Two strikes

It's been one of those days. It started with allergies, cleared up in the middle, and is ending with some sort of nightmarish sequence of stupid events and unhealthy levels of failure at anger management. Perhaps I should just start with some of the good bits, and let it progress from there.

Today is my sister-in-law's birthday, an occasion that my mother used as an excuse to test the waters of my brothers' new tolerance for each other. It's a long time since they would be able to be in the same room with each other, let alone the slight thawing of their demeanour which has seen them both participating in the same conversation - although still not talking directly to each other. Between them cracking jokes at either end of the table, and my two year old whirlwind of a niece playing up for her audience, the night was going pretty well. Some quiet chat with Mum and Dad afterwards - yes, I know, it's sad, but when you're single and broke you have to make the most of all interaction, not to mention the free food that comes with one of Mum's cooking spectaculars - and I was ready to head home and throw my phone on the charge. A bit of light reading before bed while I got some juice back into the batteries, to make sure it would last the night and wake me up in the morning. It just flashed at me with a battery warning light when I tried to make it do something. Note to self: leaving the MSN app running in the background all day chews through batteries like nothing else.

So I packed my many bags of goodies and headed homewards, feeling pretty safe in the knowledge that the flatmate would have arrived home before me and, if not warmed the flat, at least put the bins out. Sadly, no. As I parked my car, I drove past both of the bins which should have been on the nature strip. A quick check of the letterbox revealed that it was also not as it should have been. Thinking flatmate mustn't be home yet, I trudged up the stairs and rummaged in my bag for my keys.

Not there.

A vision came to me of throwing them on my desk at work, and another, later vision, of them being under a pile of papers. Still. And my phone was dead. But when I reached the top of the stairs, thinking to have another good rummage in my Tardis of a handbag, I noticed that the security door was ajar. Flatmate must be home, thank god, I thought, willing to overlook transgressions of bin and letterbox maintenance in return for being let in. I pushed the button for the doorbell, and waited.

Fine, I thought, when two more pushes had failed to yield a flatmate. She's probably in her room - where else would she be, actually? - so I'll just knock. Now I have a truly fearsome rap when I'm trying to get in somewhere. Not only has it terrified schoolies into quietude in beachside hotels, it has brought the rowdiest of neighbours to turn down their stereos. It's a knock worthy of the old ladies who live downstairs and sit in judgement on the goings on of the flats. A truly fantastic weapon to have in your arsenal when you're locked out and your apparently partially deaf flatmate is inside. Make that completely deaf. She didn't come to the door. OK, I told myself. It's 10:30, she might just be security conscious. I called out. Nothing. I thought I could hear running water inside, so I waited for it to stop and then tried again. Nada.

By this point I was fuming. Not only had she not put out the bins, but she was leaving me locked out on a bloody cold night. And this following hard on the heels of the Great Cooking Mess of 2011. Not going well at all, here. I knew what I had to do, but I was dreading doing it. Finally getting angry enough, I stormed downstairs and back to my car, bag of leftovers over my wrist. Throwing the car into gear and speeding onto the roads, I headed back to Mum and Dad's to pick up my spare keys, just hoping that they hadn't gone to bed yet, and that a knock on the door at 10:45 wouldn't give them heart failure.

An angry rant and a serious risk of speeding fines later, and my spare keys let me into the flat. The only sign that flatmate had been home, other than the unlocked wire door, was the firmly closed bedroom door, as opposed to the slightly ajar state that it gets left in when she's not home.

Banging and clattering around for a bit to get my own back, I decided to open the mail. One of the letters was a warning about an outstanding amount of rent, which I had tried without success to chase up before. This time it was different, and I felt like screaming. The amount listed as the rent we should be paying is $4 a month more than the weekly calculation suggests it should be. That's the difference in the rent that they are chasing. If they really want the extra 84 cents a week, the bastards can fight for it. I'm in no mood to be trifled with, and, based on the mounting headache, it's a mood that will linger through until morning. That this is the second time they've attempted to extract the cash from me has made me think that, as much as I love the flat, I may be moving on come September when the lease is up. Heaven help them if they fight back against the logical arguments I will attempt to make. Because I sure as hell won't.

Domestic Bliss

It's a few months now since the decision to get a flatmate. She moved in, and nothing has really been quite the same since. You'd hope I meant that in a good way, but really, no. It's not that we hate each other, or bicker, or anything drastic, really. But there is a chronic incompatibility looming on the horizon, and I don't think she's even noticed it.

