S Party

Last night, Sarah’s hipster/poser boyfriend and his roommates threw an S party–guests were only admitted if they dressed up as something that started with the letter S.

My roommates and I are suckers for themed parties, so we threw together some silly costumes and headed to his house. In spite of the hipster music that is so weird that you can’t dance to it, I did have fun just hanging out with the Sara(h)s outside of our apartment. Some of Jason’s friends were pretty funny, so it was actually entertaining to talk to them while Sarah left us to be with Jason.

As the night was winding down, Sara and I meandered into the kitchen to check up on Sarah. We found her smoking a joint with Jason up against the kitchen counter, which was fine… until she fainted. This happens every time she is crossfaded, so clearly Sarah does not react well to the weed+alcohol combination but she continues to do it anyway.

After she had collapsed onto the floor, Jason, her adoring boyfriend, just stood there… staring at her. Sara and I were like, what the hell is he doing?! We didn’t know what to do to help her, but Jason is a huge pothead and should’ve been all over it. Of course, he didn’t bother to help her at all. His roommate had to jump in and help us pick her up, offering her water and some bread.

I couldn’t believe it. Here are some S words that come to mind when I think of Jason:

Sleazeball. Skeeze.  Slacker. Senseless. Surly. Slimy. [Full of] Shit.

Sorry. I tried.

This is Why I’m a Dog Person

My efforts to be welcoming toward Hannah are beginning to bite me in the ass. The Sara(h)s have made no such effort and therefore have been rewarded by not having to deal with Hannah’s craziness, which is gradually coming out.

Since Sarah is on the pre-med track and has little care for current events in the non-fashion world, she couldn’t give any less when Hannah approached her to rant about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sarah had just sat at her desk while Hannah talked to her shoulder. I couldn’t believe how patient Sarah had been until afterward when Sarah divulged to me that she was reaching the breaking point when Hannah finally left her alone.

So now Hannah has been coming after me. Earlier this afternoon, she came into my room while I was detoxing after a rough day.

“Roommate! Do you want Facebook this cute guy I met today?” She bounced through my door.

“Um, no, that’s okay,” I responded. “Sounds like your day went well though.”

She took my answer as an invitation to continue the conversation. “How about myspacing a black guy I dated a while back? He’s hot!”

“Maybe another time?” I suggested through my teeth.

“Okay, do you want to see pictures of my cat? He is so smart! He is just like a human being! Sometimes he just comes up to me and scratches at my back… like this–”

And the crazy freak started to claw at my back! What.the.fuck. Who does that?!

So much for trying to be nice to the new girl. Now I know why she couldn’t find anywhere else to live.

Outright Lie

So I was just kidding about feeling a lot better after my conversation with Jules last night. It turns out she felt so bad about creating such an awkward situation for our friends that she apologized to Sarah today. And of course, Sarah’s reaction is to go out of her way to make my living situation a little bit harder.

Apparently, Sarah told Jules that there was no need to apologize, that she and Rob didn’t have a problem at all, and that the awkwardness was all in my head.

Excuse me?

Were Nicole and I the ones to get all pissed off because we were excluded from Jules and Matt’s conversation? Were we the ones getting cranky because they didn’t offer us any beer?

No!

But it’s my word against Sarah’s, and now Jules thinks that I only brought up the awkward situation our guests were in to guilt trip her.

Sarah always claimed that she wasn’t a calculating person, but trying to screw with my good relationship with Jules is pretty fucking catty. Though this explains why Sarah had so many fallouts with her friends in high school. Poor thing.

Hannah

Victoria, my sometimes ally in the apartment, is moving out at the end of the summer. She graduated in June and is starting the 9 – 5 phase of her life. I’m really bummed because she was so sweet–helping me clean, lending me random costumes for the themed parties, good roommate things.

She found a girl on Craigslist who was interested in the smaller single in our apartment. The new girl, Hannah, came to the apartment to take a look at the room, fell in love with it, and interviewed for us. She seemed really quiet and responsible when we spoke to her, so we agreed to add her to the contract as a subletter. I took care of the paperwork (surprised?), which was a fiasco having to mail it back and forth between us, Hannah, and our landlord several times.

