Housemates

When my partner and I moved in together, it was the first time I had lived with ‘a partner’ and it made it a little more interesting. I now know where the term nagging bitch comes from. You are never really a nagging bitch to flat mates you are not sleeping with because you keep much of your life separate and if they piss you off at all you tell them once or twice nicely and if it doesn’t change you move out. No real loss.



Living with other people can be fascinating. Each of us has little (and not so fucking little) idiosyncrasies developed from an early age from Mum and Dad, brothers and sisters or nuns if you come from an orphanage. Sometimes you simply develop eccentricities because that’s just the way you want it. It is personality. People’s habits are weird and can most of all be fucking annoying. Apparently mine are too or so I’ve heard.


I know I have some annoying little practices and am as anal as all get out. For example I am fastidious about things being in their right place. I am not however, as pernickety as my cousin who can’t bear bubbles being left in the sink after doing dishes and lines up milk cartons in her fridge door to face a certain way and God help the person who puts that carton in the wrong way around. But I do have to have the towels in the bathroom hanging neatly, cushions on the sofa lined up and looking neat and a place for things in draws. You cannot under any circumstance re-arrange a drawer putting things in there that don’t belong. For example, spatulas do not go in with tea towels and the like. They go with other big utensils like wooden spoons and can openers. Also you must not put wine glasses in with coffee cups when there is clearly a separate wine glass cupboard and a coffee cup cupboard. My poor partner gets yelled at for using the wrong rags to clean up and almost murdered for using a tea towel to mop up spills particularly off of the floor. We have to go through a whole rag inventory while my partner stands over a paint spill looking distressed,


“Which fucking rag am I allowed to use?”


And I’m yelling,


“Quick, clean it up. No, not with that. That’s the fucking dust Enyo. Jesus.”


I feel really bad after and wonder when I’m going to start dodging cracks on footpaths. The thing that amuses me most (sometimes though it irks me beyond belief) is when my partner ‘posts’ things and then spends half an hour looking for all the gear necessary before leaving the house. The car keys are in one room, or in the kitchen fridge, the mobile phone is in the bathroom, bed or on the table out side, the sunglasses are on the kitchen bench, the jacket is draped over the car. What is that? I’m always guilty of picking it all up and placing it all in one place, near the front door with my keys, mobile and sunnies on a shelf. It’s Easy.


When things are lost I call it the black hole and whenever there is a question about ‘where is my whatever’, I say ‘In the black hole,’ because I have no idea how things end up where they end up sometimes.


Draws and cupboards left open do my head in and so do not putting things back. An esky and some chairs will come out of the shed but will sit on the outside table for weeks after they are used. Ice trays sit on the bench for days, jackets and scarves will lie around and a bath towel will stay in the bedroom for a day or two before going back to it’s rightful place. How hard is it to close and put away these things? They are opened and taken out easily enough why can’t they be closed and returned? It’s no greater effort. You don’t have to be strong. I don’t get it. Even the microwave door left open astounds me.


My last housemate was good at this. We got robbed once and I didn’t even realise for 30 minutes because I walked into the kitchen and every cupboard door and almost every drawer was left standing open like astonished mouths.


“Jesus,” I cursed and started slamming them shut, because it’s messy. Then I realised the broken window in the lounge room was not done by anyone else but a burglar. Not even she was that messy. Karma sorted that out though. She married a Virgo! Possibly the most unbelievable thing she did though was left the freezer door open and went away for the weekend. Hmmm, nice.


I have noticed though that friends of mine who have been as inflexible as me in the past lose a lot of that when they have children. Impossible I imagine maintaining neat freakishness for very long when there are a million toys and small dirty fingers and baby vomit all over the place.

Now this is an interesting house mate situation!

"There, I said it!"

I want to tell the everyday people in the world that ordinary life is interesting.


A read about life, friendship, love, family and hairdressing. It may make you laugh, cry, grin and say ‘oh God yes’, all at once. And as Clive James said, “I make no claims to be accurate, precise, or entirely truthful, only to entertain”.


The narrative opens with an account of the storytellers wry, almost cynical views on weddings and marriage and follows on with a similar tone towards other modern day typical suburban life occurrences, such as life as a singleton, babies, blind dates, housemates, travel, the technical world, binge drinking, mumnesia, hairdressers, a woman’s purse and couples at cars, for example. The characters within are based on genuine people and actual events (only the names have been changed) providing testimony around these everyday proceedings over a period of time. The tone of the anecdotes in each chapter is one of underlying humour and sometimes disbelief. It is intended to effectuate responses such as, “that is so true.”


The chapters have the same feel as a Sunday Mail newspaper column where publication follows a series, producing copy that can sometimes be slightly or even strongly opinionated. It is intended to be a little acrid with an edge of sincerity illustrating human nature in expected behaviour.