She's a nice enough person, I suppose. Quite friendly, not hugely annoying, and keeps very much to herself. In fact most of the time, I'm not entirely sure if she's home or not. I have to peek through cracks or look for light shining under doors to get a sense of whether I'm alone or potentially have company. The general consensus is that it's an odd relationship in the flat. And that was before she started eating all of her meals in her room, as well spending the rest of her time holed up in there. In some respects, I guess she's the perfect flatmate. She pays bills on time, she's quiet, and she never hogs the couch or forces me to watch TV shows I don't like. But although I'm never sure of her current presence or absence, I can usually tell when she's been around.

Now I'm not the greatest with all things housekeeping. I vacuum the carpets once a month if I'm lucky, and do the shower once a quarter. Dishes are washed only when the pile on the sink gets too precarious, or there's a danger of being so many that need washing that they won't fit on the dish drainer. If I remember to change my sheets regularly, and actually have them washed by the time it occurs to me to change them again, I'm doing pretty well. But there are some things that I figure it's only fair to keep on top of when you're sharing. I think it would have been even more important if that sharing involved the use of someone else's things. But no, apparently not.

When I moved into this flat, everything I owned was new. Except my couch. And my kitchen table. And the antique bits and pieces. But you get the picture. The plates had never been eaten off. The sheets had never been slept on. The towels had never been used. The saucepans had never cooked anything. It was all still in quite good shape when she moved in. That can no longer be said about some things. It's to the point where, after helping me out while I was laid up with my back, my mother has been forced to offer me advice on how to get the saucepans back into something like a good condition, after months of things being cooked onto the sides. You can pick which pans she uses most often; they're the ones which are the most filthy outside, to the point that I can't get them clean even with steel wool, and have a soap scum residue inside them. You're supposed to wash pans AFTER cooking, not before.

And I could write it off if it was just pans, even if my pointed scrubbing of pans I haven't used has failed to have an effect (passive aggressive behaviour? perhaps, but direct suggestions for a cleaning roster have failed to have any impact). But being flat out with back pain and seeing your flatmate take the vacuum out for the first time ever, only to do her own room, having never cleaned the shower, never mopped any of the floors, it's getting a little much. I think the final straw came this weekend.

I haven't been using the cooktop much recently, at least partly because of the depressing state of my pans. But it drove me to the point of action on Saturday. I tried to clean the cooktop, because it was beginning to look like a bio-hazard; baked on sauce, overspill, actual chunks of food. But it wouldn't just wipe down. It required an actual cleaning product. I've never had to use a product to clean a cooktop before, I've always been able to manage it along the way. When I picked up the metal grate that covers the jets and found it was sticky and coated in a thick layer of baked on sludge, I was fuming. It drove me mad, to the point where I actually finished a cleaning job and looked for more - an unheard of phenomenon. I vacuumed. I spot cleaned the carpet. I swept. I mopped. By the time my sister-in-law popped in for a visit, the place was worthy of my mother's stamp of approval. I even changed the tea towels on the kitchen rail - yet another something that seems to fall into my area of responsibility. The flat was gleaming. The stove looked brand new. It was pristine. Then I headed out for dinner.

I was out again tonight. When I got home, there were once again unwashed saucepan lids on the stove. There was also cooked on sauce and a chunk of unidentifiable vegetable. There was also a load of washing that had been sitting in the washing machine all afternoon. Too bad if I needed to use it.

Individually, most of the problems I'm having with this girl aren't major. But the whole package, from the way she acts like she is responsible for inspiring any physical activity I take up - hello, woman, I have 2 prolapsed discs, you think I'm going to be taking up marathon running right now? But you're the only reason I might decide to start an activity? Or wait, you're the one who "inspired" me to take regular walks all summer until my back got screwed up, even though you didn't move in until February? Genius - to her complete inability to realise that you need to clean the kitchen floor when you spill stuff on it, or that pasta sauce will stain white cupboards if you leave it caked on dribbling down the front of them for a week or more, it all adds up and it's all driving me completely insane right now. And I'm at a loss for how to approach the problem in a way that won't blow up in my face, because clearly just leaving it until she notices have absolutely no impact at all.

How do you tell someone that you think they're a slob and that if they don't pull their finger out you're not going to be letting them use your stuff anymore? How do you suggest to a flatmate that the experiment isn't working, and that they should find somewhere else to live when the lease is up for renewal? And how do you bitch and moan to a friend who is about to buy a 4 bedroom house, without any intention of accepting the invitation to share that house?

