roommates kali i refuse to be roommates with people i don't know next year. especially people i don't know who listen to bad rap. this year was horrible. if all goes well, i will also try not to get a crush on my next door neighbor. the combination of these two things results in a great akwardness. 010430 ... bijou Dear Roommates, I'm sorry to spring this on you all of a sudden, I know that I seem easy to get along with, but the truth may be that I am not. Sharing seven hundred new_york square feet between four people has taxed my patience, and I need to make a few suggestions. 1. The water pitcher that we keep in the refrigerator is wonderful! With its Brita filter and pleasing design, it allows us cold, clean, good-tasting water anytime we want. However, when someone uses all of the water, leaving a TABLESPOON splashing around the bottom, it's worthless. All you have to do is put more water in it when you've used it all, then when I get there I don't have to fill it up, wait for the water to drip through the filter, then drink it warm. 2. The magazines. This may just mean that I have a problem and not you, but every time I walk into the bathroom, all of the magazines are turned face down. It really really creeps me out. Why would anyone turn all the magazines face down? Those peoples faces on the cover, they can't see you when you're peeing. I understand that you are from another country and they have strange customs, but I would appreciate if you left this one there. 3. I realize that I am the only one who thinks that it's important to keep the house clean. When I was first starting to live on my own, I didn't care about keeping the house clean. But now that I'm into my twenties, I can't feel comfortable if the place is dirty. So I do all the cleaning. Fine. What is not acceptable to me is if I spend hours cleaning, and someone comes home and immediately starts in on a huge stinking mess. Your recipe for ketchup-codfish is not appetizing, even when you don't burn it. But when you leave huge pots of corn porridge in the sink and oil splattered all over the walls and floors (I just scrubbed them!) I start to lose my head a little. 4. We have enough dishes. We have enough silverware that we could throw them away every time we ate. There are four coffee cups for every person in this apartment. There are four of us! We have ONE shelf in our kitchen, and all of our dishes have to fit there. So why is it that every time I come home there is new stack of plates or bowls waiting to find a home on the overcrowded shelf? What is that about? I seriously don't understand why this is happening. 5. Why don't you ever leave? I understand that you don't have a job, and you only take three classes per week, and you are inherently a hopelessly boring person, but you are in New York. You have lived here for six months and have only left the apartment like three times. I am not responsible for entertaining you, and I don't feel sorry for you. I don't want to go to a movie with you. I want you to go to the damn movie by yourself so I can have some time by myself in this apartment. You're always here. PS stop turning the magazines upside down! 6. We all have different ways of dealing with mice. I understand that you don't want to hurt them. I myself am a vegetarian and I don't even like killing bugs! But if you want to get rid of mice, the only way to do it is to catch them in the snap-traps, killing them instantly and humanely. I understand that your "humane" live-traps make you feel better, but seriously, what the fuck are you going to do with the mice that you catch in that thing? You know you can't just let it outside. So when you've gone to your boyfriend's house for the weekend, and we catch one of those things in your ridiculous contraption, what are we supposed to do with it? I hope that this has been enlightening for you. I feel better. Feel free to let me know what I'm doing to piss you off. Best, Bijou 070218 ... regards Dear Bijou, I have what i feel is an important question: Is it all the magazines which are turned face down, or just the one on the top? green tshirt 070218 ... bijou It depends on how long it has been since I have been in there. I turn them right-side up every time I come in. So for example when I come home from being out of town for a month, they've all had time to be looked at for a second and they're all turned upside-down. But if I go in there periodically while I'm home, it's just the one or two on top. 070220 ... green tshirt Yep, thats a bit weird. I can see how it would be a last straw kind of thing. Perhaps there is something of interest on the back cover - a ad or a regular column? Or maybe it is being used to remind the person of which magazines they have read? never mind my roommates were compulsive about throwing out stuff in the fridge. she threw away things which i had just opened the previous day and had weeks to go before they expired. and she ate my jelly. 