As Promised

Published February 9, 2025 by helentastic67

As Promised

This is as promised my fifth post in a session of writing. I’m on a roll. I might even try to finish open a more positive note. No promises see what I can do?

So, to give some context from all the things regarding my previous posts. For the last seven years I’ve rented an apartment through an affordability scheme. It was to take people off the public housing list but help landlords more than the tenant’s long term. The scheme ran for ten years, of which I benefited only the last seven. The landlords of new developments for a period were asked to offer up several properties to be managed by the government in exchange for cheaper rent to the tenant and what they lost in rent they got back at tax time. You gotta have money to make money, right? It is to say, I got to live in a complex with normal people not in a public housing silo. It is also the time to say when I got into this housing arrangement some bright spark, (Note sarcasm) despite my telling him not to, he had me removed from the housing list.

Every year I had to sign a new lease and provide financials and income statements to prove I was the only resident and I still qualified as low enough income to qualify for the scheme. What a MOTHER FUCKER. Mind you I had to do it every year for the seven years I was there. Honestly, it’s a different mindset. Remember the days you just needed to prove you could afford the rent?

In the time I’ve been on the Disability Support Pension I’ve had rent assistance which despite my rent going up every time, mostly initiating me having to relocate. It’s like the government that decides how much rent assistance needs to be doesn’t pay rent, or live in the real world, or care to learn how much rent is. We know the answer to all these things. No, they don’t!

In the last twenty years, I’ve rented houses for 4 years, each HOUSES WITH HOUSEMATES and at the end of the fourth year I’ve not been able to negotiate out of a rent increase, the landlord situation changes and I’ve needed to pay exorbitant rent or move. So, I’ve moved.

The house I rented the first time I moved with my disability. I struggled to find something in my price range and I was literally paying someone’s mortgage. I only had housemates for four months of the year. I stayed there and even asked my dad, who helped me a few times to cover the rent even though I’d bankrupt him.

That household situation had me move further out again, to never want housemates again. The first housemate, I ended up taking to VCAT, AMD. The second that lived with me for three months and was years my senior and had a huge reduction on her portion of the rent and had her son practically live with us. No more. There was the assumption, the government was paying my rent and my lifestyle. So, she thought to take advantage of that.

The last of the scheme I was in I paid $317 a week. At the end of the scheme my rent was to be $550 per week. They wanted me to sign a lease and there was no way I was doing that. If I was going to pay that much rent it was going to be somewhere nicer and quieter. I paid two weeks of that rent and timed it perfectly to get the fuck out.

I later checked the rental listing and it was advertised as $500 per week. Just scum, I know this post is a lot of specific financially, but necessary.

I could have afforded the scheme amount of rent in a reasonably comfortable lifestyle until sixty, when my income changes and I could no longer keep a roof over my head or the lights and internet on.

Not giving up all my things that tell people who I was/am/aspire to return to or just giving in and moving to some shit-fuck suburb, I wouldn’t survive in around people who HAVE ASPIRED TO NOT DO BETTER OR CARE, or to do better in life.

This post has not ended on a positive note has it.

Birkies – Part 3

Published January 24, 2020 by helentastic67

Birkies – Part 3

Yes, I’m finally getting back to it, part three. I’ve given you the context, but the reason you needed the context was for this part. I had a dream the other day, I don’t generally dream about places I’ve lived except the previously mentioned house I lived with my favourite housemate “B”.

For a few years I lived there alone with B and after a year of the house being in some form or other of needing repairs after a horrible storm, where I was home alone trying to prioritise if I rescued my thing’s or B’s (The answer is both, but mine first) and the last few years (we were there four years all up) my then boyfriend moved in, making it cleaner and cheaper.

But I dream about it sometimes, crazy dreams where I’m in my old bedroom, on a bed that isn’t made, the bed is higher off the ground and I’m leaning back against pillows and there are two young children (not mine, I don’t have any) playing on the bed.

My mum is out and girls are on the pillows around me. There are other details I recall from this dream too, but don’t seem relevant and I remember them for weeks without any idea why this seems important to revisit.

