has gone too far. I've just reached my breaking point.
Keeping Your Cool
So the car's still overheating. New hose and a fix-a-leak treatment for the radiator and it's helping (I got to work today but it was running hot most of the drive here) but it's not fixed. Which means it's probably something in the radiator itself. Fuck. I can't tell you how stressful it is driving down the road, your eyes glued to the temp gauge, just praying you can make it through the next traffic light, or to the next street. Panicking that it's going to dip too far and not come back down. If you've ever had an overheating car, you know how sick to your stomach it makes you. If you haven't consider yourself damned lucky. I just don't want to get stuck on the side of the road - especially when I have no cell phone and it's 95F outside. Been there, done that, don't want to do it again. I have no idea what we're going to do. I have no idea how exactly we're going to get it repaired both cost-wise and being without a car for a day wise. I'm so sick of bullshit like this. I just want a break. Is that too much to ask for? We can barely pay our bills as it is, then this like this comes up and we're even more fucked. It just gets to be too much. I can't get a new car because I don't have credit for one, can't afford another bill each month and certainly can't afford the insurance (we have bare-minimum and it's already always the last thing to get paid. In fact, it's overdue right now and who knows when we can pay it.) So I'm fucked. An old, run-down car I can't afford to fix and no money to get a new one. What the hell do you do?
Anyway, I'm finding myself more and more depressed again. It's just looming over me. Things were calmer the last few weeks - not perfect by any means, but at least not so overhwelming - and of course, it couldn't last. I always think I'm doing better and then shit like this happens. Somedays I just don't know what to do anymore. And it just doesn't feel worth it. I'm so sick of getting fucked over all the time, by everything and everyone in life. Why do I rank the short end of the fucking stick?
I'm just sinking. And days like this I don't care. In fact, I wish it'd hurry up and drown me so I could get it over with already.
~ flowers bloom near Memory and Dream
at 6/2/2004 11:11:44 AM ~
~
