battle of the tp

living with people is interesting. it gives you good insight into, well, how people live! I share a bathroom with k, who is a student and a house cleaner. before I moved in I was warned that she may not be the cleanest. people don't like to go home to do more of what they do for work, you know? and yet I never would have thought it could be this bad.

- she regularly leaves stuff all over our bathroom floor, for days, maybe weeks: shoes, clothes, razors, hair products, scissors, etc. our counter has her stuff all over it, including her leaking toothpaste tubes. 

- she orders a lot of food thru uber eats and will once every couple months clean out her room. she'll have big trash bags full of takeout boxes, and leave a dozen plates and forks in our sink. trash bags will sit in the hallway, silverware in the sink, for a few days until she takes care of it. you can imagine what her shelf of the fridge looks like.

- she'll have people over and not clean up after them for weeks. half-filled cups, pillows on the ground, open wine bottles strewn around our living room.

there's more, but the "best" stories are about toilet paper, of course, lol.

I sleep at the apartment about 4 nights a week. she's there pretty much fulltime. last summer, we ran out of tp. I got back after the weekend, saw we had no tp (and was annoyed). thankfully I have tissue in my room (which I pettily did not share in the bathroom). before work I left a note on the counter saying i'd buy tp after work. I didn't go home that night. the next day I got back to the apartment and saw that she had left some fast food paper napkins on the counter. ...I refilled the tp.

she NEVER puts the tp back on the roller thing. I now tell people I think she has a phobia about it. i'm not going to ask because i'm almost positive it's just that she's too lazy and my story is just so much more entertaining. before I left for spain, a friend suggested I put the tp roller half in half out so that it would fall out when someone used tp. I did. I came back a week and a half later and the empty tp roller was on the ground with a half roll of tp on the counter. 

last saturday night I came home to an empty roll. I was annoyed since I was in spain for about 10 days before. also, we ran out on a weekend. I usually leave for work Friday morning and get back to the apartment Monday night so I wasn't even "supposed" to be there. anyway. I actually have like 2 dozen rolls in my closet but I can't fit more than 4 rolls under the sink (she has too much stuff in there). I was in the process of refilling it when I changed my mind. I mean, I wasn't supposed to be there, at least the last 4 rolls were "my" paper, and wtf was she planning to do in the meantime before I "got back" on Monday night? so I used Kleenex Saturday night, peed at work Sunday, and left without a note that night. I got back Monday late night and saw that she had taken paper towels from our kitchen (which she didn't buy; A buys those) to use as tp. ...this fucking girl is SO LAZY and WEIRD.

and while I'm definitely annoyed, my major emotion is amusement. seriously. what 30 year old can't remember to buy tp for days? who has to depend on their roommate who only lives there part-time? who can't be bothered, not once, to put the tp back on the roller? lol, omg, she's so strange! she complains all the time about how she's single. well, no wonder! what guy would stay with you after he's seen your room? I mean. sure, I live like this too since we share a bathroom. but my room is clean. I wash my dishes and throw out my trash within a reasonable amount of time. I have no food containers with mold in them. I clean up after guests and drain my glasses. sure, I can stand to live in unsanitary conditions but that obviously isn't my personal normal state. that being said, I do wonder what j thinks. what he thinks of me that I can live like this. I mean, it must say something about me that her laziness doesn't bother me so much that I feel like I have do something about it. when I first moved in, yeah, I cleaned our bathroom, emptied the trashcan, windexed the mirrors, ajaxed the sink, but now... I don't do any of that. I'll throw our bathmats and hand towel into the wash, and use draino every few months since she often doesn't use the hair catch, but I pretty much just let it be. what's the point? she doesn't keep our bathroom even baseline clean. I don't know. you do you; i'll do me. turns out i'm pretty serious about that. to a point that even surprises (and slightly disgusts) me.

spain

they say you never really know someone until you live with them. or travel with them. which, if the trip is long enough, can be akin to living with them.

anyway, j and i went to spain for his spring break. fully 6 months ago we looked for cheap flights, with no specific destination in mind, and barcelona came up for his free week. which happened to also be our one year (the day we flew out) and my birthday (our first full day in spain). i was very nervous booking the flight. we were only 6 months in, making plans for 6 months later. crazy! but i figured that even if we split up, i'd go to spain anyway. i also forecasted that if we broke up, it wouldn't be an angry someone fucked up thing. it would be a sad we just couldn't make it work thing. so we'd still be friends. and anyway, i'm used to traveling alone. (tho it would've been a hell of a lot harder since i don't speak any useful spanish, save el baño and uno cervesa por favor tho i don't even like beer, lol)

so what do i know now? i learned that we stress about different things, which is good. i stress about timing, he about food and crowds. and we don't rile each other up, which is important. overall, we're both chill, which is really good. we compliment each other. i planned our itinerary, but he was the one who pushed to book hotels and get tickets. i got maps, locations, opening times, and he got a phone card and currency. we both brought plenty of snacks and to-be-thrown-away travel clothes.

in some ways i knew we would be fine. we haven't fought our whole time together. and i've tried hard to apply what i've learned, not only from my previous relationships, but from those of my friends and parents, even.

what else did i learn from this trip? to not depend too much on others. i don't mean that in the way it sounds. but once we were in spain i took a step back from everything. he did all the ordering, talking to strangers, figuring stuff out, etc. yes, he speaks spanish but i could've done more. halfway thru our trip i happened to see him google something like "why is my relationship so ___." i didn't catch the last word but i immediately started freaking out (to myself). you don't google good things, you know? but he knows me well enough to recognize that i was freaking and called me out on it and told me what he was thinking about. (turns out i had read the search wrong) but he was stressed. from school, work, his accident a week prior that he was still injured from. we talked a bit and he said he felt much better. not knowing how to actually help I tried to be more helpful on the trip. i screenshot maps when i had wifi and just tried to pull a bit more weight. i dunno if it did anything, maybe i was relieving some of his stress? he said after our talk he finally got into the vacation mind frame. so maybe i did nothing. either way, I shouldn't have burdened him with all the work.

next time we should go somewhere neither of us knows the language. where we're on a more level playing ground. that being said, I've definitely taken a back seat in this relationship. more than I have with anyone in any relationship, I think. i'm not necessarily aggressive, but I do have ideas on what I want. this time I feel like i'm very content to let him lead us. he seems so capable in his own life, I guess I feel more secure? whatever. all I know is that i'm happy. and that we're still together. and that after a full 9 days together we saw each other again Monday night, and it didn't feel like too much.