Japanese Sex Rope

Hannah finally moved in last Friday, 14 days after she demanded that I ready the apartment for her move-in. I figured that since she wanted to move in right away to get her money’s worth, the cheapo would have gotten her act together by now. Let’s hope this doesn’t set the precedence for how she’s going to do things in the future.

Either way, the Sara(h)s and I decided to be friendly and get to know our new housemate. We decided to skip the formalities and get down to girl business–by swapping guy stories over a Sex and the City board game. It doesn’t bode well that before the game even started, Hannah had already related the disturbing details of the time in high school when a much older guy drove her to a park and gave it to her through her back door. Now I’m not a prude by any means (actually, I have very little shame), but in my mind, you usually wait at least half an hour after meeting someone before you share such a story. We all tried to be polite and engaged in the grotesque imagery, but game abandoned, Hannah decided to really make herself at home.

“Wait, let me show you the penis lollipops!” she exclaimed, disappearing into her room. She returned with a mug full of small suckers shaped like phalli–in all different colors! We actually found this pretty amusing, until Hannah saw this as approval to continue with her graphic story time and pulled out the Japanese sex rope.

For some reason, I feel like the kinky Japanese probably never used neon pink ropes, but I’m not from Japan so what do I know.

Elitist and Better For It

Sara is coming back from DC soon, and I am excited for two reasons: 1. She will be a buffer (sort of) between Sarah and me, 2. I just love hearing Sarah blindly support Sara’s plans for saving the world with her political prowess.

Her most recent email explains the obstacles that her virtuous plan encounters–11 paragraphs about how her “friends” in DC think she’s addicted to money and power. Excerpts (best parts highlighted for easy judgment… but all of it is entertaining):

They always point out the times I mention something that could even be remotely linked to power and money. For instance, I really like Diesel jeans on guys. One girl said, “Because it signifies that he can afford expensive things, which you’re attracted to. You say it’s the fit, but cheaper jeans could fit well too. Or how you picked out this girl who has a Chloe bag; not a lot of people do that.”

This bothers me because I’ve always made an effort to not be a bad person, but is it so bad that I’m so materialistic? Is it awful that I would like a job that pays well? Do I name drop too much? Am I incapable of concealing it from people? I’ve never claimed to be a saint when it comes to my superficiality and ambition. Yes, I’m an elitist, but my life is better for it.

My business friends think I’m really honorable because I want to go into development and that I’m interested in the world’s welfare. When I’m with these “academics” in DC, they think I’m a bad person. They don’t see that you have to work within the system to fix it. People need money and power to influence others to act. However, I don’t know how to justify my affinity toward nice clothing.

Guys, keep me in check when I get too arrogant because that’s the last kind of person I’d want to be.

Aside from how much this reveals about Sara’s character, Sarah’s email reply is also incredibly precious:

You know I’m just going to agree with everything you said, but here goes. What the fuck is their problem? If they are so disgusted by money/power, they shouldn’t have spent the summer in a city that embodies both. While they’re judging you for liking money and power, I’m judging them right now for dressing poorly.

As for liking nice clothes, that doesn’t mean you’re attracted to money and power only; it just means that you have better taste than everyone else. If someone is wearing cheap jeans, I’ll know that they have no taste, no sense of humor, and no aspirations in life.

All this judgement [sic] is making me hungry. Call me later.

Don’t I live with the most amazing and compassionate ladies?

I’d Rather Have You Do Your Share, Thanks

My glorious week of maintaining an empty apartment came to an abrupt end when the door opened with a loud crash yesterday. Sarah walked through the living room with an overstuffed suitcase and several bags.

“Hey, you’re back!” I greeted her with a forced smile. Inwardly, I groaned.

“Yeah… my mom’s outside with more stuff,” Sarah responded. No greeting necessary for her.

“Okay, I’ll go out to say hi and help bring in your things,” I offered.

