Roommate Wars

Stanton, Scott, and I were in the kitchen...I should give myself an "S" name too...how about "Seao?" Very samoan sounding...it might fit. Anyways, Stanton went to wash his dishes and Scott protested "Put the dry dishes away before you put wet dishes in there." I chimed in "yah, Stanton, you know that's his pet peeve." Stanton insisted he had no idea. But it got me thinking. It's been over a year of marriage, and thus, over a year of living together as one big happy Sunaoka 'ohana.

Scott's biggest pet peeve (he may be more of an expert on this):
1. Putting wet dishes in the strainer (or dish rack as some call it) when there's dry dishes in there already because now it makes the dry dishes wet all over again.

Vying for the top spot is also.
2. Hanging up your bath towel on a fan.
3. Putting other dishes to soak in the water already being used to soak a dirty rice cooker (that's a big no-no)
4. Not resetting the microwave clock/timer to zero when you're finished using it.

How do I do with these? I pretty much bomb on all of these but at least Scott usually blames Stanton first.

My pet peeves:
1. Hair...I hate it. I spend a lot of time every day cleaning it off of things. I sweep often, I wipe down the sinks, clean the hairbrush on the counter every day, and even use a lint roller on our bed and pillows every day. I clean the bath soap every day too. Yup, I even quickly swept up someone's bathroom floor on an impulse while at their house.

2. Fluffing up my rice in the rice cooker. GIVE ME MY WEDGE.

3. Not bringing in my laundry basket when you bring in all the clean dry clothes.

Stanton's Pet Peeves:

Nah, I have no clue.

But, all in all, I hope the two other boys can say the same but I've had a pretty wonderful living experience in my new home. And I'm glad, after living with roommates (not counting my family) since seventh grade (Boarding at Kamehameha followed by college followed by pure living)...I"m glad to say good-bye to the roommate dramas that I and everyone I know has endured in our younger years. Hooponopono's with crying and confessions. Silent treatments...one particular bad experience where campus police was called to my dorm room. Yup, so glad it's over. I have tried to learn from all of it, but I know I probably drove some people crazy. What peculiarities could I possibly have? I know, there are some...hard to believe.

I can't go to sleep unless I'm sufficiently cold enough. At Boston College, with heated rooms, it meant that I had to open the window at least 4-6 inches to cool the room down enough for me to slumber. My roommate HATED it. But I still did it...well, she fell asleep first so it was super easy to avoid arguments about it. Of course, sufficiently cool 60 degrees very quickly drops to a freezing 30 degrees by dawn and you could probably hear the crackling of my leftover can of Coke slowly freezing in our dorm room. Course, it didn't concern me too much because my roommate had to get up first and would close the window, thus allowing the room to warm up before my awakening hours later. I could see why she might have been tempted to warm my face up with my own pillow.

That wasn't mean intent on my behalf, simply selfish intent. But I did have some slightly more sinister methods for dealing with unlikable roommates.

1. My dorm phone ringer was obnoxious (we all had our own phone lines)....so I used to call myself from my work place just to irritate the heck out of my roommate. When she turned the ringer off (even when I was home), I glued it so it was permanently on. Yah, she just unplugged my phone...but it was a small victory.

2. Our suitemate was never home on weekends and her phone rang constantly. So my roommate and I forwarded her phone to an unusable extension. I don't think she even noticed that her phone never rang anymore.

Stupid...but that was just the drama that was my life. Dorm life it seemed. I knew a girl freshman year of college that put a tape down the middle of the room...trash can, door knob...etc. Was that in a Brady Bunch episode? I'm much better now..you might almost say more mature. I would never call my phone anymore to bug Scott. Heck, I don't even know where my phone is half the time. Anyone ever had a horrible roommate? Or been the horrible roommate?