Dear Roommate

I should not be made to feel guilty whenever I ask you to clean your mess up out of public spaces or inquire as to why the messes have not been cleaned up after a reasonable amount of time.  I think I have been fair by not yelling or getting snippy, as you have, but even so I believe that its not just my years of maturity that separate us in this situation.

You may not have had to do chores when you lived with your mother, in fact I remember hearing how you would yell at her and make her cry when she tried to get you to clean your room.  So naturally, you must see me as you would your mother trying to get you to clean up after yourself in the kitchen or bathroom.

We have different definitions of clean, what it means to clean something, and expectations about cleaning.  Wiping the sink and top of the toilet does not mean cleaning the bathroom.  I don't care if you wiped the mirror too.  Your hair is shed all over the floor, clogged on and off in the tub, and the trash does not take itself out.  Do not get mad at me for holding you to the same cleaning standards I exhibit on my weeks.  Its simply not fair to have only me taking out the bathroom trash and cleaning the floor and tub.

And the recycling.  If its past overflowing, and its your week to take it out, take it out.  Usually, you are better at this, but when you get busy you forget.  Far be it from me to remind you and have you roll your eyes, give me the cold shoulder, and stalk around me for days after.

The way I am being treated is unfair.  It does not matter to me that we have less than a month until graduation.  When you go off into the real world, I hope you will have learned the errors of your ways from this situation just as I will have learned mine.  Something new about me is revealed every time I live with someone and this time I realized that I need to not only define what clean is to me, but agree on the mutual definition as well as timeline.  I shouldn't wait until you hair is on my toothbrush and its been two and a half weeks before I say something to you about finally cleaning the bathroom.  And then when I also mention the recycling that hasn't been taken out because you also had not done that in those weeks as well and I let it pile up thinking you would surely get around to it...well you see where I am going.

I don't want to spend these last few weeks of my senior year avoiding you in my own apartment, or looking at your bf's bloody tp in our bathroom trashcan.  It is better to win than be right, I once heard, and in this instance to win is to have a clean bathroom and the recycling taken out.  I have in the past picked up on your slack but I don't want to coddle or enable you.

So.  Clean it.  We are all busy.  If you don't like it, live alone when you go to Harvard.

My How Things Have Changed

The last time I posted a blog, I was jonesing and jonesing hard for the last man who ... got into my cookie jar.  I was in desperate need of a deep hug from someone who meant something to me and cherished me as well.  It has been a long time since that has happened, and even longer since the moment was not muddled with details like I am married, but not to you, or I am not married, but wouldn't marry you, and the list goes on. I know you have already rolled your eyes and either verbally or mentally sucked your teeth while shaking your head because of the picture, but I suppose when we get together to go to the movies I will give you that full story.  Mostly because I should be writing other stuff right now, and I wanna focus on what I can and leave the juicy bits for the in person tete a tete.

I am in the final countdown of my final quarter here at Stanford and I am on struggle.  Not low key struggle, but not necessarily Mariah Carey struggle which is where I was last quarter.  I have 20 days til my thesis is due, and 16 days til I present on it for my department.  I have 4 classes, 1 final exam, 2 final papers, 6 response papers, 4 blog entries, and a media paper to write.  In all of this, I am dealing constantly with my meds which are either not helping enough or too detrimental because of how they affect my mind.  After this week, I will have finished with another 40% of work, a great deal, and after my thesis, I will only have 2 final papers and a final exam.

I look forward to the summer, during which I will be working on campus so yea for that, and celebrating graduation with you, and figuring out where I am going to be working after the summer.  I am hoping for this AmeriCorps position which will have me either here or in New York with Reading Partners.  I have a third interview at the site this week and I hope to find out whether or not and which position I got in the next week or so.

Let's plan out next movie day and I suggest memorial day weekend since that will be the weekend that most of my work is done and I will have a celebratory mood anyway in preparation for graduation.  I hope your life is moving along well, wedding plans, work for you and your boo, your apartment, health, all of that.