History of Roommates

I was reading a blog earlier that mentioned that she had stopped counting the number of roommates she had had when she reached 65. SIXTY-FIVE roommates! That is a ridiculously large number, I thought, but then again, I have moved many times and I had no real idea of how many I've had and how many was a lot. After my calculations, 65 is still a LOT of roommates.

In the past seven and a half years, I have had 29 roommates. I'm counting my Aunt, Uncle and cousin in most of this because I lived with them for several months.

Out of these 29 people I have lived with, the stats are these:

• I am friends with 20 on Facebook
• I am related to 4 -- 1 being my sister
• Only 2 of them followed me (or I followed them) to a different apartment
• I've completely lost track of 4 of them
• 12 are married
• 4 are/were divorced
• 1 is engaged
• 1 absolutely still hates me
• 4 are over the age of 50
• 7 have children*
• 2 were from different countries (Venezuela and Russia)
• 7 are from California
• I was a bridesmaid for 1 of them
• I attended 5 weddings
• I attended 8 bridal showers, co-hosted 3 of them
• I've met the parents/siblings of 13 of them*
• Went home with 6 of them*
• Celebrated Thanksgiving with 4 of them*
• Walked in on / overheard a make-out session on 4 of them

*Not including my Aunt, Uncle and Cousin

There have been times when I didn't want to go home because of roommate situations, but over all, I have had pretty good roommates. Considering some of the other horror stories I have heard, mine are fairly tame. And there are some roommates who are now my very best friends and I can't imagine that ending any time soon. Hopefully, we'll be the kind of friends that get together every few years, no matter where we end up, and force our kids to be friends and we'll keep on making memories.

Thanksgiving Flowers and Toilet Paper

The other day my roommate walked in with these beauties just for me. It had been a hard week, and she was very thoughtful to think of me.

Not only are they beautiful, but they are very festive. Which is particularly important during this time of year. So many people are forgetting which holiday they are supposed to be celebrating. I LOVE that these are harvest colors!

Melissa and I have been having a lot of fun lately. It sort of started with a slumber party that kept us up until 5:30 a.m. a few weeks ago, and the giggling hasn't really stopped since. (We've decided that after last Sunday, we aren't allowed to sit next to each other in church anymore.)

A couple of months ago, we came up with the clever idea of starting a toilet paper roll collection. Of course, we had a very decided purpose. Our neighbor has issues with his roommate never, ever throwing away the empty toilet paper roll. He'll move it to the tank of the toilet. He'll move it out of the way. But he doesn't throw it away. It drives our neighbor insane. Knowing how he feels about empty tubes, we decided to collect them and when we had enough, we would do something like such as above.

He went out of town for the weekend, and felt that we had a pretty good stock pile. We tried to make a wreath, but it didn't work out well. We were lucky to have accomplished what we did, considering that Melissa sliced her finger after working on only three tubes.

We were going to make a "bead" curtain out of the TP tubes, but... neither Melissa nor I are very crafty people. We managed three rows, loved the way it looked hanging from Dustin's fan, and decided that was good enough. We sneaked over to our neighbor's place, had his roommate let us in, and we hung the sucker as well as left a trail of toilet paper tubes up the stairwell, and left.

I woke up to find a strand of it on my car, and was able to transfer it back on to his for a double whammy! the next morning.

Oh no. She's cooking.

"You're going to love this...our roommate is cooking something in [a borrowed] crock pot..."
"I'm doing that. Turd. Does it smell OK?"
"It smells disgusting. Why did you use [that] crock pot?"
"It was the one sitting out. Really?? What's wrong with it? It was an experiment."
"Now that I look at it, it does look like hobo food. Is it for [a boy]?"
"No! It's for us! Lol."
"Uhh...I don't know if I can eat that. It smells good, but looks disgusting."
"Heheheheheheheheh... I'm sure it will be fine. It's just....Mexican Chicken!"
"I don't know about that..."

Weekend Update

Friday, Melissa had some friends over and we sat around and talked for a little while, but then they left to attend a concert. Melissa and I were trying to come up with something to do, but both of us were fairly exhausted. We didn't want to be lame by going to bed at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night, so we read from A Compendium of Kisses. Really, Melissa was sleeping and I was cracking up over my inability to read out loud. Butchering words led to more laughter, which led to Melissa waking up long enough to see tears running down my face and her gasping and me wheezing... and finally we decided that we had enough and it was time for bed.

