Resurrection

Well folks, who I'm sure don't even read this anyway, it has been over a year since I last posted here. The reason for this? Eh. I got bored. And after reading back on all the posts I made, they were pretty much the same thing through and through. Yeah. Mikey sucked as a roommate. Weget the picture, Burnout. Now go drink a latte, emo boy.

Since my last post, a whole year on our lease went by. And I was bound and determined to move out of that house because I couldn't stand living with Mikey anymore. Here's how I described our relationship to our friends. Mikey and I are old friends. I've known the dude since elementary school and he's like another brother to me. And he's also one of my best friends. But we are just so incompatible living together that I pretty sure we were going to rip each others' throats out.

As a bit of an update, since I knew our lease would be up at the ened of February 2010, I spent that whole month reassessing my life as a whole. I figured I wouldn't get stuck here in this same town I grew up in. And since I was going to move out and I was done with college, I may as well look for another job in a new city. So that's what I did. And by the end of February, I had two jobs lined up down in Southern California. One with another location from my current employer's franchise, and another with Wellspring, where I would also work with special needs children.

However, a week before what was supposed to be my big move, I received a letter from my good ol' efficient college. Assuming it was my diploma, I excitedly ripped open to the envelope. To my dismay, it was just a copy of my graduation petition I had turned in a whole entire year earlier, reviewed, approved, and assigned by my advisor. On this letter was a note saying, "You are 3 units shy of completing your graduation requirements. You will not receive your diploma until these requirements have been met."

So on a week's notice, I had to email my would-be employers informing them of the news and that I, therefore, don't qualify for the jobs they were going to hire me for. And with that, it was also too short of a notice to move anywhere else here in Sacramento and find another roommate.

"Hi mom. I'm moving back home."

I spent two arduous months back at home with my mother. And what's worse than NOT choosing your roommates wisely, is being a 23-year-old man moving back home with his mommy. Although things got pretty bad between my mom and me, I do have to say that moving out of that previous house was the best thing that could have possibly happened to mine and Mikey's friendship. We went a couple weeks barely talking, if at all, then slowly we built our way back up again. And now, I'd argue he and I are actually closer friends than we were pre-roommates.

For a while, I was in limbo. Trying to find a BS community college class to take and whatnot. But to no avail. Finally, I was able to convince the head of my department to let me use my job as an internship. I still haven't received my physical diploma, but I have received a letter saying the extra units have been approved. I'll believe it when I see it.

Anyway, I came to the conclusion around the end of April that I wouldn't be leaving Sacramento anytime soon. And at the same time, I went to a rave in Chico with a friend of mine. After spending half a night in the ER, being able to spend a few hours with her getting to know each other better than we already do (known her since high school), it all came together. I'm living with my mom, she's living with her dad. We both like to party. Let's do it.

We went looking for placed to live when we got back. Though we both agreed not to just go for the first place we see, it just so happens that the first place we stepped into spoke to us. And the price was well within our price range so we scooped it up that very day. It's a 6 month lease so hey, if things don't work out with us living together, at least we're not stuck with each other for a year. That shorter time frame also gives me a chance to keep searching for jobs in other places than Sacramento. Though, at the same time, I'm in no rush because hey, I have 6 months and I already love my job. I'm comfortable.

Starting off, things were awesome. We even had this nice space in her closet that was perfect for sitting and hot boxing. It was cool getting stoned almost every night for the first few weeks. Even being able to hear the lesbian sex in the room next to me was great. Oh yeah. Did I mention she's a lesbian? Well she is. Now you know and you can be jealous.

HOWEVER!

Women. Are. Crazy. Even if they look like boys. Moving in, it was understood that she and I are both clean freaks, so there was never going to be an issue of this house being clean. However, I learned less than a month into this that she likes things clean. But she likes to be the one to clean them. If she comes home and there's nothing to clean. She gets bored. And further gets upset that there's nothing to clean to keep her busy. So then I start leaving things messy. But then it's TOO messy and she doesn't want to clean up all of it.

Shoot me now.

