Thanks, guys. One of the things that upsets me so much is, we really cleaned up the clutter, and worked our asses off at it. I do clean regularly, but my boyfriend let magazines and junk pile up on our living room table, which is one of the things I don't touch. I mean, that's one thing that happened. The table and its contents got dusty. My bf handled that, in our cleaning spree. I can't do that kind of cleaning a lot, which is why I do the regular cleaning I do, so other things don't get like that. I don't just mean I can't just in terms of OCD, but in terms of stress.

And don't misunderstand; my bf does a lot of things for me, and tries in a lot of ways. There are things he does which are not helpful, and things which actually hurt. Plus, he has a temper that makes me cringe (I don't mean he hits me or yells and screams at me, but when something upsets him, his reaction scares me). That's just something from my childhood. I want to get out on my own and not be a burden for him.

I'm feeling a little better, although still depressed. What really got me is, we worked so hard, and then the manager (who hadn't seen the apt. when it was messy) was still so critical. Honestly, no one would be freaked if they saw our apt. It's clean. But my bf didn't get the blinds completely clean (the wet cloth he used left some dust gooped near the strings that hold the blinds--it's not much, but visible), and he commented to the manager, "Oh, I didn't see the blinds weren't all clean. I'll have to wipe them down again," to which she said, "Yes. You will."

Like I said, there's a bathroom cabinet door to be fixed--it broke just when we opened it one day, and we did tell them about it, but no one came to fix it--so we'll see the maintenance man again soon, and some grouting to be done (not our fault), but that's minor stuff.

The thing is, it's not definite our lease will be renewed (and that's coming up soon). I'm like, damn! The place looks fine! Yeah, we'll put the videotapes in plastic storage bins--we were going to do that eventually, anyway--but it's not like we had roaches and rats.

My mom's house had roaches after my aunt moved in, because the furniture she brought in had roaches (long story, and a long time ago), and I remember a mouse in the house (it ran over my foot one time! I jumped a mile high, and we all know white girls can't jump! LOL!), but this apartment hasn't had any such problems. They're nice apartments, although not rich-people apartments.

TC, I'm actually considering getting an extender, when I calm down, and trying to deal with my OCD in using it. Despite all the problems I have with OCD, I've overcome a lot, too, and using an extender might be possible with a little work on the OCD thoughts.

Debbie, I used to have hamsters. When I got my last ones, Squirt and Scoot, when the girl handed me Squirt, she peed on me, LOL! I used to block off my room and make sure nothing dangerous was on the floor, and let them out to roam around. They liked that. I never had a rat, but I love them!