Some burning questions.

I think smoking is disgusting.  It stinks, it dries your skin, it's expensive.  So why do people do it?  That's the first of my questions.  I used to hang out in bars a lot, though I never smoked.  I always had to shower and wash my clothes.  While I realize being in a bar and smoking outside a bar are two different things, but still.  I am a tutor and have helped some people that just stink.  Even the really clean ones, you know, they shower, do laundry, suck on breath mints, but that smell just comes out.  Normally it smells like the back of their throat.  Yuck.

Another thing I can't understand is smoking in the house.  Then, after a time, it's like you are living in the bar.  I've been to chain-smokers-in-the-house's house before.  You can see the nicotine stains high on the walls and across the ceiling.  It's gross.  And EVERYTHING stinks, no matter how clean your house is.

Cigarettes can make me a little sick these days, too.  It dries out my nose, I am more prone to asthma attacks, etc.  This is where my anger comes in.

My downstairs neighbor keeps smoking in the house.  She quit for a week, and was gone for a week, then today she came home.  I got home from school and that's all I could smell.  It just sends me into a rage.  James owns the house, therefore is her landlord.  He's talked to her twice and I've talked to her once.  How she thinks she's getting away with this is beyond me.  She should have been evicted the first time she did it.  And I'm not letting James give her her deposit back, she broke her lease the first time she smoked.  We let her know we were getting new furniture (In the thought she'd realize if she ruined it she's buying us new stuff) and I'm asthmatic.  She's still doing it.  I get so angry I could just spit.  She's lucky I haven't gone down there and completely yell at her.  But oh, it's coming.

James is going to talk to a lawyer friend of his (who also rents apartments) to figure out what is the best course of action.  I have to leave here in 15 minutes, but before I do that I'm going downstairs to sniff around the door that adjoins our part of the basement to her apartment.  If I smell smoke I'm going down there.  And I'm yelling.

Most of what makes me so angry is that she's breaking the lease, but the brunt of it is that she a)thinks so little of us, and b)thinks we are so stupid that we wouldn't notice.  I'm done being walked on by this woman.  There is a line where being an asset because you pay your rent on time and being a burden because you are impossible to live above meet.  Well, she's crossed it.