Housing grumbling

It occurs to me that I should have included one additional category on my outline of what's going on in my life right now that has an effect on my wellbeing and happiness, and that category is "housing."

I currently live at Elsinore, a house on South Street very close to Brandeis with four other people. There's a lot I like about the place. I like the setup of living in a house. My room is nice and big because I have the master bedroom. The location is incredibly convenient, within walking distance of a number of important things. I have space to entertain with dinners and parties. I have really appreciated these features of my living situation over the last year and a half I've lived there.

But still, living at Elsinore involves roommates. My dearest dream at the moment is to live alone, without having other people in my space with their irritating habits. In general, they're not bad; I have no real problem at all with one of them, though the other three tend to get on my nerves. But I really hate having to deal with the habits and mess of other people, and frankly I feel chased out of my own space a lot of the time. I'd really love to have a place that was just to myself. I worry though about the feasibility of finding a place I could afford by myself, and what I'd be sacrificing to have it. Probably wouldn't have space to entertain, which I do love. Would lose the lovely big bedroom. And the convenient proximity to important things would be a pain in the tail. Would I be giving up too many of the things that make me happy just to live by myself? I'm not sure, but it's something I'll have to think about as May comes around.

Still, I don't live well with other people, and when I'm at home I generally prefer to be alone. And I feel like a lot of problems stem from having to deal with other people to handle your problems. Here's an example. When zapf* and witticaster* moved out, one of my other roommates took over handling the household bills. By and large that's worked out, because we're all on the same bill for things like utiltiies, but I have never loved just having to trust someone else to handle my financial matters. But recently we got a big water bill from our landlord that put my monthly expenses up to an unreasonable level. I pointed out to my roommate who handles the bills that I was fairly certain when we first moved in we were told we would not pay for water; that would be encompassed by the rent. Basically he doesn't acknowledge me, just goes ahead with calculating what we all owe. I keep on with it, and finally get him to say he doesn't remember whether or not we ever paid for water before because he wasn't handling the bills back then. I am aghast; was he just handing over money without knowing what it was for? Does he expect me to do the same? So finally I call zapf* and ask him what the deal was; he confirms that at least when the initial group moved in a year and a half ago that was the agreement. I pass this on, and finally my roommate agrees to talk to the landlord about it.

I just couldn't believe my current roommate was so unaware of the situation, and was so hard to get to listen to me about this. Is he cool with just handing over that much extra money? I hate living with people! I just want to have to worry about myself.

Anyway, the one other issue of living at Elsinore is that when the lease for the first year ran out and people moved in and out for the new year, we were never given a new lease. Our landlord isn't exactly a bad landlord, but he doesn't get back to you about anything and everything he does so is on an enormous time delay. But I guess technically none of us are on the lease, due to no fault of our own, and I worry what would happen if we protest this water bill. I'm pretty sure that was the old agreement, but we don't have an agreement right now. Hell, I guess if he wanted to he could tell us to leave right now and we'd have no way to stop him. But that water bill pushes my monthly expenses beyond what I can easily handle, so I don't think I can just leave this be.

So, the one other aspect of my life affecting my life is this. Though not terrible and not without its advantages, is a source of stress, one that I am still trying to figure out how to deal with.