It isn’t just that the front panel of the oven door suddenly fell off yesterday (whilst roasting comfort food veggies) but this now means I have to go through another whole ordeal with the landlady about WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. Well, I mean, it’s an old oven, it has never worked properly (it basically has one temperature) and I don’t think the fact that it’s falling apart should be my responsibility.

I will never understand landlords like mine (and I mean all the landlords I’ve had since I moved here). They have either inherited apartments or entire buildings, do minimum maintenance, may or may not be declaring income, and yet always balk at spending ANYTHING on, well, anything, if they can help it.

Remember the whole paying for the split episode last summer? In the end the landlady lost out – if she’d taken my previous offer she wouldn’t have ended up paying for the whole thing.

Now she’s telling me to call a “técnico” to see how much it will cost to fix the oven door, without actually saying she will pay for it (she says it depends on the amount). But of course if someone comes over here to tell me this, it’s already going to cost money. Ufff…

Thing is, if I were happier here I wouldn’t think twice about just buying a new oven, especially since this probably wouldn’t cost much more than paying someone to come over and fix the front door panel. But part of me still has one foot out the door. Every day I check the apartment listings, just in case my dream apartment is there. This just doesn’t feel like a place I want to invest in.