I've never lived with boys before, well, other than my dad, and my brothers who moved out of home when I will still a wee little thing. But in my adult life, I have never lived with boys. I've lived with girls, I've lived with my parents and I've lived alone. I have stayed in the same room with boys at numerous hostels around the world, but I have never
lived with them.
I came back to Australia to live with my boyfriend (which, in itself, is a whole-
nother-huge thing, but it is all going quite fine thank you for asking) and wound up getting two extra boy housemates as a bonus. It's like three for the price of one!
Luckily for me, my boyfriend has been house-broken and potty trained. He does all the things normal people are supposed to do, like clean up after themselves, share work around the house, etc. He's actually even better than that, he cooks too. I lucked out with this one! He's a keeper!
But the others ... well ... they haven't entirely been house-trained.
Let's see if I can give you a few examples.
1: The Shower. I frequently walk in to the bathroom and find myself stepping in puddles. I look down and see that both the bath mats are soaked and there are water puddles all over the floor. It is as if one of them takes a shower and grabs handfuls of water and, with a flourish, says to the world, "here I am," and flings the water all over the bathroom. If we had a detachable shower head, I would assume one of them had a water fight with his shadow. But we don't. So I guess the only logical explanation is that they shower, step on the bathmat with soaking feet, shake themselves off, and then walk to the other side of the bathroom to pick up a towel to finish the drying process. I, on the other hand, hang my towel over the shower rail so that I can get dry without soaking the floor. Logical? Common sense? No? Que?
2. The Smoking. They don't smoke in the house. If they did, I wouldn't live here. But I can't tell you how many times we've asked them to shut the door when they are smoking on the patio so that the smoke doesn't drift inside to the kitchen and then right in to our bedroom. We might have to resort to stuffing hairs in their cigarettes. I wonder how that would go over?
3. Dishes. We've all had roommates that didn't do dishes, but this is a bit ridiculous. I think one day the boyfriend said to one of the guys, "Um, your dishes have been waiting in the sink for you since Friday."
So combine this with drum lessons; shoes left in perfect "trip over me" positions;
loogey-hocking sounds emanating from the bathroom; empty milk cartons, empty potato chip packets and glasses lying around; it is sort of like living in a frat house. So this is what living with boys is like. But really, it's not all that bad, I mean, look at the bright sides ...
um ...
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight ...
uh ...
The drumming keeps would-be
burglars away.
And ... um ... it's cheaper.
It's kind of like being at University again.
As my dad would say, "Some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you."