CHRISTMAS AND THINGS

I haven't really given you an update about Christmas, by the way. Things were good and bad.

Firstly, I went to that dinner party with Laurence. We had a *fabulous* time. He has great friends, and we hit it off really well, and I have promised to have some kind of a party down at Gipsy Hill sometime in the near future and invite them all over.

I brought Laurence cookies, and he asked if we could bring them along to the party, so we did. Then he spent the entire time trying to eat them without anyone notice. I guess he didn't realize that I'd probably make *good* cookies.

One of his friends has a psychotic downstairs neighbor (the one who was hosting the party, actually) and so we swapped freakish living situation stories. And it turns out that when I've had a glass and a half of champagne, I start speaking with a British accent. It's not an intentional thing, it's just like...well, if I order a sandwich with tomatoes over here, if I say to-may-to, at least 50% of the time I have to repeat myself and eventually end up saying to-mah-to because they know what I'm talking about. It's sort of polite or something. So I'm in the habit of substituting words here and there to make my speech more understandable, but add alcohol to the mix, and I'm just doing it indiscriminately. I'm conversing with someone about something that happened in their "baaahth", and the next thing you know, I'm saying "baaahth" right along with them. I noticed it three or four times after the fact. I have no idea if they thought I was a freak or what.

At one point in the evening, we were talking about how little kids can't tell a joke. You know how that is--their jokes always go something like this: "There's this guy, and he has a train. And he says, no, no, the schedule--wait, I forgot, there's also this man, and he's got a parrot. And he's, no, wait, the parrot is blue. And then the guy with the train--no, wait, I mean, he used to have a car, but he wants to trade it for a train, so he goes to see the guy with a monkey--oh, wait, I forgot, there's also a monkey...."

So after talking about this, we got on the topic of the recent appearance of Eddie Izzard (who I love) on Jonathan Ross's Friday evening talk show. And I was trying to tell them about this line that Jonathan Ross had said in his opening dialogue, which went something like this: "Well, it's Christmas, the time of year when you fight over what to put on top of the Christmas tree. It's basically the same as trying to figure out whether to watch me or Graham Norton [a rival, gay, talk show host] on Friday night--you either go with the fairy or the star."

So I'm trying to tell this joke, and I end up saying, "So, like, you either go with the fag or the--wait, I mean, the angel--no, wait, I mean, er...."

This would fit under the "I am never drinking again" heading.

Anyway, the party was great fun. I ended up calling Laurence a day or two later and telling him that I'd like to meet up with him and give him more cookies, since he'd had to share the last batch. It turned out that he was just about to call me, to ask if I'd bake him more cookies if he bought the ingredients, because he was going to visit some in-law types for Christmas and wanted to bring them something. So we got together, wrapped presents, ate pizza, watched DVDs, and basically had a really wonderful evening. I adore him.

Then Christmas Eve came, and by now PMS had gone into overdrive. I met up with Matthew and dropped off his presents. He gave me a couple of presents as well, which were really, really nice. I hadn't expected him to get me anything, and I was really surprised. They were sweet and thoughtful.

By Christmas Day, I was a sobbing wreck. I am horrified now, looking back on it. I called up Matthew, and ended up arguing with him, and it was ENTIRELY MY FAULT. I'm serious, it was entirely my fault. Yes, yes, I know, he's done crappy things a lot. Whatever. This was bad of me.

The day after Christmas, I was back to normal again.

Here's too much information for you: oral contraceptives really balance things out hormonally. When I'm taking them, PMS all but disappears. But I stopped taking them quite some time back, because I can't afford to take them.

Oh, well. On the bright side, I probably wouldn't have snapped at my roommate otherwise, and honestly, I think it was the right move. I think he'll stop hitting on me now.

He'd better.

The other bright side is that in this country, you don't have to worry about important holidays like Christmas interfering with your full day of Nazi History Programing on television! No, it would take more than Christmas to get rid of grainy black-and-white films of bombers and speeches filling the airwaves!

ROOMMATE INSANITY

I have decided that having roommates just makes one insane, regardless. Under normal circumstances, keeping a secret stash of toilet tissue in your room would not seem, well, normal. However, since Peter keeps finding reasons not to buy toilet tissue himself, I have decided to stop using the stuff in the bathroom, and if he runs out on his own, I don't see how this will concern me.

I have finally had a major argument with him. I guess I should outline a few of the things he's done.

I think I've mentioned the thing about the bathtub. He fills it sometime prior to 9 am on the weekends, and then doesn't get into it until almost noon, which means that I'm waiting around unable to get ready myself. He'll apologize every half-hour or so, which is meaningless if you don't actually get the heck into the tub. Finally, about two weekends ago, I asked him not to fill the tub more than 30 minutes prior to getting into it.

