One degree. An improvement over the negative two on my drive to work this morning, but still freezing! It's the kind of cold that stings my cheeks when I'm walking out to the car. I park about a hundred yards from my apartment, in the carport. It wouldn't be a bad walk, but my apartment complex is ghetto and they don't shovel the sidewalks all the way to the carport. Instead, they snowplow over them, meaning I have to walk through the parking lot and along the road to get to my car. Which wouldn't be that bad, but they don't salt the parking lot or the roads, so they end up as solid sheets of ice.

There are three months left on my lease. I cannot wait to get out of this place. When I first toured the complex last summer, it seemed like a nice place to live. It was well landscaped, the management was friendly, and it was quiet. Those were (and still are) important features to me. 

Since I moved in, the landscaping has gone to hell. There is a dead, fallen tree taking up half the parking spaces in the carport, where it has been lying for about five months now. Another tree had fallen some time before that one, and the groundskeeper had cut it down. So now, in front of my complex, are an ugly stump and a dead tree. The snow removal service sucks. The potholes along the road are about three feet deep, and the holes grow wider each day. Each morning and afternoon I get to play "dodge the pothole" on my way to and from work.

The management changed hands right before I moved in. After I'd signed the lease, of course. They are nowhere near as friendly as the people who had enticed me to rent. My requests for service are either forgotten, ignored, or put off until I am on the phone with them every day asking when they are going to come in and fix something. I pay my rent on time each month, so the only time I hear from them is when I call in with a complaint.

Not that I call in many complaints. The complex remains quiet for the most part. I think this is due to the fact that people continuously move out and nobody new moves in. In other apartment buildings I've lived, there has always seemed to be a steady stream of moving trucks as people came and went. In this one, it seems that the only direction U-Haul carries is outbound. Slowly, to avoid the potholes.

Inside the apartment isn't pretty, either. I had a list of things that needed to be fixed before I moved in. They finished about half the list. I'm still missing the flooring to my bottom kitchen cabinet. My bedroom window doesn't close all the way (doesn't stay closed). Did I mention that it's one degree outside with a windchill of minus fourteen? My heating bills are killing me.

Three more months. I'm supposed to move out next month, but I'm going to honor the lease and keep paying until May. I can't afford to let my credit be damaged any further than it already is. I know I could probably fight it. But honestly? I don't have it in me. I just want out.