Saturday I woke up for a RS breakfast. We had French toast, which I sort of have a weakness for. And then I didn't do much until I headed up to South Jordan to meet up with Lauren. We went to an improv comedy show. I like improv, and I respect people who are able to be funny on the spot. That's not an easy thing to do. Provo has Comedy Sports, which is big on BYU/LDS culture and has a very defined theme and set up. It has its own venue. Push My Button is not as organized. They perform in a small coffee shop. They rely a little too much on audience participation, which led to some pretty strange and too elaborate prompts. There were some really funny parts, but for the most part, it wasn't that entertaining. They roped me in to "playing a game for prizes", and I won the Halloween trivia (answering 5 out of the 6 questions quicker than my opponent). Only... they gave the runner up a gift card to Applebees, and the winner got two free tickets to their next show.

...Ok.

Anybody want two free tickets to see Push My Button next month? Let me know.

Utah roads are an absolute mess right now. And on my way home from South Jordan, I had to navigate my way through all the detours and orange barrels. It was confusing and frustrating. They had closed the on-ramp to I-15, so I had to go up and around on a road that wasn't clearly marked as the detour, and I was only guessing where I needed to turn. Luckily, I guessed correctly. When I made it to Utah County, they had closed down the highway to one lane, and all I saw was red brake lights, so I decided to get off at American Fork and go down State Street. Unfortunately, I think I picked the worst exit to get off. There were two detours to take you to 500 East and back to the freeway. Then, because of the Haunted Forest, there were hundreds of cars wherever there weren't orange barrels. I got temporarily lost, guessed my way to State Street, and headed home... of course, that took a bit of time because State Street is down to one lane as well. Sigh.

Sunday we had stake conference. Both Melissa and I dragged ourselves there. The first meeting was fairly unremarkable, except, one of the speakers (the wife of one of the high councilmen that serve in our stake, approximately 45-years old) decided to talk to just the girls; she said that she was sad that the guys seem to get ripped in to every general conference, and that they were all great and wonderful and stuff like that. The girls needed a little constructive criticism; according to her, we need to "be less picky and more submissive". She didn't explain enough to know if that is what she actually meant -- if she actually wanted us to go back 200 years before women had rights and were imprisoned in insane asylums for speaking against their husband's ideals (I'm reading a book on one such case right now) or if she just wanted us to.... what? I don't know.

The usher didn't have a hunchback, or a droopy eyelid.

 

 

 

 

The second session was better in way of speakers, but worse in the fact that there were a whole lot more distractions. The first meeting met in an auditorium. The second in a double chapel with hard folding chairs and an overheated gym. There was an usher who reminded me of Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame...he had really crazy, buggy eyes. And he just walked up and down the gym floor, hunting anyone down who wasn't in a seat and making sure we were packed in there like sardines. We had sad next to a bigger guy from our ward, and spaced the chairs perfectly, and along comes Quasi, and he makes us move down, making everyone uncomfortable and then continued to patrol the area so that we were afraid to move again. We did, though, during the intermediate hymn, finding our original places much more comfortable. He was so distracting, though. And every time he walked by, we wanted to punch him.

The speakers were better this time around. I really do like our stake presidency. They are good men. One of them is actually my mom's old seminary teacher from high school! Crazy, right? He's my favorite. And our stake president is Canadian, and really funny. He stands up and tells us how grateful he is to have his "first wife" in the audience. Then, he had to clarify that she is his only wife. He told us about this weird, old many that used to live in his ward boundaries that they used to make fun of. "We all have trials," he said, "some of us are heavy and weird and that's our trial." He then went on to say that this man moved to be close to the temple in Cardston, Canada, and did some 200,000 ordinances before he died in his early 80s. President Hatch talked about how this man, who didn't have a lot of friends and family on his earthly life, was probably heralded in to heaven by the 200,000 souls he did temple work for. The amount of awe and respect in President Hatch's voice was enough to know that he regretted having made fun of this strange individual, who obviously amounted to much more.

