What follows is a reprint of this post from August 20, 2003, which I found amusing.
Abode Musings
My older brother is currently staying at my grandmother’s house, crashing on a cot in a corner of the attic. She hates having him there, but then she’s suffering that aging symptom of hating everything these days. She also does nothing but gripe about my mother, who also lives there, and on whom my grandmother is increasingly dependent. She collects a significant amount of money from my mother, which is how she can afford to keep the house. When my grandmother is gone, everything will be sold and split, and my mother will be out on the street. But I digress. Same kind of thing is happening with my brother. She’s collecting significant money from him and complaining to everyone how she’s losing money by having him there. Patently absurd on the face of it.
So my brother needs to go somewhere else eventually, of course subject to what happens with his divorce and whether he gets his house back. He’s been talking with my cousin, who – if I am remembering right – is getting an apartment because his house isn’t done yet. They may share a place, then later my brother may be able to take a room in my cousin’s house.
If not, he’s approaching me about the idea of sharing a place when the time comes.
I have mixed feelings. He can be tempestuous, but mostly he was fine to live with when I rented a room from him for a couple years up through and just beyond the end of college. It was meeting the ill-fated wife he’ll be divorcing that he became crazy, and she made a concerted effort to “encourage” me to want to leave. For a year or so, I really liked living there. Whatever happens, I’d rather he move into a place that is already mine, or we move into a place together, so there can’t be any “this is my apartment” bullshit. Though that didn’t start until he’d met her.
I try to avoid sharing an apartment with anyone. I’m the esaiest going person in the world, but I can’t stand living with people who aren’t that way, or take advantage of my good nature. On the other hand, I really can’t afford to keep on paying rent on an entire apartment myself, not at this price. It’s a tough call. It would help us both.
Anyway, because he is talking next spring at least, it’s so far in the future as to be highly speculative. I’d like to have moved by then myself.
All of which affects the broadband I spoke of in the previous post. I can’t commit to a year, knowing I expect and want to move. Then again, with my level of inertia, I could be here that much longer. Which is bad; I’ll end up frantically trying to move when I get a notice that rent is going up. Amazed I haven’t been hit with that yet.
Well, we’ll see what happens. I’ve had slow connections this long.