Sunday, October 26, 2008

Random Thoughts-- And Roommates Pt 3 of 6

Random Thoughts:
*Right now, my seven favorite people in the world are the people who came to help me move yesterday. I am all moved and my old apartment is already completely cleaned and ready to go. I suppose that the one person who offered to come but was unable due to circumstances beyond his control can be included, therefore making it my EIGHT favorite people in the world.
*My dad and my brother are the most dependable men that I know. I owe them a fabulous Mexican dinner and some beer.
*I can see cows from my kitchen window.
*Bowling left-handed is challenging. It's helping me learn to laugh at myself a lot more. (I know that I already laugh at myself a lot-- but usually only with friends, not strangers.)
*Earlier, I was watching TV and there was a commercial on about one of those expensive programs that is supposed to prevent identity theft. It's good to know that our most important identity, the one of "Child of God," cannot be stolen from us.
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Roommates Part 3 - My ex-best friend's sister and my brother's girlfriend

After the special experience I was treated to my second year in the dorms, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. Then I realized that I am in Nevada, and therefore the pastures are BROWN. While the dorms were not the most pleasant living experience, they were still a vast improvement over living with my parents. So during the seconds semester of my las year in the dorms, I started looking for roommates to share an apartment with. Conveniently, my brother's girlfriend (also known as my current sister-in-law) decided that she wanted to move into an apartment around the same time. To keep it affordable, we decided that we should find a third roommate and get a three bedroom apartment. The third roommate wound up being my ex-best friend's sister who was the same as as my brother and his girlfriend, and who'd had a crazy crush on my brother since they were about 12, though she would never admit it.
To make it clear, the ex-best friend wasn't an ex-best friend because of anything bad that happened. She just moved away for college and we drifted a part. She was actually quite a good friend for most of high school. She was the friend I went to church with occasionally. The trouble was, both her and her sister, who would become my roommate, were raised in a rather legalistic Christian home and were not really allowed any sort of freedoms. So when my friend went off to college, she rebelled and became a bit of a wild child for a few year. These were the same few years when I was beginning to find myself and my identity as a Christian-- We drifted apart because we were headed in different directions.
I have to admit that when I found out that her sister was looking to move out of their parents' house, I was excited for several reasons-- The first was that I had hoped that it would bring me closer to my friend again. The second was that I had hoped that she wouldn't feel the need to rebel against her parents if she had moved out of the house and was living with someone she felt comfortable to be herself around; afterall, she had known me for about eleven years by this point. And the third was that I thought that maybe if her and I went to church together, we could get my brother's girlfriend to go with us, too.
As I'm sure you can guess, I was overly optomistic. By the time we all moved into the apartment in May of 2002, she had already rebelled, though I didn't know it yet. It turned out that she was dating a guy several years older than her and after a few weeks, we basically acquired a fourth roommate. Her boyfriend started spending the night most nights. She never warned us when he was going to be there, she never asked if it was okay and she let him eat all of our food. At first, my now SIL and I tried to include her when we made plans for dinner or nights in, or whatever, but she always turned us down. Then her boyfriend would show up and they would lock themselves in her room. There were several problems with this plan:
1) He was practically living with us, but was not paying rent.
2) He would oversleep, then try to rush to take a shower in our home, where he was not paying rent, or utilities, and would wind up making my SIL late, even though she had woken up in what should have been plenty of time to get ready.
3) She asked me to lie to her parents if I happened to see them at church. That if they asked I should tell them that she was not sleeping with her boyfriend and that he didn't stay the night. I made it clear that I would not lie for her, but fortunately her parents never asked me anything.
4) There were three shows that my SIL and I watched together every week at the same time every week. And every time the other roommate's boyfriend would be playing video games and would get pissy with us when we asked him to let us watch the show, and then even more pissy when we suggested that if he paid rent then he would have the right to decide what the living room TV was to be used for.

Who would have ever thought that it would be more awkward to have her boyfriend stay the night than to have my brother stay once a week?

Fortunately, we had only signed a 6 month lease, and when that 6 months was up, the third roommate decided to leave (sigh of relief) stating that she just didn't feel welcome because we didn't include her in anything and because we didn't like her boyfriend (aka the leach). Good riddance!

5 comments:

TimmyMac said...

I was here . . . Good series . . .

Jeni said...

plucky- you were included in my eight favorite people in the world right now and all you can say is "I was here"? I guess perhaps you'll have to be demoted... :)

Erica said...

this is a step up from your Dorms part 1 series in roommates that is ;). Seeing cows from your kitchen is awesome! so glad your move went smoothly

digapigmy said...

it seems like you are slowly moving up in terms of roommates. this one still sucks, obviously, but is definitely better than part 1's roommate.

laura said...

I can see why you now choose to live alone...