Anyway. Hannah was to take over Victoria’s lease on August 15th. Sarah is vacationing with her family in Asia that week, Victoria and Jules are moving out, and I’m doing overtime at work to launch a new application, so it would be a very hectic week for us to help Hannah move in. I explained the situation to Hannah, hoping we could work a different arrangement out.

“Hey, Hannah. Since none of us are going to be around for sure to give you keys and help you get settled in, would it be okay if you waited a couple days before moving in? Say, the 20th when Sarah will be back for sure?”

“If you guys don’t let me move in until the 20th, I’d like my rent prorated for the days I’m not living the apartment,” Hannah said flat out.

“Hannah,” I started out sweetly, “the landlord is not going to prorate your rent for five days when there are three of us already living in the apartment. It’s just a matter of timing!”

“Well, then I’d like you guys to reimburse my rent for the days before I’m allowed to move in.”

Ugh. I don’t want to deal with this tightwad right now. “All right, all right. We’ll figure out a way for you to move in on August 15. Please get the entire rent amount to me ahead of time.”

This does not bode well for new roommate relations.

A Good Deed Never Goes Unpunished

Sarah’s birthday was this past week, and since her parents have finished the interstate move, Sarah couldn’t go home to her friends for summer vacation. I knew this was going to happen , so I contacted her sister in advance to plan a surprise party for her.

For the month before her birthday, I surreptiously asked the right questions to extract the information I needed: what kind of cake she liked, if she and her family were doing anything, etc. I ordered a book on shoes and personal style that I knew she’d love (since shoes are her favorite things in the world).

Sarah had met my friends from high school on various occasions and we had a lot of fun together, so I invited several of them to be the guests at her party, hoping she would now have automatic friends from in-state.

On the day of her birthday, I went to pick up her cake at a ridiculously good bakery that my mom recommended. I meticulously wrapped her present (admittedly, mainly because I enjoy wrapping presents) and packed it into a bag with napkins and a cake knife.

My friends and I crammed into my car with her cake and gift, and we headed over to her new house. Sarah’s sister and mom knew I was coming and giddily opened the door for me. We all rushed in and surprised her. We sang happy birthday and enjoyed the scrumptious cake together. Then we “kidnapped” her and cleared out of her house so her early-sleeper parents could go to bed while we could have more fun.

Turns out that Sarah did not like that. Afterward, I found out that she did not appreciate the party, the cake, the book, the planning that went into it, or my friends’ efforts to make her day special. Maybe she really hates surprises, but I feel like she at least shouldn’t be acting pretty bitterly toward me since then.

I guess I deserve it, for being the only one of her friends to do something for her. None of her old friends called her or anything on her birthday, so I guess that makes me a pretty crappy person for trying to make her transition to a new place easier.

Silent vs. Vibrate

Last night, I was studying for an intense midterm at a cafe for several hours with several friends. I was really stressed out when I got home at 1 AM to Sarah pouting in the kitchen. Great. I mentally prepared myself for whatever was coming next.

“Roommate, did you not get any of my calls?” She demanded angrily.

“No, Sarah, I didn’t get anything.” I pulled out my phone from my backpack to check, and I did have five missed calls. “Sorry, Sarah, I didn’t hear it go off.”

“Are you serious?! I can’t believe that you wouldn’t hear it ring! I was getting so worried that I had to have Rob call you!” She was getting really worked up.

“Well, I had my phone set on ’silent’ since I was studying for a midterm I have tomorrow,” I tried to explain.

“That’s bullshit. You set your phone on ‘vibrate’, which you should have heard!”

“Yes, it vibrates, but I would have picked it up if I had heard it.”

“Well, if it vibrates, it’s called ‘vibrate’,” she insisted.

“On my phone, the setting is called ’silent’.” I added, “Does it even matter?”

“Yes, it does,” Sarah hissed, “because it’s called fucking ‘vibrate’!”

“All right. I’m going to go cram some more. Let me know if you actually need something,” I ended the conversation and walked away incredulously.

… I think she just picked a fight with me over whether my phone setting is called ‘vibrate’ or ’silent’.