the big jar

My roommate likes to grow things. In jars. When I moved in, I noticed a jar perched on the corner cupboard. A big glass jar full of a dark liquid and something floating in it. I didn't try to figure out what it was. A couple of days later, my roommate got on top of a chair and took the big jar down. A mushroom! oh dear, that floating thing is a mushroom. She set the jar on the table and went to the refrigerator and grabbed the pitcher she had been drinking from every day. She lifted the cloth covering the big jar, and carefully poured the dark liquid into the pitcher.

"What is that?" I asked.
"Kombucha tea."
"What?"
"It's really good for you," she began. This is never a good start. She said something about good bacteria and your body and maybe something about digestion or your immune system. She explained that the mushroom fermented the tea and made a drink with quite an acidic bite, which you then consume daily for heath reasons. I then watched her drink her daily dose. Her mouth puckered and her eyes squished down to her nose, which flinched. She smacked her lips and stuck out her tongue and shook her head. Every day, she suffered through a glass of that god-awful drink.

One day, she brought the big jar down to work on her mixture. (I found the directions on our fridge -- there's a lot of splitting mushroom colonies and harvesting and something about the "mother colony" and tasting for "bite.")
"Oh no! My tea is moldy, Sherry," she said.
"It's a mushroom," I said. "It is fungus."
"No," she said, not at all appreciating my quick wit, "There is mold floating in the tea."

It turns out something had gone wrong with something, and the tea had mold floating on the top. To me, the mold didn't seem any more offensive than the floating mushroom colony, but I guess even health nuts draw the line somewhere, because that day, Danae poured the whole thing down the drain.

N1H1

Since we're on the subject, there was another rather crazy lady I lived with at one time as well. I was new to the town and I think I got the place on impulse. I was certainly way off with my first impression of her. She seemed relaxed and all at first but she basically turned out to be just the opposite. She had to have everything very very clean. I thought she may have been, you know, obsessive compulsive or something, but she told me she wasn't. And she acted like that even the idea of thinking that was pretty obsurd. Anyway, specific examples of creating misery...well first of all, she'd leave me notes quite often. You know, those little hot coloured blocks of sticky notes that you see, well, just about everywhere. Well, I would find one just about everywhere except in my room. Notes like reminding me to turn off the light after I'm done in the kitchen or please clean up my fallen hairs in the shower or around the sink, but they wouldn't be worded so simply. I can't really remember exactly what they said but I know they were annoying. Now, strictly speaking, the messages themselves weren't bad. Of course we all want to conserve electricity and be clean. Sure. And I would clean up. All the time. But her cleaning level was like brand new clean, I think. It was probably mostly just her personality or whatever, but she was also always mentioning that she didn't want to catch N1H1. What an idiot. She didn't even know the correct name of the disease she was so afraid of catching. And the light thing, well, I'll just say it - I like lights on. Not all of them or anything, but, you know, enough to see. And yes, I'll leave on the range light throughout the evening. I always have. It's like a night light in the kitchen. I mean - wait! Look! This is not me justifying my actions! Good grief. She was nuts. And I hated heading back to that townhouse (not an apartment) every single time because it was depressing and miserable and she'd always have something new to tell me that she'd like me to do or not do. And her whole delivery of it all was so annoying as well. I couldn't do anything, practically. One time I tried watching a movie downstairs (living room and kitchen down stairs, rooms upstairs), and I had on just enough so that I could hear it and she said it was really loud and it was bothering her. Later I tried watching one in my room and she said that that was too loud as well. And eventually, she would only use the upstairs bathroom just to shower and if I ever used the downstairs bathroom, she'd leave a horrible note on the door that said something like "Girls only please!" or something. I mean, we were both paying rent. It's not like I was in her house and she was renting out a room to me. Not at all. Man, it was a pretty lousy time. Just picturing her face in my mind and her talking makes me feel so awful. Fortunately, I was able to get out of there within a month after moving in. Since then, I've seen this woman at school a couple times and have really gone out of my way to not bump into her. Once she was actually talking to a professor in a hallway that I was going to talk to. I went all the way around the building to the other side so they were on the other end of the hallway and so it'd be harder for her to see me. I waited outside standing half behind a pillar, every now and then looking through the glass doors checking to see if she had left yet. She made me feel that miserable. It's like a nitemare but worse. You wake up from nitemares and you feel good because, hey, it was only a nitemare, a bad dream. But this. This was real. This was misery.