I found her mom’s humongous black SUV parked illegally blocking our building’s driveway.

“Hi, Mrs. Y! How was your trip? Can I help carry anything in?”

“Hi, Roommate. You can grab something from the trunk,” Mrs. Y answered from the driver seat.

As soon as Sarah and I finished several trips back and forth from the car, Mrs. Y drove off. Sarah promptly opened her huge rolling suitcase and dumped its contents on the floor of her room. Apparently, she hates unpacking and lives out of the pile until it gradually disappears. At least the disaster will be contained in her room.

In an unexpected move, Sarah pulled out an eyelash curler and some plastic soup spoons that she bought for me. It was actually really nice of her to think of me while she was on vacation. Maybe that means that she’s becoming more thoughtful and will start pulling her weight around here!

Probably not.

At This Rate She’s Never Moving In

Here are the possible explanations for why Hannah still hasn’t shown up yet:

• On the drive here, her car got stuck in a ditch and the heavy furniture is inhibiting any movement
• She forgot that school starts in a few days
• She decided that our apartment isn’t good enough for her (hopefully it’s this one)
• It’s Shabbat… except that it has been a week
• She thinks that I have nothing better to do than twiddle my thumbs while I wait for her

I give up. If Hannah decides to come up and I’m not there to let her in, she’s just going to have to stand outside in the sun with all her shit until I’m done making her wait.

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

While Sara has been in DC, we’ve been exchanging lengthy emails every few days. This is a continuation of the tradition from last summer, when Sara was in Europe and Sarah went to visit friends out of state. We tried to keep each other updated with our lives through emails at least five paragraphs long. I always read through the whole thing in parts during my breaks at work, and several times over while I’m writing an equally lengthy response.

Just recently, Sara found out that one of her best friends, Amy, only skims these long emails. I can see why she would since they are so incredibly long. Needless to say, if you’re not giving Sara your complete and undivided attention, she flips out.

“Unlike with you and Sarah, with Amy and Evan I have to initiate contact. If I didn’t send them one email, then we wouldn’t have talked at all this whole summer. It really upsets me because I spend more than an hour writing emails to each of you. If Amy is just going to skim them and give me brief responses, then I’m wasting my time!”

“Maybe she meant she skims them the first time around and goes back when she has more time,” I tried to reassure her.

“She keeps asking me about what’s going on and yet she doesn’t even read my responses! She can get over it and email me if she wants to know anything!” Sara fumed.

Huh. Funny how her two best friends aside from Sarah can’t take the time to care about all the details of her life, but she has no problem complaining about how I ask her too many questions–even after acknowledging that I am one of the two people who take the time to respond to all her whining about life in DC.

I love how she expects people to find the exact happy medium to that satisfies her.

I’d Like This Week of My Life Back Please

If any of you have ever moved, you know how hectic it can get– furniture not fitting through doorways, clothes all over the place, appliances falling off shelves. Imagine half our house moving out. It was insane.

On top of all of that, Sarah went to Asia with her family so I’m doing all of this alone. I have no idea where she disappeared to all summer because she’s just taking MCAT classes at night. Either way, I had to somehow figure out how to let Hannah in (she has no key yet) even though I couldn’t be at home because of our project release at work. I managed to negotiate leaving work in the middle of the day to meet Hannah, and then I’d go back to work over time to meet our launch deadline.

Yesterday, I waited around for Hannah to arrive for hours. She was a no-show. Finally, I called her, and she said that she would move up sometime in the next week.

What. The. Hell. Hannah wanted us to pro-rate her rent for the days after the start of her lease that she couldn’t move in. So I had to rush around helping Victoria/Jules to move out, getting the room inspected by our landlord who lives two hours away, risking missing our launch deadline–only to be stood up by that bitch.

What was the point of making a huge deal out of not being able to move in at the very start of her lease and making me jump through hoops to accommodate her if she wasn’t going to fucking move in right away?!

