Sadly, the time has come again for me to look for a new housemate. After exhausting several leads from personal contacts, I must now resort to finding some potential psycho off of Craigslist. I don't know why I am actively avoiding this inevitability so much. To date, I have lived with several people I've met through Craigslist, and it has always worked out just fine...except for the roommate who bought a tiny dog that wanted absolutely nothing to do with me but considered the floor of my bedroom to be prime real estate for its peepee. I am not afraid to publicly state this because, much like the dog's apathy toward me, I am fairly confident my former roommate's interest in my life does not extend to following this blog.
I'm certain my failure to search for a roommate is a mixture of one part dread, three parts laziness, and one part held-out hope that my quarter will finally unearth a $10,000 prize on one of those dollar scratch-off lotto tickets, in which case I would be able to afford to live alone. (Yes, I am indeed living proof that it's not just retirees whose McDonald's menu item-of-choice is the filet of fish sandwich who "invest" in those lotto tickets.) "You look like a deadbeat mother," a dear friend once commented as I walked out of a 7-Eleven carrying a gallon of milk, a fistful of lotto tickets, a pint of ice cream, and the latest TV Guide. (I didn't actually have a TV Guide in hand, but I feel that this is the only way it could have been a fair judgment.)
When considering my Craigslist ad, I am uncertain of the approach I should use. Part of me wants to start the screening process early, do a little weeding out before the face-to-face meetings. I could ask some simple multiple choice questions like this:
1) Clorox, Windex, aluminum foil, Drain-O, ammonia. Combined, what do these things make?
A) a clean apartment!
B) crystal meth
C) Yo no hablo ingles.
(He/she would still be awarded partial credit for answering "C"--in my pursuit of becoming bilingual--but would still need to check out on the meth-cooking part.)
I could begin by providing a few fun factoids about myself in the hope of generating some compatibility, but then I run the risk of a situation like, "Ohmigod! I also wear a size 7 in shoes, am a left-handed recovering hypochondriac, find fart jokes funny, and don't like preparing meat or touching newspapers! It's like we're the same person or something!" And, in fact, we are at this point because she's been actively stealing my identity for months, controlling my paltry bank accounts and managing my Mint.com budget unbeknownst to me, as I wrote off Mint.com as the devil incarnate months ago and haven't touched it since. It's now just a stagnant webpage containing all of my most sensitive financial information, neatly compartmentalized and waiting [/asking] to be stolen, which I believe was the whole purpose of the website in the first place.
"Quit flattering yourself with these delusions,Kristin,*" is what you're saying to me right now.
*You are now one step closer to successfully hacking into my Mint.com account.
And I say to you, "Oh, I am flattering myself with exactly these delusions." Look, Ipaid money to sit in the theater and watched "The Roommate," so I know how quickly these things can escalate. It's all fun and games until you stumble upon a sketchpad filled with 73 charcoal renditions of your face from different angles--"Are these of me sleeping???" (...met with silence because, at that very moment, he/she is behind you wielding a knife aimed directly at your jugular. "Not my new Wüsthof! I just got that on sale at Crate & Barrel.")
In the end, I trust it will all work out, and I always welcome the opportunity to meet new people....or to be sketched. ("How about now? Does it look like I'm really sleeping???") If nothing else, it will give me more to blog about passive aggressively. "Ummm, whoever keeps dipping their knife into my peanut butter jar after they've already dipped it in the Nutella jar had just better stop!"
NOTE: You will NEVER see me write this, as peanut butter and Nutella are a delicious union of spreads.
P.S. NOTE: Kudos to you if you got this post's title reference. For your impressive knowledge of terrible '90s movies, I reward you with this:
I'm certain my failure to search for a roommate is a mixture of one part dread, three parts laziness, and one part held-out hope that my quarter will finally unearth a $10,000 prize on one of those dollar scratch-off lotto tickets, in which case I would be able to afford to live alone. (Yes, I am indeed living proof that it's not just retirees whose McDonald's menu item-of-choice is the filet of fish sandwich who "invest" in those lotto tickets.) "You look like a deadbeat mother," a dear friend once commented as I walked out of a 7-Eleven carrying a gallon of milk, a fistful of lotto tickets, a pint of ice cream, and the latest TV Guide. (I didn't actually have a TV Guide in hand, but I feel that this is the only way it could have been a fair judgment.)
When considering my Craigslist ad, I am uncertain of the approach I should use. Part of me wants to start the screening process early, do a little weeding out before the face-to-face meetings. I could ask some simple multiple choice questions like this:
1) Clorox, Windex, aluminum foil, Drain-O, ammonia. Combined, what do these things make?
A) a clean apartment!
B) crystal meth
C) Yo no hablo ingles.
(He/she would still be awarded partial credit for answering "C"--in my pursuit of becoming bilingual--but would still need to check out on the meth-cooking part.)
I could begin by providing a few fun factoids about myself in the hope of generating some compatibility, but then I run the risk of a situation like, "Ohmigod! I also wear a size 7 in shoes, am a left-handed recovering hypochondriac, find fart jokes funny, and don't like preparing meat or touching newspapers! It's like we're the same person or something!" And, in fact, we are at this point because she's been actively stealing my identity for months, controlling my paltry bank accounts and managing my Mint.com budget unbeknownst to me, as I wrote off Mint.com as the devil incarnate months ago and haven't touched it since. It's now just a stagnant webpage containing all of my most sensitive financial information, neatly compartmentalized and waiting [/asking] to be stolen, which I believe was the whole purpose of the website in the first place.
"Quit flattering yourself with these delusions,
*You are now one step closer to successfully hacking into my Mint.com account.
And I say to you, "Oh, I am flattering myself with exactly these delusions." Look, I
In the end, I trust it will all work out, and I always welcome the opportunity to meet new people....or to be sketched. ("How about now? Does it look like I'm really sleeping???") If nothing else, it will give me more to blog about passive aggressively. "Ummm, whoever keeps dipping their knife into my peanut butter jar after they've already dipped it in the Nutella jar had just better stop!"
NOTE: You will NEVER see me write this, as peanut butter and Nutella are a delicious union of spreads.
P.S. NOTE: Kudos to you if you got this post's title reference. For your impressive knowledge of terrible '90s movies, I reward you with this:
be still, i'm trying to draw you working at your desk.... via webcam
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