Also, I should mention that we had a third person move in at the last minute. Just 2 days before we moved in, a friend of ours went through a bad break up. And she simultaneously got laid off from her job. She asked us if she could crash with us a while until she got her life back on track. So we did. And she lived with us for 2 months while she enlisted in the Navy. After about 2 months, Lesbian (who I will now nickname my current roommate...since everyone has to have a nickname in this blog) and I got into a HUGE argument. The context, not very important. But it's one of those issues that one person in a friendship has with another person and they bottle it up to protect their feelings. Well, she let it slip one night and it prompted a 3 hour discussion. And Seamen (not that nickname is just too easy) was there for all of it. And it was implied thorough the course of this conversation that since Lesbian and Seamen were introduced to each other by me, and they didn't meet on their own, Lesbian inferred that Seamen and her can't be real friends. Only acquaintances since a third party introduced them to each other.

God, there was so much unintentional innuendo in that last paragraph. I'm a little proud of myself for that. Anyway, end result is that Seamen didn't feel comfortable living here with Lesbian so she moved out. Ironically, she moved into my old room at Mikey's place. Then a few weeks after that, moved in with her uncle. Then she quickly received news that she was going to be shipping out to basic training early. She shipped out on July 21st.

Truth is, I really miss Seamen. And though she was kind of a chore, and she's impossible to debate with since she just contradicts you the whole time (see "The Argument Clinic" by Month Python and you'll get a sense of what it's like), I would have gotten along a lot better with her as a roommate. It was like having an awesome girlfriend/maid live with you. Except one you can't have sex with. One time I accidentally woke her up as I was getting ready for work, I apologized and said "Go back to sleep". Instead, she gets up, makes me a full, legit breakfast. Makes and awesome sandwich, put some cranberry juice in a mason jar, fixes up some snacks, and packed me a full lunch. She kissed me on the cheek, said, "Have a good day at work" and went back to bed.

Seamen is going to make some man very happy someday.

Anyway! Back to the situation at hand. Long story short, it was awesome the first few weeks living with Lesbian. We'd hot box "The Cave" as we came to call it, every few days. Lesbian, Seaman and I would have some great times. We had friends over a lot to see our new place and just kick it. It was MUCH better than living with Mikey where I couldn't have anyone over unless I gave him at least 2 days notice. And it's still like that. I can have anyone over whenever I want and it's totally cool. Same goes with Lesbian, for the most part.

However, once the middle of June/beginning of July hit, it became clear that Lesbian parties just a little bit too hard for my liking. See, we have just a tiny apartment, and she's been known to have upwards of 15-20 people in here. And that many people can barely be backed into the kitchen and living room combined. And these situations can occur on any night. Even work nights for me.

Lesbian has casually mentioned just spending a day doing ecstasy, or acid. Or being high all day.

Now you're probably wondering what she does with herself. Nothing really. She helps coach a crew team a few days a week, but she mostly just lives off her dad. She has a degree in civil engineering, but not doing anything with it. She's apparently applying to grad school, but all her expenses are paid by her dad.

She also got a puppy at the end of May. He's a cute little thing. A beagle. Which, cute as they are, are the devil's dog. And she was all excited after reading this puppy training book about how awesome he was going to be. Well he's not. He still tries to piss and shit in my room all the time after 2 months of "intense training". I came home one day from work, and noticed some pretty typical behaviors. I spend 1 hour training him using my Applied Behavior Analysis knowledge I have learned at work, and he made more progress with me than he has in 2 months being under her control. He's satan. And he chews my hats, destroys my room, pisses on me shoes, and eats my photos when I'm not here. I'd shut the door, but I don't want to lock my cat in or out of here because she'll either be trapped in my room all day, or be locked out and have no access to her food or litter box.

But the drug thing is my biggest issue with her. She has taken all the joy out of inebriation for me. I actually stopped smoking weed altogether just because of her. Sure, I have the guise of I might be getting a new job and I might need to drug test for it. Which might be true depending on the job and its requirements. But really it's just because she does some kind of drug ALL the time. She even started doing coke about a month ago and I know of a few times she's done it since then. And I'm not okay with that. There are crazy partying gay people here all the time I don't like and they all do all sorts of drugs right in our living room.