Salvageable

Now that Sarah is gone for the next week, things in my apartment have returned to normal–in the regular dictionary sense.

Jules and I back to our cleaning-in-our-underwear and making-fruit-cobbler ways. I feel significantly less cranky when I don’t have to wash anyone else’s dishes or take out overflowing trash bins alone. Jules and Victoria do their shares of the chores without complaint, and I love it.

Unfortunately, both are packing to move out in the next few days so that Sara can come back from DC and Hannah can move in. I’m so disappointed because living with Jules has been the best thing that has ever happened to me in this apartment. She was so supportive during a jerk guy crisis, and I loved hearing about how she was kind of stalked by a guy in her summer class. Victoria has mostly kept to herself, but I will always remember the day she did a really sexy booty shake in my doorway.

And in less than two weeks, everything will be back to normal–in our sense of the word, aka “hair-pulling inducing”.

God Made Dirt, and Dirt Don’t Hurt

Something incredible has happened. Sarah’s conservation courses (and let’s be honest–her hipster friends) introduced her to a garden where she can pick her own fruit and vegetables.

Pros
- She has actually let her dainty “surgeon” hands touch dirt!
- She gets off her normally sedentary ass to go to the garden.
- She brought home some baby spinach, onions, and berries.

Cons
- She must exhaust all her energy getting to the garden because she’s still lazy with the chores.
- She just threw all the fruit and vegetables on the kitchen table–dirt, roots, and all–for several days.

The best part of my day is when I come home from work to see shriveled/moldy fruit and grimy vegetables swimming in dirt on my kitchen table.

The second best part is that Sarah has left on a family vacation and won’t be back until next week, so guess who is cleaning up her crap.

Legos > SATs

Since the Sara(h)s have at least 20 pairs of shoes each, we were running out of floorspace near the doorway to hold all of them. It also didn’t help that Sarah refuses to put her shoes away neatly; she just kicks them off and where they land, they stay… until I get so disgusted that I straighten them out. Get this: the crazy bitch makes me touch her diseased shoes (Sarah has a skin disease on her feet) because she’s too good to do it herself.

In the hopes of facilitating her laziness, I suggested that we get some cheap shoe racks to store the things. They agreed, but no one bothered to take any action (as usual), so I purchased the shoe racks and had them delivered to our place.

When they arrived I had class and work the whole day with no breaks, so I asked Sarah to start assembling the shoe racks, and then I would finish them. When I got home, the pieces were all over the floor and only half of a shoe rack had been put together.

“Oh, um, Roommate? I put one of the plastic sides together incorrectly and I can’t pull them apart, so now this part is a little messed up,” Sarah pointed out.

Oh. My. God. How hard can it be to put this piece of crap together?! Look at the picture on the box! Obviously Sarah never played with Legos as a kid nor has she ever put together anything from Ikea.

This incident is only good because it followed one of Sarah’s gloating sessions about her fabulous SAT score. Yes, she still brags about getting a near perfect score four years after they no longer count for anything. Her parents spent thousands of dollars putting her through SAT prep courses in order for her to achieve such greatness. For some reason Sarah believes that her test-taking skills entitle her to proclaim her success in her biology major and to belittle my humanities major–constantly.

Quotes from Sarah the Prodigy:

- “I don’t take anyone who isn’t a science major seriously. No, Business/Economics don’t count.” Note: Sara, her best friend since 2nd grade, is gunning for a Business degree.
- “There is a reason I have the highest GPA in this house!”
- “I’m just really good at taking standardized tests.”

Funnily enough, I scored only 50 points lower than her on the SATs (still 99th percentile) from nothing but a $20 too-old-to-count SAT book where I didn’t get past the vocab word “ambivalent”. And I hold a well-paying job that is going to advance my career in computer science/technology. Oh, and also, I can put together a freaking plastic shoe rack without screwing up! So much for being booksmart. Jeez.