I’ve recently increased my very mild anti-depressants to help with my “Crazy Bitch Hormones” and sleeping problems. Although the dreams are getting weirder and my desire to hurt people has not diminished.

I’m debating with whether this as the happiest time in my life and this is why my subconscious returns there? But the dreams are always vivid and immaculately detailed.

Why am I hiding under the round formed dining table in the room that was B’s bedroom? What am I even doing inside? How can they not see me?

Can the manufacturers of anti-depressants get this shit sorted out? I never took drugs in the 90’s, so it’s all new to me and I don’t like it.

Sort this shit out please!

Burkies – Part 1

Published January 17, 2020 by helentastic67

Burkies – Part 1

Ok, the next two short posts are purely context for the third, I now must write today. So, bare with me and strap in for a bit of a chuckle.

When I was first diagnosed in 2007, I lived with my favourite housemate down in Clifton Hill. My favourite housemate even in twenty years of sharing, will as he has in the past, go by the name of ‘B’. The street we lived on ‘F’. We lived on a corner of ‘F’ and whatever the side street was.

During peak hour F street became the alternative route for people not wanting to use Hoddle Street, which was once described by my friend Frank as the carpark. Clifton Hill often had many commuters drive from the outer suburbs, so they could catch the tram from there to work.

The home was brick veneer and our bedrooms were right at the front of the house, surprisingly not as noisy to sleep as you might think.

We had a tiny bathroom, an equally small kitchen with an old Aga, where I stored my gladwrap, foil and such. To put it in perspective, an Italian couple had immigrated to Australia back in the 40’s and this was their first home, where they had, had and raised their children before moving out to the suburbs (as they did).

We had an outside toilet; we did have a garage and possums in the backyard which I fed bread. No, don’t eat that, eat the bread. That’s my finger! Eat the bread!

Anyway, I digress, B parked his car at the front of F street and occasionally he would not be able to park in this spot and he would become quite grumpy.

We consulted over this mysterious red car that was in ‘his’ spot. It was a little red Barina and it has stencilled letters on the side. You know, like those for Tupperware or Mary Kay or Avon.

Anyway, even if you know who is parking in your car spot, you can’t really say anything to them because it seems you are being rude. You resolve this dilemma in all good neighbourhood squabbles with the appropriate passive/aggressive culture of you just keep your car there until they stop trying to park there.

Anyway, B didn’t drive his car for a good few months, maybe he couldn’t afford his rego or whatever. B decided to sell it.

One particular Saturday, he called RACV who were out the front getting his car started. That afternoon, a woman came to see the car and buy it. Ironically, she had gotten a job as a Personal Carer (Support Worker) and needed a car. What a small world.

After the sale was completed, I was moving from one room to another and saw B standing inside the front door, which was timber and glass and he was (from where I was) hugging the door. I thought maybe he was sad to see his car go. He had inherited it from his grandmother.

I went past him a second time and he was still there, so I prompted him “Are you OK?” his reply came after a few moments. A car engine idled in the distance.

“Yes, I’m just making sure she got through the lights down the street and it didn’t conk out” or something to that affect, he was concerned she would come back insisting on a refund.

Moments like these.

Fur Baby

Published October 13, 2017 by helentastic67

Fur baby

Fur Baby

In Memory Of Jamima

This one is for TRT (Tummy Rum Tuesday) which is my absolute favourite post to read on a Tuesday. I always save it for last.

Jamima Patch Pirate Cat Puddleduck! (Is her official name) Jamima Puddleduck was the name she kinda came with and we added the rest because of the patch of colour over her eye and early penchant for liking to sit on our shoulder. Just like a Pirate’s parrot…

Jamima Puddleduck

Jamima came from a house across the town that had 5 cats! 5! And there were three litters of kittens all at once. I know. Bit extreme that all five cats were not fixed. Jamima was a runt of her litter apparently. She came home with my housemate and I when she was five or nine weeks old. Two of the other kittens (black and white boy and a girl) were adopted by B’s mum who paid for all three to be de-sexed, which was nice.

I would love Jamima to have had kittens as she would be much more settled and calmer now, but I also know her kittens would have been even harder to part with.

