That crappy landlady has died.
I can’t say she was particularly nice to us – but she wasn’t an alcoholic or a thief either, and sometimes, that’s the best you can hope for.
Rest in peace.
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Natalia A. 
Yes, RIP. And I hope that you don’t have your home disrupted by the changes.
Your header pic gives this obituary its real quality.
That reminds me that I ought to update my header pic sometime… Hm…
I don’t know why I had to stifle a giggle when I read this. Maybe it was the part about her trying to slutshame you into paying the bill she’d forgotten you’d already paid.
Am I horrible? Maybe I am.
Oh well. Rest in peace, crazy lady. I hope I’m right and there’s no such thing as hell. Or I hope the Xtians who believe that jeebus forgives mean crazies for being crazier than they are mean are right. Er, as long as crazy lady really was crazier than she was mean…
Bah. I’m no good at being nice to people because they’re dead. What Pragmatic Realist said.
Yeah, besides being indignant about crazy thing slutshaming a pregnant woman, I had a vague recollection of commenter Laura’s Estonian wisdom and Tabby’s…er, whatever you call that. Leave it to Tabby to side with the obnoxious slutshamers.
Just curious. I think I missed a little of the nuance in your stab at the way batshit landlady got all pompous about using the son-of-a-vich part of your husband’s name. Cultural exchange please? It might make my adventures with Tolstoy a little easier on my eyes 🙂
Well, if you use a person’s patronymic while in conversation, it means that you’re being very formal about them, and, in her case, it was a way to show respect. By contrast, she would never refer to me as Natalia Vladimirovna. Just Natasha.
Also, yeah, the implication that I was whoring it up while my poor, blessedly ignorant husband was off shooting a film was a bit… much. Especially since I was hugely pregnant at the time and life was already pretty stressful.
Oh, I get it. Man, I really get it. She was calling him Mister and calling you chicky-poo. The nerve!
I’ve been noticing an interesting thing about slutshaming. I never thought it would happen bc I’m coming up on 40, and only ever considered myself average looking. But it’s getting worse for me as I get more education. I honestly thought people would stop treating me like a piece of meat once they saw my inner spinster cat lady, once I learned how to use words like epistemic privilege, once my kids reached late adolescence, once I decided to stay celibate for several years. I should be so lucky. That shit doesn’t even stop after I put a beating on somebody. It obviously doesn’t stop after a lady gets married, either.
I think batshit potato bun lady was self conscious about her lack of education. (I know that they screen Russian candidates for postsecondary education according to their aptitudes. I’m guessing her mental illness may have kept her out of that race.) You corrected her math and spoke the language of the thieving insurance salesmen in front of her. Slutshaming is often the last straw grasping attempt by an unqualified person who gained his/her authority through nepotism to maintain the illusion that s/he deserves to be in charge.
What a horrible world. At least you’re working to change it, Ms. Vladimirovna. Or Mrs. Alexey, if you prefer 😉 I can’t be nice about crazy landlady anymore. Every time some Phyllis Schlafly type like her rolls over and dies, I can’t help but think “Good riddance.” One more person who stood in the way of freedom&equality is gone.
It’s really not up to me to say when it’s someone’s time to leave this world, so I’ll refrain from saying or thinking “good riddance.” It’s just a shame that we never established a decent relationship when she was alive. And she’s left some uncertainty in her wake (her grandson is now the legal owner – and her husband apparently had no idea that she would sign the flat over to him) – so we’ll just have to see if it all works out.
Yes. Like I said, that thought does make me horrible. I’m kinda cringing at my own “throw the fat man under the trolley” attitude in this case. (The “fat man” is a thought experiment designed to point out the problems with utilitarian ethics, for any readers who are interested the way my crass brand of *whistling in the dark* happens.) Chatting on the internet is therapeutic in that way, I find. If we were chatting in RL, that thought would either go unstated, with an unpleasant and off-putting grimace all over my face. Or I would blurt it out with even less finesse than in my statements above. Either way, I’d piss you off and we probably wouldn’t be chatting much longer. I like wrapping my head around these issues on line. It gives everybody a chance to think and be reasonable about awkward dilemmas like speaking ill or not speaking ill of a not-so-well-liked dead person.
I hope you can have a better working relationship with her husband and grandson. I hope everything works out ok with the apartment, too.
Judging from what you said in your previous post about the lack of Tenant Protection by-laws where you are, is it possible that the worst could happen? Could you be evicted on short notice? Do you have a backup plan if the worst does happen? Family? Friends? Nest egg? Travel documents up-to-date if the nearest people who are willing to help you are in another country?