070221 ... pete the little things are the kickers.. but not the little roommates, our's is a bit of an ankle biter at times (literally). i prefer to have the word "roommate" when dealing with my human flatmates to the plural. so say we all? 070221 ... bijou oh man I'm definitely a "throw fridge stuff away" kind of roommate, I guess that makes me bad too. I always wait until the date on the package says it's expired, but I keep an eye on that shit. I can't stand rotten food in the fridge. we four people are sharing this fridge, and we all buy lots of produce, and everybody has their own half-gallon of milk. There's no room for rotten food. 070313 ... bijou Tuesday, 2:30 PM. I receive a call from Simone, asking me to take some meat out of the freezer to defrost. Not so difficult request, even for a vegetarian. I'm not grossed out by the frozen stuff. Oh, except it's a huge package of beef kidneys. Gorgeous. Can anyone tell me something that would distinguish beef kidneys from human kidneys? They look exactly the same. **Shiver.** Flash forward to the present, 10:24 pm. Eight hours later. Simone still has not come home. There is now a package of fully defrosted beef kidneys sitting in the kitchen, all shiny and bloody. I'm not sure when they start rotting. And I still have tonight to look forward to, when Simone gets home, who knows when, midnight? and starts cooking. I don't know what cooked kidney smells like, but I can tell you that OUR apartment is the one in your building that causes you to smell the weird cooking smells all through the hallways. Imagine if you lived in that apartment. That's me. (I'm sorry to complain, but I just have to get these complaints out somewhere so I don't give myself stomach cancer thinking about it!) 070313 ... ... I wonder, with your three classes (that you usually don't go to) and no job or girlfriend, what do you do with your days? 070314 ... b Update: Bloody, now definitely rotting kidneys still sitting on the counter. It's been close to a full day that they've been sitting out. I'm pretty sure Simone came home at some point, since all of her lights have been left on. But didn't bother to do something about the rotten organs sitting on the counter. The thing is, I know she's still going to eat them. She does this. She once left a package of chicken wings defrosting in the sink, with fucking dishwater splashing all over them, for like 32 hours. Then she cooked them and ate them, served them to her friends. I can't believe they didn't all get salmonella poisoning. 070314 ... bijou Update: Bloody, now definitely rotting kidneys still sitting on the counter. It's been close to a full day that they've been sitting out. I'm pretty sure Simone came home at some point, since all of her lights have been left on. But didn't bother to do something about the rotten organs sitting on the counter. The thing is, I know she's still going to eat them. She does this. She once left a package of chicken wings defrosting in the sink, with fucking dishwater splashing all over them, for like 32 hours. Then she cooked them and ate them, served them to her friends. I can't believe they didn't all get salmonella poisoning. 070314 ... pete meat can usually last a few days on the counter, as long as you cook it thoroughly to kill all the germs and bacteria that will get in to it. beef, in most cases, hangs for upwards of a month before it is even put on the shelf/shipped to restaurants. the salmonella comes from undercooked chicken, not overly defrosted birds. but that is disgusting. 070314 ... ... again with your three classes. some how you're always playing video games or watching movies off the internet. can't you at least rinse your dishes and stack them beside the sink rather than leaving them piled with your excess food for hours on the stove where i'd like to cook my dinner? 070315 ... yell it means that they don't respect you or care. don't lower yourself... do their dishes too. they will learn. 070316 ... ... he cleaned the common parts of the apartment while i was at school and work. usually he only talks about it and i start and he has a nap. this time he didn't even talk about it, he did it. 070316 ... bijou I feel like I should get better at this, the co-habitation thing. Why does Ida's nervous whistling and flushing EVERYTHING down the toilet (nail clippings and snotty kleenexes can't just be thrown in the trash, they need to be whisked away with six gallons of fresh water)make me pull my hair out? If I can't live with these people and their little annoyances, how will I ever be able to live with a significant other? I once shared a studio apartment with a boyfriend. The space was so small, but I think he really wanted me there, and we were in love. The rent was so cheap. I think it actually went really well, we almost never fought, but his boxes of ten-year-old junk consuming his closet were giving me ulcers. I couldn't understand how two people could live in 200 square feet of space and share it with 10 boxes full of junk, dumped from the "junk drawers" of previous apartments and never sorted through. (He's now married, and the two of them live in 500 square feet of space, 250 of it a basement that is completely full of their junk! They belong together.) I guess this is my concern: I need to live by myself. I think it's a completely reasonable thing, I'm 26, it's time for me to be left the fuck alone. But am I ever going to be anything but a hermit? I've always been a very solitary person, I remember at recess in elementary school I preferred to walk the perimeter of the playground balancing on the wooden beams that surrounded it. I didn't want to play house in the tunnel slide or play tether-ball on the pavement. I think that's okay. It's okay for me now to prefer to play house by myself. But will I ever be able to stand the sound of someone brushing their teeth in the next room? I need to lighten up. 070319 what's it to you? who go blather from