President Hatch also talked about the people that go in to talk to him before they get married, or as individuals, and express fears about the future. I guess it isn't surprising that my peers are all worried about what the world has to offer them. They are afraid to have children because the moral standard of the world continues to decline; the economy is never stable; divorce rates continue to rise; etc. etc. etc. He told us, "You have the brightest of futures of anyone on the history of this earth. You have more good and more joy to look forward to. Yes, there will be trials. But, miracles are born out of trails and sacrifice."

The whole time I was listening to his talk, though, I was thinking that I'm not scared to get married. I'm not scared to have children. I am not worried about how I would support a family -- I know that God sustains us. I am scared about the future, though. Because I'm scared of having a future where I am alone. For some reason, a lonely future sounds neither bright or joyful.

After conference, I went home and made pumpkin pies. They turned out delicious. I know, because I had some for breakfast. I'm pretty pleased with the crust, which we all know is one of the hardest things to pull off, and I didn't over or under bake them. Now, I just have to decide if I am going to share, or if I am going to devour them all up myself.

Seven Reasons I Hate My Room

1. The miasma. Whether it is an antiquated Victorian belief or not, you tell when you are in a sick room. And I hate being in a sick room. Besides, I know that even though I'm covering my mouth when I cough, there are little seedy germs everywhere!
2. The fact that it isn't clean again. I haven't had the strength to carry up loads of laundry. I haven't had the inclination to fold and put away laundry, and so I am right back to where I started a week ago.
3. My bed. I've hated my bed from the very beginning. With two foam things on it, it is still the most uncomfortable bed I've had in my entire years living in Provo. There is no position, no spot, no anything that makes this bed comfortable except sheer exhaustion and drugs. And once those have worn off, you crawl out of bed feeling like an invalid. I can't tell if my muscles are sore from being sick or from just laying here in bed the whole time. Plus, there's no headboard, so every time I lean against the wall, the mattress goes sliding out of place.
4. There's no TV. Rather, there is a TV, but it doesn't work because it is so old. It just sits in the corner taunting me. I have officially caught up on hulu.com and netflix.com, and my head hurts too much to even think about writing. I'm bored. Plain and simple.
5. The temperature. Either it is too hot. Or it is too cold. I can't seem to balance it out. Well, I couldn't until about five seconds ago. Right now, my window is open about three inches and my hair is wet. I'm almost at perfect temperature right now.
6. No one can come visit me. I'm sick = quarantined = no visitors.
7. I have to be in here. Well, I guess I don't have to be. And I am about ready to go downstairs and sit on the couch for a bit. But I feel really bad. Because when I'm sick, I like to stay locked up in my room in order to make sure no one else gets sick. But, I can't take it anymore! Melissa just Lysoled the whole place, so I hope beyond hope that my disease does not contaminate anyone else.

Also, my hands are shaking right now. It's been really fun trying to type this out. I think it is low blood sugar since nothing sounds appetizing right now and I haven't eaten all day. Melissa has gone to go get me some soup and stuff for toast. She and Savannah have also opened their drug cabinet to me, and boy! am I grateful! It is great to have roommates that look out for you, even though when they were sick, I was fairly certain I kept my distance.

Now, I'm just going to go downstairs and enjoy the fresh smell of Lysol, the book I just got in the mail (for free!) and maybe eat some soup.

Cheese Breath

One must always be wary of what he is doing with blinds wide open and facing another apartment building. Why? Because one never does know if there are three girls sitting on the couch watching.

For instance, if you have a bit of a cheese addiction, you might consider closing your blinds so that no one sees how you polish off the rest of the shredded cheese, down to every shred left in the bag - to the point where you turn the bag inside out, wear it like a glove and lick the bag clean.

If you are going to pick bitty morsels off your pizza while - the girls might assume - preheating the oven, with the pizza close to your face and your pincers armed and ready, you might consider doing that in a private place.

Sure, you might think that being alone in your kitchen is in fact, a private place.... however, if you leave the blinds open, you might be victim to some very classic neighborhood peeping.

So listen, Cheese Breath, if before you put your pizza in the oven, you are going to stick your face right in that pizza and lick up all the extra shredded cheese you just added to it, you might remember to shut the blinds.