Now don't label me as homophobic. I'm totally not. I'm completely all for gay rights and equality. But my roommate is a martyr for the cause. She gets incredibly preachy about it. But if I even say one little thing wrong, or if I use the wrong label for the wrong type of "queer" I get chewed out for it. Yes, I love gays and I'm all for you being treated equally, being able to work in the military, and to be bale to get married. But when my home has become the headquarters for this cause in downtown Sacramento, it's way too overwhelming. Same goes for my Christian friends (I'm an Atheist by the way). I love my Christian friends. And I totally know what they believe and though I may not agree with it, more power to them. But I'm your friend. Not a stranger on the street you can preach to. I know your opinion and I know I'm damned for hell. You don't have to remind me every time we hang out.

Bottom line is that looking back, I had it way better with Mikey. I wouldn't live with him again. That's for sure. At least not in the foreseeable future. But I'd take domestic squabbles and arguments over the division of household labor any day over drugged up, fucked up, coked out gays using my living room as a refugee camp any day.

I'm looking to leave this situation as soon as possible. Hopefully I can either find a promotion at my current job and be able to afford a single or studio apartment here, but I'm also continuing to look at possibilities down south. I've also recently considered going into the Air Force. This isn't a new thing, by the way. I used to want to join the military back in high school. But it's a "calling" that creeps back up on me once in a while.

Changes are about to come. Don't know how often I'll update, but for now, you know how things have been for me.

You'd think that in my experiences last year, I would have learned to choose my roommate wisely. Alas, I haven't. I lived with someone who was messy and doesn't like to party. Now I'm living with someone who is a clean freak and loves to party all the time. From one extreme to the other. If I ever live with anyone else again, I have to find someone who has some sort of middle ground.

Taking Advantage

So today, I had made a bunch of brownies for a potluck at work. This was far and away the best potluck I've ever experienced. Anyway, the reason why I mention that is because the food was so splendidly good, that everyone ate so much of it that they didn't have any room left for any desserts. So I had a lot of brownies leftover. a full 9X9 try, and about 3/4 of a 13X9 tray. Mikey stopped by my room last night and asked if he could have any brownies. I told him he could help himself to the lasrger tray, and if he wanted, he could take them to work, and leave me the small tray. So Mikey took the large tray and said, "Thank you."

I went out to the kitchen later, after my nap, and Mikey, again, had left a mess. After the fiasco from yesterday, with the messy kitchen, I assumed that wa a one time thing. But I went out to the kitchen today, and he made another mess with just the brownie supplies. He took the aluminum foil off of the tray, and just placed it on the counter. Used two paper towels for something, and left those laying on the counter as well. The empty ziplock bag container was on the counter, as he used the last ziplock bag out of the pack to carry the brownies. Finally, the had placed the brownie tray in the sink and filled it up with water.

(In addition, like usual, the cabinets and drawers were left opened.)

It took me all of 5 minutes to clean up and wash the tray. Sure, not a huge deal, as it wasn't THAT much of an inconvenience to me. But being that it didn't take me that long, it wouldn't have taken him that long either.

At this point, he's just being flat out lazy. He's taking advantage of the fact that he knows I'll do it. How hard is it to throw a couple of napkins away and simply scrub a dish when you're done with it? Is this roommate setup really at the point where when he says, "I'll take care of my mess," it's really just code for "I'll consolidate it and let you clean it later"?

Tornado

So I have been very jet-lagged this whole week so far, and haven't been able to do much in the way of housework. Well, certainly more than Mikey has ever done, but not much according to my own standards. This is why there is no post from Monday the 29th, my first day back. I slept all day until 6pm, and then tried to go to bed 6 hours later at midnight to reset my schedule.

Anyway, I did clean the house from the giant mess Mikey had made while I was gone. I haven't however, had the opportunity to clean my bathroom, my room, or vacuum.

So I did a bit more tidying up today when I came home from work. Mikey had a giant stack of his mail on the dining table. I gave him from Sunday (the day I got back) until today to do something with it. That's a 3 day grace period, and he still failed to do something with it. So I moved it to his room. Well, I just noticed that in the hour and a half he just spent here he moved half the stack back to the dining table. Why? I don't know. It's all mail that's addressed to him. When I get my mail, I take it to my room, read it right away, throw it away, or store it in my desk immediately. Why he has dozens of letters that he keeps moving everywhere, I have no idea. But I'm going to go buy some sort of decoration for the dining room table, and hopefully, that will prevent him from putting his mail there anymore.

Well, like I said, he was here for an hour and a half just now. And like I said before that, I came home from work and did a bit of further cleaning. And by a bit, I mean I spent nearly an hour in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher and cleaning everything spic and span. I went to my room and started watching some YouTube videos. In about 10 minutes, Mikey came home from...doing whatever he was doing.