Pooky

Well i was thinking of at least waiting a good day or so after starting this thing, let alone after rachel's post, but i have nothing to do right now and i have plenty to write about. whether it's plenty to read about, well, that's up to you i guess.

One time, an old roommate of mine, who i don't mind naming because she probably doesn't even know how to use the internet or what it is, tammy, drove me nuts. wait, that wasn't one time. that was just about every time i came in contact with her, or even thought of her. anyway, one night i was in my room reading or something and my door was shut, as it always is, and i hear her start talking to her stupid little untrained yorkie, pooky, in this very ridiculous voice just outside my door. think baby talk and then amplify that to beyond annoying and there you go. "Oh Pooky, you're so great! I wuv you! You're just the best! Let's see if Luke has some music for us! Should we ask Luke if he'd like to let us listen to some music? Should we? Huh? Yes! Yyyyyyes! Oh Pooky! Yayyy! (she did the yayyy thing more than anything) Let's ask him! Yayyyy Pooky!" and this continues for a little minute or so. just outside my door. keep in mind she still hasn't knocked on my door or directly addressed me asking me what's she's been asking her should-be-dead dog. finally, i get up and open my door, asking her what she wants. almost surprised she says something like, "Oh, Pooky and I were just wondering if we could listen to some of your cds, if that's okay." I say well they're out there in the living room, help yourself.

The thing with tammy is that she could (she's not around any more. thank god) be really repetitive and i never understood why. she would just kind of continue to keep asking me and telling me what she wants or what she's trying to say. so that's what she was doing this one night. which made me go to my cd binder (filled with some two hundred or so cds) and flip through it asking them what they wanted. i told her that i really don't think she will have heard of any of this music. it's not really radio music or anything. and then, quickly thinking, i said oh i don't have any country or rap or anything. then she asked me like four times if i really didn't have any country. not kidding. i said no, none. she made it a point to let me know that that was her favourite type of music. eventually i put on some m. ward. easy, acoustic, i don't know. she said she liked it. probably first good music she's ever heard. and then she started telling me that she had a boom box but that the batteries were dead and i said well don't you have a cord, and i don't recall ever getting a real answer from her. and then she started telling me about her life and that's another story.

Now, in describing this woman, it's probably easy for you to think that she was retarded (sorry. mentally ...whatever. face it, there's no polite terminology). i'm pretty sure she wasn't. but she definitely made me miserable.

hair horror

I have to confess: I've actually never had miserable roommates. Yeah, there have been times when I've wanted to secretly (or not-so-secretly) edge them out. I'm not gonna lie, I've been annoyed more than a few times.

But for the most part, I've been lucky. Very lucky. I mean, you hear stories -- nightmares if you will about slobbish roommates, thieving roommates, unhygienic roommates, flaky roommates, poorhouse roommates, etc, etc, etc.

So far, I've only had to deal with long-haired roommates. A horror of its own kind.

You may think I'm exaggerating. I am. Even so, living with multiple long-haired female roommates can engender a swirling web of hair horror unimaginable by mankind (and by mankind I really do literally mean only men).

For one thing, it literally follows you everywhere. You'll be walking down the street, glance down to brush off a piece of lint off your sweater, and wha' oh! There's a mile-long hair that's clearly not yours slithering down your side. Or you'll be slipping into your blazer and wha' oh! realize your corduroy jacket has been transformed into a fur coat. Even PETA wouldn't stand for this.

Multiply that experience by everywhere and you get a sense of the full magnitude of hair horror.

The end.