Need a Little Xmas Miracle

 

     Hi, all. As well as all the traditional winter states, Massachusetts is gearing up to celebrate the holidays. Look, we even have draft horses in downtown Hudson tonight, complete with sleigh bells!

     And if Christmas isn't the time for miracles, I don't know what is. And Casa de Pottersville is in need of one.

     Those of you who've been following our plight may know that, in addition to the sudden deaths that have rocked us since last summer, our landlord suddenly passed away from COVID in September. As expected, all his properties were willed to his wife, so she's managing his many business affairs.

     After having met her and engaged in phone calls and many text messages and emails since October, she's turned out to be a real sweetheart, the kind who will bend over backward for you within reason. In fact, just today, the book she wanted to read, The River Never Speaks, just arrived today in hard cover that I'd ordered specially for her at a cost of over $30 with tax and shipping and handling. (Last October, when I offered to have a hard copy commissioned just for her, she said it would make her "feel better about [her] life.")

     So, when I'd told her the book had arrived today, she expressed enthusiasm but then immediately got right down to business and said she wanted to meet at the bank on Monday, meaning she wanted the rent that was due three days ago. She did us a big favor by signing us to a year-long lease on Halloween that her late husband refused to extend to us.

     I don't want to tell her we don't have it and make her think we're deadbeats, after all. Up until September, we'd gone for 150 consecutive months of paying the rent on time but none of that means a damn when you do rent. It's all about, "What have you done for me this month?" No matter how nice your landlady is, she still runs a profit center, meaning this house, as well as her other properties.

     So, we're on a tight timeline. We'll need at least $500 to remain solvent while making the rent on Monday. Yes, we need $500 in less than 48 hours. I'm so sorry to have to do this to you guys but Christmas is the time for miracles, right? And we'd sure like to stay on good terms with my landlady, especially with the adversity that she and all of us have endured since the pandemic set in.