I heard him in the kitchen for about 20 minutes or so, then I heard the XBOX 360 turn on in the living room. He played XBOX for about an hour, then he played drums for 20 minutes. He stopped by my room, told me he was going to work, and told me to water the backyard.

I emerged form my room and went to the kitchen. And I saw an absolutely horrendous mess in the kitchen. Nearly as bad as the initial mess I came home to upon my return form Tokyo. And I had JUST finished cleaning and shining the whole kitchen. Took me an hour, or close to it, to do it. And it took Mikey a matter of 20 minutes to destroy the whole thing again. It looks as if someone came in here and cooked all three of their daily meals and didn't clean any of it:

Opened peanut butter and jelly jars in the sink. An opened milk container on the counter. All the pots and pans, dirty, on the stove, a grocery bag on the counter. dirty utensils and about half a dozen napkins strewn about. A chair from the dining room all the way in the living room in front of the TV.

Using a plate and not putting it in the dishwasher is one thing. That's not a big deal at all. But you're telling me that he made THIS much of a mess, had time to play an hour of XBOX and 20 minutes of playing the drums, but he couldn't clean up any of this?

I can't fucking believe this...

The Return

Well, as I mentioned in the last blog, I went to Tokyo for a week. And as I expected, this house was an absolute wreck upon my return.

I won't post any pictures or anything, since I don't wish to post pictures of the house itself (minus the toilet pictures). But to draw a comparison, the mess in this house was just as bad, if not worse, than the mess that existed during the time when I did the first big clean which was a mess that had consisted of anything and everything the both of us failed to clean up that had collected for two months.

I will rephrase that just so that the severity of the actual mess sets in for you.

For two months after we first moved in, we both had messes we didn't clean up. Various things that had collected and not been picked up. It was a wretched mess. And it took me two weeks to clean up (of course, I had work, school, taekwondo, and guitar practices in between these cleans). It took the both of us and two months to create this mess.

Upon my return from my trip. The mess I encountered was just as bad. So the amount of mess and clutter that had previously taken the two of us two months to create took Mikey a week, alone in this house, to create on his own.

I am on my way to clean it up. He just left the house and I'm actually still afraid to do my cleaning while he's here. Because he actually will complain or make some sort of snide comment about it. But I've discovered that if I do my cleaning when he's not around, he no longer says anything about it when he comes home and finds things clean.

Perhaps that's improvement on our relationship as roommates.

A Week Without Me

Well, I mentioned it a while back, but I'm going to Tokyo for a week. I leave tomorrow morning and I won't be back until Sunday June 28th. I have a week vacation form work so my friend and I are going. It should be tons of fun!

It will be interesting, though, to see what happens to the house. Mikey will be here alone for an entire week. I've thought this place got very messy in a matter of one day if I didn't do anything to clean. So we'll see the state of this place when I get back after a week. My prediction is that he'll either let the place go completely to hell, not do anything, and I'll come home to a complete pigsty; or he'll let his mess collect but clean a bit just before I get home.

Since I am a man who likes science, I'll put this house in as much of a "control" state as I can. I'll completely go through this house today and clean, polish, shine, vacuum, and do absolutely any cleaning thing you could imagine can be done on a house. Just so I know it's all perfectly clean when I leave and I can more easily determine how much of a mess he let me come home to.

Goodbye for a week!

Only time will tell. So this will break the chain of me updating this blog everyday. I'm sure I'll have a bit to say when I get back.

A Simple Matter

If you've been reading this blog, you've noticed that what I've talked mostly about is me being very clean and Mikey, well, not being very clean. I find that is our biggest issue in living together.

When we first entertained the idea of moving in together, we both told each other the same thing. We were messy living at our parents' houses. Both of us wanted to turn that around. Start fresh. Make new habits, be clean, and take care of our house.

The reason why I wrote the blog was because after my whole depression, I took stock of myself. I realized was being messy, lazy, and becoming a slob. I came to terms with the fact that I wasn't being true to my word. I said I wanted to turn things around and I wasn't. It was time for a reality check. From that point forward, I've kept true to my own vow.