Because if you leave yourself vulnerably exposed to the neighborhood, there are going to be three girls watching you from their window - laughing hysterically and being grossed out by your dairy obsession.

And a little bit irritated when they wait the necessary 15 minutes for you to remove your pizza, only to have you take it directly out of your oven, and out of viewing range.

Starved for Hilarity

After tonight's Relief Society activity, Savannah, Melissa and I went over to Megan's house for a little exercise. I did the elliptical while they shredded it with Jilliane.

I think it was the activity, but I was in a super hyper mood. The likes of which have not been seen since I have been separated from Becca for these many months. It is proof that I am totally starved for hilarity in my life, because by the end of my workout, I was still bouncing off the walls, or actually, rolling off the noodle.

Melissa has one of those foam core noodle things, OK, it's called a foam roller. To help stretch out the muscles. As I was rolling, I was also wheezing (sports induced asthma, neat, right?) and then laughing right off the noodle and face planting into the floor.

It was insane. And it was funny. And I haven't laughed to the point of tears for ages. I loved every second of it. And I really do love that roller thing, even though, my muscles will still probably be sore when I wake up in the morning.

I Love Halloween

The idea came to me out of the blue.

"I want to be a drag queen for Halloween."

Drag queens get to wear crazy make up, crazy clothes, crazy accessories. Really, anything goes and I wanted a part of it. I didn't know how I was going to go about it, and I didn't know who I was going to be going out with - my Halloween cohort from the past two years has been out of the country - but I was going to do it. So I suggested to my roommate Matti... and she ran with the idea.

We spent a couple of weekends watching movies like Victor Victoria and Connie and Carla. Matti watched youtube.com videos demonstrating how to do the make up and we carefully planned out our outfits.

The week of Halloween is usually filled with parties. Everyone wants to throw a party, and they want people to attend their parties and so they throw them on different nights. Our stake combined with a few others and we had a dance at the institute building.

Matti was the resident make-up artist, and since she didn't get off work until 8 p.m., and it takes about an hour to do a full on drag face (at least), we were running a bit late. But that's OK. As I've mentioned before, stake dances aren't really my thing.

Making your eyebrows disappear is not an easy task.

I should have practiced my drag facial expressions. Amy and Matti had it down.

We looked fabulous.

 

Savannah, Matti, Amy and me.

I'm pretty sure Savannah was going crazy. Fajita was not amused.

We got home late, stayed up later... and Saturday, it was hard to get out of bed at all. We were seriously considering bagging the whole party hopping thing for a second night, but in the end, we decided that we better just go.

We had more time to get ready on Saturday, so more thoughts about outfits, and some laziness had us changing up our costumes. Amy had to work.

We met up with my friend Brooke and hit up three parties (and stayed for about 20 minutes at each).

Brooke getting in some Risky Business (she got more comments on her costume than anyone).

Dance party at Lori, Leica and Em's.

Cleopatra and Fajita

Probably the manliest face I managed to pull off.

Margaret, Brooke and Matti. We got to this party just after it had been broken up by the cops!

Probably the best costumes - or the funniest - was this guy and his "companion" who were dressed like sister missionaries. They looked better in drag than we did... then again, it was probably because they looked still so manly.

At the end of the night, Margaret showed her true heroism and tried to stop University Parking from towing away this car. Everyone around Provo hates University Parking, and we were all dying at Margaret's antics and sheer determination. She went as far as sitting on the trunk of the car, but the guy was relentless. He was either going to tow the car with her on the back or call the cops. She finally gave up. But it was the funniest, most awesome part of the evening.

Another trip to Ihop, and this weekend was complete!

"There's something wrong with your toilet..."

Also, see previous post... but this is what it totally made me think of.

Something Serious Better Have Happened

When I came home tonight at 9:30ish, I went straight to my room (after turning off all the lights that had been left on in the house) with the intention to work on Stats. I only got one quiz done, and it took me until about 12:00 a.m. And then I edited a friend's paper until about 1:00 a.m.

