This past month it seems like "The Man" (that is, anyone in a position of authority) is coming down on me extra hard. This is the reference to MB undies which stands for Milk Bone underwear.
I don't know why, but when the chips are stacked against me like they seem to be this past month, I always think back to one of the one-liner quips that became a staple of the "Norm" character on the '80s sitcom "Cheers." Usually presented as the soft opening, Norm would walk in the bar, the crowd would yell "Norm!" and he'd say some smart-assed one-liner. The pertinent one here was "It's a dog-eat-dog world and I'm wearing Milk Bone underwear." Corny, I know, but it stuck with me and I think of it whenever the world seems pitted against me.
My landlord decided to charge all us tenants here at the Bellagio Apartments (definitely NOT anything like the luxurious Bellagio in Vegas) for some bullshit mark-up fee called a Stormwater Fee. This will now be an extra $7 or so a month along with the $30 we have already been paying for Water Fee, Trash Fee and Admin Fee (not to be confused with Sewer Fee, either, since that charge, another $30 a month, comes from the electric company) But, the kicker with this new fee is we're being charged retroactively back to the end of 2012 over the course of the next three months to the tune of some extra $40 a month! They say they "forgot" to bill us. So my monthly rent bill shot up unexpectedly and without warning or recourse some $50 a month over night! Is this legal, you ask? Sure. Here in Florida the Republicans have made the rental laws obnoxiously one-sided in favor of the landowners. Renters here are treated like second-class citizens.
My doctor, or should I say now my former doctor since after this stunt I'm never going back there, had the gall to charge me, 7 months after the appointment, a co-pay for an annual physical. Normally, physicals have a waived co-pay. The reason? If the doctor talks about anything of an ongoing chronic nature they can bill for it in addition to the physical, thus it comes with a co-pay due. So now I have to mail this $30 in using a check (How 20th century, I had to dig up my checkbook from the bottom of a storage bin.) even though I was told at the time I didn't need to pay a co-pay.
My eye doctor's office was already on my shit list for their buffoonery and inflated prices failed to cancel my "upcoming" appointment when I called to cancel a month ago. They sent an email a couple weeks ago reminding me of my "appointment" and giving me the option to reply to the email saying I cancel which I did. Then I get a voicemail this week of someone from that office reminding me of my upcoming appointment. I called them up, asked them for the third time to cancel the appointment and left them with some choice curses to make them remember it this time.
The Cali Question has been the other big thing this past month. Not a day goes by now that I'm not thinking of doing it. Moving to California when the lease here at the Not-So-Luxurious-Bellagio runs out in November.
But the old fears crop up. Not of getting familiar with new surroundings...I'm oh so ready for that and I just know it will be a good fit. But of letting go. Letting go of some of my possessions I've accumulated over the past few years (all very affordably replaceable) and my job (there are nut houses in Cali, I'm sure) and the cost of living (it's high there but it's no longer a bargain here, that's for sure).
Do I think moving to California will fix all my woes? Not at all. My biggest problems are going to follow me wherever I go, of course. But clock's-a-tickin', and the Cali Question was always a part of the long-term equation. There will be struggles with the implementation of all of this but then again there are some aspects of my life that make the move more achievable than other people might have. namely, there's nothing, and no one, holding me back. Of course that also means there's nothing and no one helping me out either. I'm, as always, totally alone on this. But I think I'm kinda used to that by now.