Mikey hasn't. From the very moment we moved in, his room has been an absolute mess. Even when he was first moving stuff in, he just kind of chucked it all into his room. He had the same piles of laundry (I'm not sure whether they're dirty or clean) on the floor of his room in this house that I would see whenever I went over to his mom's. I'm sure he told himself he'd clean it all later, but he still hasn't.

What he does with his room is fine. That's on him. If he wants to lock himself in there, shove potato chips up his ass and leave the crumbs on the bed, that's totally his decision. I don't care about the mess in his room. I only mention it as a reflection of him as a person. And because it's his mess that spills out to the rest of the house, which is problem for me.

He'll bring his headphones and iPod out to the front room when he's playing drums. Then he'll leave those items on the drums or on the table. He doesn't shut cabinets or drawers when he's done. Puts his dirty dishes in the sink or leaves them on the counter. He's had a mass of books spread out in the front room that he said he would take care of a month ago.

The other day, he even yelled at me because I was putting the frying pans in the same cabinet with the pots. He said to keep them in the oven, and we'll just take them out before we use the oven. However, when he cooks his copious amounts of eggs everyday, he'll leave the frying pan sitting on the stove instead of putting it in he oven where he specifically said it needs to go. Most of the time, too, he won't even wash the pan, but leave his egg residue in it.

He can be messy all he wants in his own room on his own time. But his mess becomes my mess. He teases me for being "gestapo" when it comes to this house being clean. But truth is, I'm not mad that he doesn't dust, vacuum, or scrub anything. What irritates me is the simple matter of not putting things in place, and not cleaning up after yourself when your done or putting stuff back when you're done with it. How hard is it to place the fan in the closet when you're done using it, instead of leaving it in front of the front door for someone to trip over? How hard is it to take an extra 10 seconds to place your dishes in the dishwasher instead of leaving them in the sink? Is it really so difficult to take your headphones back into your room when you're done?

What's really irritating about it is that he'll do other things. So I know he has the time. He'll spend an hour playing on the XBOX, but he'll suddenly have to leave to go to work or somewhere else and doesn't clean up. Apprently he has enough time to dick around and play video games for hours on end, but doesn't have enough time to take a maximum of 30 seconds to simply throw his trash away or clean up after himself.

These are skills we are supposed to learn as children. And in that regard, his parents failed him. I pity Mikey's future wife.

The Innernets

I nearly forgot to mention the first conflict that occurred in this house!

It happened probably two weeks after we moved in. We had finally gotten the internet set up in the house. We were both sitting in the living room watching a Carter Beauford (Drummer of the Dave Matthews Band) drumming video. We were both on our computers and I was talking to my friend online.

About 20 minutes into the video, Mikey paused it, turned to me and said, "Do you realize how fucking loud that typing is?"

"Not really, but okay", I replied as I continued to type.

Mikey sat there just looking at me for about 10 seconds while I continued to IM with my friend.

He said, "Seriously, that's fucking annoying."

"Well, I'll try to type quieter, and you try to deal with it. We both want to watch this and I need to continue this conversation."

Mikey started at me wide-eyed. Apparently in disbelief that I wasn't following his wishes. Mikey played the DVD again and turned back toward the TV and his computer.

About two minutes later, my web pages stopped loading, and I was suddenly signed of from AIM. I clicked around a bit on the computer and noticed I still had a full signal. So I asked Mikey, "Uhh...did the Internet go out? I got disconnected."

Mikey responded, "I know."

I was able to look at his laptop screen. He logged onto the wireless network and changed the password.

I yelled, "What the hell?!"

Mikey said, "I told you that typing was fucking annoying!"

"Yeah, and I told you I was in the middle of an important conversation. Grow the fuck up!"

I stormed out of the living room and into my room. At that point, Mikey changed the password back to what it was.

How immature is that? He can't deal with me typing on the computer while we were sitting in the same room watching the same DVD?

Mikey is an only child. And it was at this point that his only child syndrome began to show. He's accustomed to having his needs suited by his parents. Getting his way all the time and not having to deal with and compromise with people his own age. Growing up with two brothers, I learned this skill. You aren't always going to get your way. Deal with it.

If I was more of a bitch, I'd seek revenge. I'd do something he doesn't agree with to get my own way and punish him if he didn't obey my wishes. But guess what? I'm more mature than that. I have the ability cope with life without always getting my way.