THE GREAT ROOMMATE DERBY

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Let me start off this entry by its conclusion. As of November 1, I’ll be bunking up with Carol, an energetic 47-year-old divorcee who knocks around her 4-bedroom house alone in a gated community in Oceanside. Her two teen kids mostly live with their dad in the house they were raised in, a few blocks away, and she moved into this house so they could be in quick walking distance whenever they wanted. They wander over a few nights a week, and then on the weekends, when for the most part I’ll be gone anyway.

She is a gregarious person facing living alone for the first time in a long time. Although I’m in very different circumstances, we share that feeling of being in a transition, but also in a time of personal discovery. I’m sure we’ll get along great. (Also she’s been working out like a fiend since her divorce so maybe she’ll kick my butt into shape.)

Living in a house ended up feeling like the right thing to do. There are families all over Carol’s block. It feels like the normal rhythm of life. I have gotten way too used to the presence of kids, and at least 20 feet separating you from your neighbor. All the apartments I visited seemed so impersonal and cramped.

At Carol’s, I get my own bathroom and I don’t have to park on the street. The benefits of these things are apparent but you’ll see why they looked especially good in a few paragraphs.

On my way to Carol, I met lots of interesting characters that I chose not to live with.

There was Priya, who’s writing her PhD dissertation in the psychology of attachment. This would have been good, I might have gotten some answers about my personality. Hers was the most expensive of the listings, and without any furniture. I am not too keen on having to rent a bed for what I hope will amount to a really brief time.

There was Matt, who lives with his wife and 5-year-old daughter, also in a big house. I started to get the feeling that many of these people bought homes above their means and now that adjustable interest rates have adjusted, they need some extra money. Matt’s going for his masters in physical therapy and his wife works in management at a hard disk company. Matt was very cool and was actually my second choice. But my bathroom was also the 5-year-old’s bathroom. There’s just something ookey about shaving in a shower you know will be graced by a 5-year-old who’s unrelated to you; I would have been obsessively scrubbing that puppy every single day. And, I could see myself waking her up constantly because my flight schedule on the weekends to and from Chicago is kind of brutal. They would come to hate my body hair and my odd hours.

Then, there were the people who made me wonder: do you really expect that someone will want to LIVE with you?

There was Sherri the realtor. I should have suspected something, when a realtor in one of the hottest markets in the country, is renting an apartment. At any rate, this woman was a major collector of flea market items. It was as if everything on eBay that lists for 99 cents, was in her apartment. She had everything from wall clocks to little tea sets, all meticulously displayed nearly everywhere, but never dusted. She had classic furniture such as the pink tweed La-Z-Boy with the doily on the back. Her listing said “beautifully decorated.” Hm. Anyway, she pounced on me immediately about my family’s plans to move to the area and our plans to purchase housing. I felt as if I would be subject to a Chinese water torture of talk about buying a home if I moved in with her. Not to mention we’d have to share a bathroom… which also had a curio display case in it!

There was Dee, whose listing said she was English, when what she really meant was, she speaks English. Dee is a perfume saleslady who works 2 other jobs and lives with her teenage son, Tez. Tez was dark and brooding, like a rap sheet in the making. I would be sleeping with my eyes open.

There was Susana, who is a divorcee living with her 9 year old daughter. Susana is an obsessive compulsive clean freak. She cleaned the whole 15 minutes I was there and washed her hands twice. There was nothing to clean. She worried me.

But the topper was Holly. I am going to devote a post purely to Holly in a minute.