Stupid shit: a synopsis.

Lately I've been noticing that I make a lot of stupid mistakes. This wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't tend to cost me a lot of money/dignity. There have been a bunch over the past few months, so I'm just going to summarize them here.

1) Not realizing that heat wasn't actually included in our rent.

Apparently, despite the fact that our broker told us that both heat and hot water were included in our rent, that was a total lie. Only hot water is included in our rent. Sarah and I didn't realize this until we received a $266 gas bill. I called our super, who acted like I was going crazy for ever thinking that heat was included in our rent, and I called our broker, who ignored me all four times. So that was a stupid mistake.

2) Locking myself out of my apartment.

This was a really airheaded move that ended up costing me $250 and most of my dignity. In the middle of a recent laundry day, I grabbed my wallet and headed down to the basement. It wasn't until I got back upstairs that I realized I had forgotten my keys. So there I was - locked out of my apartment in the middle of the afternoon wearing scrunchie-bottomed sweatpants and fuzzy slippers armed with nothing but my wallet. Long story short, after a few failed attempts at breaking the lock with my laundry card and a series of phone calls placed from two different neighbors' telephones, I ended up back in front of my door watching a locksmith drill the entire mechanism to tiny pieces. That was an even more stupid mistake.

3) Mailing the rent to the wrong address.

This one wasn't entirely my fault. When our broker wrote the managing agent's mailing addres on our lease, she wrote the wrong zip code. So, every time we mailed in our rent, it ended up getting re-routed all over Brooklyn and arriving three weeks late. This would explain why I kept getting angry phone calls asking where the rent was. It was only after three or four of these mishaps that our super finally decided to let us know that most renters just slipped their checks under his door. So really, I think I can blame our axis-of-evil building management team for this one.

In conclusion, I wish I didn't do as many dumb things, since most of them are very expensive.