I bonded with Jamima early, I guess I kinda become her mother. B, the cool now housemate previously mentioned would put her on his turn-table and played with her a lot.

Turntable

But he also did the “Bad-Parenting” letting her scratch the bejesus out of things that should not be scratched.

Jamima and I have moved four times now and she’s now 15-ish. Housemate ‘B’ lived in the first two houses and then sadly, he decided he couldn’t afford real rent. You know, to have had a proper roof, a bathroom that wasn’t falling apart and we were no longer housemates.

He was really chilled-out ‘cool’ housemate and I miss him, but I made it clear when we weren’t housemates anymore I was keeping Jamima.

Makes it sounds like he was my boyfriend? Read it again! He wasn’t. So Jamima is my greatest companion in these lonely days of being a barren, single, crazy cat lady.

Crazy cat lady

Yes, I’ve got the crazy cat lady mentality despite only having one cat.

There are evenings she just stays in bed until I chase her out, insisting this is why I have her. Love her, feed her.

So, I don’t spend every single night on the couch alone, this is her job.

If you are a new Hellonwheels visitor/convert, you might like to check out some earlier posts.

Jamima

Sadly, earlier in 2017 my last responsibility as Jamima’s fur-mum was to take her to the vet one last time. Still now, it makes me very sad. I have not yet welcomed a new fur-child into my heart and my home as moving home has needed to happen first. I miss her every day.

But it’s still nice my followers get to hear how weird and special she was.

You can catch up on her previous post here…….

https://hellonwheelslifeonehanded.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/jamima-the-human-cat/

Finding a Housemate

Published August 15, 2016 by helentastic67

Housemates_-_lead_image.png-1

Finding a Housemate

So, finding a housemate is crap at the best of times. I wish I’d counted how many people I’d do the song and dance for to present myself as a normal person, just so I could find a responsible adult to share the rent and expenses.

I just found this description of someone I had look through that 1^st house. Because sometimes it’s now you re call people not by name of how they look.

Here goes;

“Horror/Action/Gemini/Butcher/Maids outfit while cleaning/Cross dresser/Porn!

Also think this was a guy who said he would be happy to be my Carer. (help me after a shower etc)

To be clear that was never going to happen!

I don’t require my housemate to help me EVER that requires them to see me naked! Boundaries people.

Briefly, I had a woman move in who told me one thing and did another.

Then had a tall Frenchman move in who stayed a year. He paid the rent and worked away at times giving the place to myself – Bliss!

He was not, I repeat, NOT my favourite ever housemate. He wasn’t my least favourite either. But he wasn’t my favourite and I now try hard not to judge other French tourists and such by my year or so co-habituating with him.

Some woman would ask “Oh, French, so sexy!”

To which I would reply “Um?, No!” Bon!

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Then I had to move and find a new housemate!

Moving is annoying at the best of times!

Moving with a disability is a pain in the ASS!!!

What is the Game?

Published April 1, 2016 by helentastic67

What is the Game

What is the game?

My favourite housemate ever and I used to have a game we used to love to play. Firstly, when I say ‘game’ don’t the wrong idea. And when I say ‘we’ loved to play, I mean I loved it and he dreaded it!

To give you some background this housemate, let’s call him “B”, and was very relaxed. He was a roadie and I considered him a pothead. He didn’t, but he smoked a spliff or 2 every night, but what do I know? I don’t smoke.

Ok, that’s the background out of the way.

Here’s how the game works. I would start at one end of the mantel piece in the lounge and touch a finger to the first ‘thing’ asking “What’s this and does it need to be here?”

“B” would pick up “this” item and we continued. Halfway along the mantle piece he would get ahead of me and remove all the things he knew didn’t belong there.

By the end of the game all that was left were the clean plates that sat in the middle and the Kuan Yin head.

My home is not always spotless, but I try to have a ‘home’ for everything. A tidy house is a tidy mind. I generally limit the amount of time I spend in environments that make me want to blow my brains out.

I can’t help trying to problem-solve and neaten things, because it gives me a migraine very easily.

More about my favourite housemate ever “B” another time.