Mudrucking and Gravel
This morning two of my roommates and I got up early to dig out some dirt and replace it with gravel. The third roommate who drives, and who had indicated he would help out, made a brief appearance in his Jeep before driving off. This does nothing to help the relations between him and I, which at this point are already strained. Adam, you see, is my next door neighbor. He gave me a good initial impression when he outlined a bathroom cleaning plan with me that sounded like a good idea. Well after I did my part, and then his part, I see no evidence that he even noticed. But thats OK — I’ve gotten fairly used to occasionally cleaning up the war-zone kitchen, which is a rather thankless job. But it was a mark against him.
Over the course of the nearly two months I have been here, however, my opinion of Adam has steadily declined, while my opinion of my other roommates has generally slightly improved, or at worst stayed the same. Other incidents included him asking whose box a certain box was. It was mine, and it wasin community space, so I decided it was appropriate for me to take it outside, which I promptly did. He then replaced the box with a bag full of his books, which has not moved in over a week. He seems to think that his Jeep is too good to park on mud, so rather than park out of everyone’s way (or help turn the mud into gravel), he has on several occasions parked me in. He has by far th largest amount of kitchen cabinet space dedicated to himself. Just a bunch of little things, none of them important in the lest, but all of them rubbing m the wrong way.
So when his muddy soccer shoes showed up on top of my open Spaghetti package, I threw a bit of a tantrum. I kicked his shoes under the cabinets, threw my gum at them, and (gasp) put a roll of empty paper towels in his spacious food cabinet, because there was no room for it in the trash (and I didn’t want it on the counter). Apparently this last part made him angry, which led to him discovering that I was the culprit. So, yesterday evening he showed up at my door and asked, “Ryan, why do you have to get passive agreesive on me?”
At that point, I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I’d nearly forgotten about the “noodle incident” and it would have been a thing of the past until he brought it back up. When he mentioned the paper towel thing, I remembered the whole thing, and he mentioned that I should just be stright with him, and that he was “easy to get along with.” So I agreed, told him where his shoes were, and thats the last I heard from him. Until this morning, at about 5:00am, when he and one or two guests woke me from my peaceful slumber. I’m a pretty hardcore sleeper, so that feat alone was pretty impressive. Taking into account our earlier agreement, instead of building up quiet rage, I knocked on his door and told him to keep it down. He (or someone in his room, at least) agreed. It was quiet for about two minutes. I considered, briefly, 150 Watts of Bass directly into his ajoining wall, but settled for ear plugs, which worked wonderfully.
However, bearing in mind our agreement, I’m going to let him know, the next time I see him, that I’ll expect quiet from his room, or at the very most, I will knock once and I won’t hear him again fo the rest of the night.
–UPDATE–
I just talked to him and he has agreed.