Because L is about to take the plunge into the real estate market. She wants someone to share her mini-mansion, and I fit the bill quite nicely. She knows I'm fed up with my current living arrangement, she knows we rub along well enough as flat mates - or at least she knows she can put up with my more annoying habits, and that I won't kill her for hers. But I don't think I'm ready to go and live in her house, and that's another conversation that I don't know how to have. That said, I think I have more clues on that one than I do on how to kick out my current flat mate. If I could re-negotiate my rent, I'd be happy enough to stay here on my own. But dear god, something better change soon.

The Art of Distraction

I've stuffed my back again. I must be getting old, it's happening more often than it used to. Now, something as simple as sleeping can have pain shooting down the back of my legs and radiating up to my shoulders. I've been using it as an excuse to avoid doing dishes (although interestingly, the number of dishes used seems to have multiplied in inverse proportion with my will to clean them). That little half bend at the sink had me throwing in the towel, before it had wiped a single plate. Tonight, I felt that I ought to bite the bullet and get on with it, before I ran out of tea spoons. Funny how they're always the first things to go.

Of course, my will to do the dishes actually increased when I realised how much study I had waiting for me. Because I've taken the masochistic jump and enrolled in that teacher training course I mentioned way back. Part time, I should be able to teach in three years or less, depending on how soon I get myself to a point where I can quit work and study full time. So in around 5 years I should be standing in front of my own class, then. Pfft. Like it will ever happen...But either way, it inspired me to wash the dishes. And now the spasm that caused in my back has me propped carefully on the couch with a comfy cushion squashed in just the right spot while I recover once again.

Of course, all of this is not just a distraction from the lock on my spine. It's to distract me from the fact that, once again, I'm waiting for a seemingly nice boy to get in touch with me so we can meet up and see if we're as nice in person as we seem via email. I'm sweating on my inbox like I never did over results for study, even though I know the boy - let's call him Ernie - is pulling midnighters at work for a week or two and is therefore unlikely to contact me. Either that, or he's miffed about certain parallels with Ray Martin that I jokingly pointed out. Actually, thinking about it, I probably shouldn't have done that. Just like I shouldn't have started writing about him, because now I'm going to get all paranoid that I've done something stupid, yet again. I need a "Quick! Look over there!" distraction. But when you're in your own head, it's a little hard. So I think I might have to get back into some of the things I've been putting off. I think I have some movement in my back again, and an airer full of clothes is calling me. And my new flatmate (did I mention that I have a flatmate now? All part of the trying to get to a position to fund full time study plan...as an added bonus, she's hardly ever here and when she is, she keeps to her room. The perfect flatmate, in many respects) gets back from a holiday on Thursday, so best not have my underpants on display in the living room. I don't think we know each other well enough for that yet.

Right. Arse off couch. Here we go.

Bugger.

Oh well, was worth a shot.

Welcome wagon

I love my new flat. Really, I do. I've been almost 2 months now, and it feels like home. I've got things how I like them, my stuff is everywhere, and I love having my own retreat from the world. Not least of its plus-sides is that it is 6 minutes from work.

And for the most part, I like my new neighbours. The senior citizens downstairs are friendly, the women in the next block always smile and say hello, the gardener is hot - as he should be - and very friendly. But the guys who share a landing with me have a little bit to learn about how to not piss off your neighbours. So I thought I'd compile a list of tips, all the things I'm too chicken to say to the white shoe wearers.

1. Never, ever play your music so loud that it rattles the plates in your neighbour's dish drainer. If they can hear the words - assuming, of course, that there are words - it's too loud. If they can feel the bass as they sit on the couch, it's too loud. If they have their own music on but can still hear your combination of turkish pop, rock, and south american pipe music, it's too loud. Same goes with your television, the football, in fact any kind of noise.

2. Don't fill your neighbour's bin the day after they have been emptied. How do I know it was you? Well let;s see...you has a party in the stair well till all hours, the bottles in my recycle bin are a lovely combination of girly sweet drinks and turkish liquer, and there's a collection of chip packets, pizza boxes, and styrofoam takeaway containers; I'm guessing it isn't any of the pensioners.

3. When you drive past my window, I should not be able to hear your radio.

4. When your friends arrive, there is no need for them to cluster on the stairs and have conversations that would seem loud if they were in my living room. Get them inside, shut the door, and shut them up. And they shouldn't have to knock on your door. Be an adult and get a door bell.

5. Smiling and waving in a Joey-from-Friends "How-you-doing" way is not neighbourly. Especially when I've seen your girlfriend.

SO there you have it. My tips for the cavemen next door. Now all I've got to do is get the ones on the other side of the fence to change the program on their swimming pool filter to not start at 9am on weekends, and it will be the perfect flat.