The Weather Inside Is Frightening

Chris and I are pretty sure our landlord is stealing our heat- both for his basement apartment and his mother's first floor apartment. The way I see it, here's the situation: on the plus side, the entire heating system is only accessible through our apartment in the attic. On the minus side, our landlord is a rat thief.

Yesterday I saw that the heating bill for November with his name on it had been dropped in our mail slot by mistake. Being the good neighbor/tenant that I am, I kindly dropped in his box on my way out. When I got home from work today, there it was again! He must've just stuck it right back in my door! I muttered to myself all the way up the stairs, there's no way I'm paying for this man to heat his entire house when I live in an already toasty third floor apartment.

Then Chris took another look at the heating vent up in the attic and realized that one giant section of the venting system goes straight down the back wall of our apartment, down to the first floor. So basically, he thinks we're just going to be idiotic enough to not question a $300 gas bill every month?

Oh, hell no. My momma didn't raise no fool.

But I played it cool. I wrote him a cheery note on a purple post-it explaining that the mailman must have mistakenly dropped his bill in our box, but that I was kindly returning it, and that my name would appear on the December bill, thank you very much. Now it's up to Chris to threaten to disconnect the landlord's heating vents from the one and only source of heat in the house. What do I care if there are little Greek popsicles living below me? I will not be cheated.