the wrong side of the bed

i want to write a post about an amazing hat, but i keep putting it off. it's okay, i just have to get to it before thanksgiving. this, though, is something i need to deal with right now. my roommate is completely great as a roommate. i'm not in love with her quite as much, or at all, as i was when we moved in together. she is still almost everything a person could want. quiet. about as clean as i am. tolerant of my moods. but there are three things about her that have been making me crazy. i am a bad person for telling you, but here they are:

1. she hangs the toilet paper so that the sheets come down in the back. what is the advantage of that? the end of the roll is not always apparent. finding the roll requires awkward, unnatural hand positions.

2. she wears a faux hawk. why?

3. she decides that some things are recyclable that clearly are not. styrofoam. envelopes with plastic bubbles inside (the kind you pop!). take out containers. she doesn't even always break down boxes. okay, so the madison recylopedia doesn't say that you can't recycle packing envelopes, but how would they be processed by recycling facilities? i guess that other envelopes with plastic windows get recycled. maybe whatever soaking processes lets them extract all of the plastic after the paper is already mulch. still, i wish she had looked in to it.

she only eats oatmeal. every bowl in the apartment is sitting in our sink by the end of the week. she often puts dish towels in the bowls as if to hide the contents. it is quite odd. i can't get mad at her about this because i take ever glass in our house to my bedroom so that i can have water to take my pills. i never bring yesterdays glass back down. so, okay, i will let the bowl thing go.

Labels: roommate

last week i didn't finish anything i needed to get done at work. the same for monday of this week. tuesday when i left my desk i still had things sitting there from august and i moved the most urgent of those in my chair so that i wouldn't be able to put them off. today i sat on them. i never looked at them. i just sat. it felt weird, but it didn't hurt.

my scheduled work hours are 8:00 - 4:30, assuming i don't have night meetings. today i left at 4:45. i would have stayed later but, thank god, i had a party to go to! my roommate's workplace was having a "talk like a pirate day" party. even though i think pirates are soooooo 2 years ago, i decided to attend because, well, my pool of friends is on the decline and it isn't getting any more promising. there were only a handful of people, but i actually knew two of them through friends.**

i was nervous before i got to the party. i'm scared of people. sometimes they bite and stuff. but, i went anyway. i wasn't a huge fuck up. i did talk to a few people. i managed to ask people questions about themselves, though not quite as much as i should. i tend to dominate conversations despite my social anxiety.

the funnest part, however, was somehow upsetting/hurting/annoying my roommate's boss. i have no idea how. i asked her if she liked the button i was wearing, erroneously assuming that, because my roommate had pinned it on me when i walked in, maria had either made it or that it had something to do with their company. it would seem that i was wrong, but i have no idea how. maria said she would tell me when we "weren't in front of the children." i am hoping it involves swingers.

this happened after i had already been there for around 2 hours, and i did not stay for cake.


*let me just say that when i searched my blog to see if i have ever used the above as the title of a post before, i came up with this. i am pretty funny. fuck you if you don't think so. i do wonder what that post was about, though.

** in the who time i have known them as friends of friends, i have never talked to the woman part of the couple as much as i did tonight. i have still barely spoken to the man. it turns out she is quite nice.

Labels: roommate, work

i haven't had a roommate in a long time. it has been, so far, fun and games. i am picking up new mannerisms that, when i realize i have picked them up, annoy me, even though it seems quite normal and innocuous when maria does them. that's fine. she says she has picked up some of mine, and i believe her, even if i haven't observed this. it is a nice thing, i think, to have someone with whom a mutual adjustment has gone smoothly. we both like the word "underpants."

there is one thing that has suddenly emerged that makes me a bit skittish. she brought someone home last night. a new someone that did not exist in our little world at the beginning. if maria had been with this person from the get go i think i would barely even notice, but now i need to make an adjustment. i don't remember what you do in a situation like this. maria had given me a bit of a warning yesterday that there was someone she was interested in, and when i walked into our apartment at 11:00 yesterday, i knew who the extra person in the living room must be. i said hello, stood around for a minute, and then dashed up to my bedroom. i think i did well. i acknowledged her, but didn't stay around long enough to get in the way.

what about now, this morning? do i need to change into real clothes, or are pajamas okay? what do i say when they wander out bleary eyed and i am sitting on the couch eating snicker doodles? i just need to be reminded.

presumably (hopefully?) there is a chance, however small, that i could start seeing someone and will have to repeat the process with a reversal of roles. do you think i could pull it off without making every party uncomfortable? like i said, it has been a long, very long time since i have had a roommate. 7 years? i can forget many things in 7 years.

Labels: roommate