So when I headed to the bathroom in order to do my nightly bathroom routine, I was a little confused when I found the following:

I wondered if something really bad happened. Why is there no seat on the toilet? And why is the shower taped off and the curtain clamped shut? But surely my roommate would have let me know through text message or knock on my door or something.

 In case you can't tell what that is, that's the shower head taped off with electrical tape.

So then, I thought... this must be some passive-aggressive way of sending some sort of message. It was sort of confused when I found this:

That reads loud and clear....something? I can only think of a few things that would cause this drastic of a reaction to whatever I've done. So what could they be telling me?

1. Clean the bathroom. Well, I've been the only one to clean it since I moved in. I bought cleaning supplies for us to make it easier.
2. Empty the trash. Yup, check. Did that this week, too. There's barely anything in it now.
3. Replace the toilet paper. Ok. Done. I went out past midnight on Saturday to make sure we did not run out. I even bought the spare roll holder that goes on the tank. You can see the two new rolls I added before I took the picture. (When I got home at around 3 a.m. on Sunday, I deposited the toilet paper in the front room and forgot to take it out... so it got shoved away in some closet and not by me. So maybe she didn't know that was for us?)
4. Take shorter showers. Hmmmm.... maybe. But, I'm always the last one in, and I leave plenty of hot water when I get out. Also, I have mentioned to K that if she needs in the shower, she only needs to let me know so I can make it faster. (This is maybe the only one I can see being a potential problem, and I admit it.)

I even bought a new bathroom rug! And I wash the shared full-length mirror that I never use. I. Don't. Get. It.

And this is why I hate living with girls. As I say, I hope I am interpreting this all wrong, or something is going to go down in the morning. And considering that I'm going to bed with a full bladder at 2 a.m., I do not think it will be pleasant.

Maybe it's just an April Fool's joke? If so.... it's not funny.

The Dishwasher of Hope

Since I've moved in, I have not seen a clean dish come out of our dishwasher. It doesn't matter how many times I've put soap in and started it, and then redid a cycle and then gave up and washed the individual dish that I wanted to use. It took me...well, a while, to notice that when the dishwasher ran (which was not often) it would leave about 4 inches of standing water down at the bottom. When I made a comment about it to the roommates there response was basically an acknowledgment of that fact that it didn't work, but that didn't stop us from loading it - I only assisted in the madness in order to get the dishes out of the sink - and then, surprisingly, unloading it - to which I never did.

This is mainly the reason I have only eaten from a pink fork, spoon and knife, a pink plate or a pink bowl and a small number of glasses. Because I knew they were clean. I have often opened up the cupboard where their dishes are stored, or the silverware drawer in order to retrieve something, only to shudder and break out my own things. It took every ounce of.... determination? I had in me to sit down during roommate dinner and eat from the fork and plate, and drink from the big plastic cup (which I hate anyway)  without gagging a little bit. I just couldn't imagine those things to be that clean.

Finally, I took it upon myself and called the landlady of ST. I've heard some things about her, and while she seems like she can get a little cranky, she has so far been very nice to me. I told her about the dishwasher and suggester a little maintenance could be provided. Two days  later, a big box was discovered in our living room. The next day, we had a very pretty, shiny new dishwasher sitting under the counter.

Now, one of my roommates suggested that the whole kitchen situation (i.e. the sink of dishes) was in direct relation to the fact that there was a non-functioning dishwasher. I am hoping that the novelty of the new dishwasher will encourage a level of cleanliness that has not yet been achieved at this apartment. If C is correct, then the new dishwasher should solve all our problems. I am, of course, a bit skeptical as the dishes are not the only problem: crumbs and other remnants of breakfasts, lunches and dinners are always on the counter tops; overflowing trash and trash bags NEXT to the full trash can are often a concern; I'm fairly certain there are several rotting items in our fridge; etc. etc.

However, I must admit... when I walked out from the back of the apartment, I was surprised to see the sink empty, the counter top and stove mostly wiped down, and....at least there wasn't a bag of trash NEXT to the trash can. Can this mean that the dishwasher has begun to instill a little hope in me? Perhaps.

Or even more hopeful? I heard A trying to sell her contract to someone on the phone. K is getting married in April or May and C is planning on getting a house where she can have a dog. I think I might just make it until August - and that is hopeful indeed.