Hairy Potwasher and the Pavlov of Poop

In my last post, four short weeks ago, I made a point of talking about the perks of living on my own. But that statement, I've come to realize, needs a slight amendment.

See, Karen's return to Texas has left me living on my own within my room. But in the windowless basement that serves as my home, office, and vampiric playground, there is another bedroom. And that bedroom is rented out to someone who...well, let's just call her She Who Shall Not Be Named. (This is not, I promise, just me being coy. I just feel like maybe, if I'm going to slaughter the shit out of this person, it's best not to publicly out her by name.)

(Yet. If things get worse, anything's fair game. You heard it here first.)

What I can tell you is that this person is, to put it lightly, a train wreck. She's in her mid-thirties, just returned from time abroad in Costa Rica, and has moved to the DC area in order to take a shitty job teaching douchebag wannabe-dropouts in an especially economically crappy and gang-ridden part of Alexandria. Clearly, a winner.

But I'd be callous if I was only judging her based on her choice of profession. The truth is that I judge her based on three distinct qualities: inconsiderateness, laziness, and slovenliness.

How inconsiderate is she? Try getting woken up most mornings at 6:45am because the person in the room next to you has decided the only way to make sure the door is closed is to slam it as hard as possible. Multiple times, too, since she always seems to forget something just when you think she's finally gone.

How slovenly is she? Try a kitchen counter that went unwiped for over two weeks. Or a stovetop that's had the same stain under the burners for over a month. (I know it's disgusting, but I'm sorry, it wasn't my mess, and I'm not her fucking father.)

But the real kicker is trying to describe just how lazy she is. Because she takes this to a WHOLE new level.

She's committed the standard egregious sin of not replacing the toilet paper roll when she uses the last of it. She's also refused to clean her hair out of the shower drain, resulting in a clog that slowed drainage enough for me to need to remove the hair myself. (Fun fact: I'm still traumatized over what I saw.)

But if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a half-assed job at doing the dishes. And man, does she deliver.

Never mind that she leaves dishes lounging in the sink for days before finally cleaning them. Never mind that we haven't had dish soap for about three weeks and she never once offered to go buy more. Never mind that dishes disappear at will because (I think) she brings them into her room and lets them languish in their filth for weeks before bringing them back into the kitchen.

Forget all that. What really grinds my gears? Drying rack abuse.

The drying rack is designed, oddly enough, to let things dry. And once they are dry, those things are meant to be put away until their next use. They are not meant to sit there and wait until the next time they are to be used, because that only leaves less room for the next round of dirty dishes. Which results in more dishes piling up in the sink. Which keeps the vicious cycle going.

Today, I found two pans, one pot, and a collander in the drying rack. They'd been there for days, and I'd finally reached my breaking point. I took them off the rack and placed them atop the washing machine, hoping above all hope that when she went to change over the laundry that was in there, she would put the pans away.

But later this afternoon, I found the laundry changed...and the pots back on the drying rack.

So I did what any insane person would do: repeated the same action, with the expectation of a different result. Back went the pans back on top of the washing machine. And, stupid me, I went off to work believing they'd be put away when I returned.

Naturally, there weren't. They were put back on the drying rack.

And my blood pressure was back through the roof.

I told this story to Karen today and she suggested I stop being so passive-aggressive, which was a fair critique. I opted to take the high road, to approach her and ask her if she could put the pans away now that they were dry. So I did. Just like that, too, with no snark or sarcasm to speak of.

And what happened when I went to put my glass in the sink tonight before bed?

I saw the pans. Still on the drying rack. And I was beyond livid.

I felt sure I'd exhausted all my options. How can you possibly make a thirtysomething with the maturity level of Lindsay Lohan realize that she's being a bitch and needs to change her ways? What ever could hope to foster some kind of change?

That's when Karen came up with the next brilliant suggestion: drop a deuce in the toilet in the morning and leave it there for her to find when she gets home. And every time I find a pan not put away or a mess not cleaned up, she'll have to interrupt her first morning pee by flushing my stanky shit down the toilet.

Will it get her to change her ways? Who knows. But considering that all the other attempts have failed, I'm actually considering this one. And hoping it's not as shitty an idea as it may seem.