I don't think I've really mentioned the noise. Every night, he stays downstairs until after midnight, listening to the television full-volume, or playing the Hammond organ without headphones. Then, sometime after midnight, he walks upstairs, where his bedroom is next to both mine and the neighbors', and he turns on his radio/CD player, at a sort of normal (ie not quiet) volume. He then has three loud alarms go off in intervals between 6:45 and 7:00 am. As I mentioned, on the days of my job interviews, I ended up getting less than 5 hours of sleep each night because of this, and went to my interviews with dark circles under my eyes.

Mind you, this is the guy who has asked me to use headphones if I'm going to watch television after he goes to bed, and complained about me going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

I haven't said anything to him, for a number of reasons. For one thing, I definitely see this living arrangement as something temporary. I want to find a job, and then get the heck out of Dodge. Until then, well, the guy doesn't steal stuff or anything like that.

Things had gotten much worse with him and the whole touchy-feely thing. He makes a *lot* of innuendoes, which I just put down to general Britishness and ignore. But he's started pausing when he walks past me, resting his hand on my lower back, and saying things like, "It's like having a wife." THIS CREEPS ME OUT. Obviously.

Last time I was here, there was this night when we went to a pub together, and he'd had a little alcohol, and when we got back to the house, he tried to kiss me. Ever since then, I've maintained a strict distance and tried not to be too friendly or do anything that so much as hints at intimacy. So I don't leave my bedroom until I am fully dressed and bathed--that's why I wait for him to get out of the bathroom. It seems too intimate if I make it seem like "we" have a bathroom routine in the morning. When he gets out of the bathroom, I go in quietly, then quietly go back to my bedroom, and he never sees me unless I am in full armor.

I don't hang around with him in the living room or anything like that. When I am home, I will go into the kitchen long enough to make my meals, which I carry up to my bedroom and eat when he isn't looking.

So what he's started doing is doing all of this stuff while I'm cooking. I'll be at the sink, rinsing something, and the next thing I know, he's standing behind me and putting his hand on my back. I stiffen and try to step away.

My original plan was to make Christmas cookies for everyone, including him. I couldn't really afford gifts for anyone, and this seemed like a good solution. But every time I was baking and he was in the room, he started in with the touching and intimate stuff, and so I decided the smartest move would be to not give him a Christmas present at all. And I don't really contribute a lot to the household chores, because that seems too much like "domestic bliss." Maybe that makes me a crappy roommate, but it doesn't make me as crappy a roommate as touching someone who has clearly made her disinterest known.

I don't feel guilty about not helping with the chores. I really hope he feels like I'm a crappy roommate and gets a bit irritated with me. That would stop the touching, I'm sure.

Mind you, when I say that I don't help with the chores, I mean I just don't take out the garbage or mop the floors. I do all of my own dishes, I don't leave things out. My toiletries have a place in a basket on a shelf, and they are there whenever I am not actually in the tub. I clean the bathtub before and after I use it. I just don't mop, rake the yard, or vacuum the living room I don't use.

So all of this stuff has just put me in a basically cranky mood. Then, I started having raging PMS a few days before Christmas, and it lasted until the evening of Christmas Day. My tolerance goes waaaay down.

So, Saturday night, the neighbors a couple of doors down had a Christmas party. They are generally completely silent--this is a once-yearly thing. They stayed up until 2 am, playing music pretty loudly.

My reaction: It's once a year, it's Christmas, and it's a Saturday night. You can't really get much more considerate than that. Everyone is allowed to have a loud party once a year--that's totally reasonable. And if it's a Saturday night, that indicates that they're being considerate enough not to have it during the week. Bully for them. I hope they have a great time. And, you know, next time I do something stupid, they'll probably be considerate.

Peter's reaction: get up in the morning and do nothing but complain to everyone you can find. I saw him for a few minutes the next morning, and he said he was going to leave at 2 pm. I was relieved, thinking, good, the house to myself for five glorious days, and all I have to do is wait until after 2 pm.

So I stayed out until 4-ish, and then got home. He was still there. In my PMS-addled brain, this was almost inexcusable. He had *lied* to me! He had *promised* he'd be gone at 2! To be honest, when I had left in the morning, he made these little motions like he wanted to give me a "goodbye" hug and kiss (ended up blowing me a kiss) and I'd sort of managed to dance out of the way. I wondered if he would stick around deliberately to try something later. So when he was still there, I thought, crap, I'm going to have to go through that again.

I had purchased a couple of things that needed to go in the kitchen, where he was, so I couldn't just go directly upstairs. When I got into the kitchen, he started going on and on about the neighbors again. My patience was gone. I said, "Look, Peter. It's Christmas. They have *one* party a year. Leave it alone." He continued to go on and on, saying that it was completely inconsiderate, and he had gone to one of the other neighbors to complain, and they'd agreed. I said, "Peter, you are the most selfish person I've ever met. It's bloody Christmas, it's once a year, everyone has a right to have one party a year. It's not all about you." His voice went up about an octave, and he started protesting in a half-hysterical voice.

Eventually, I said to him in a very authoritarian type of voice, "Look, if you want to complain about the neighbors having ONE party a year, then I EXPECT you in the future to wear your headphones if you play your organ after midnight, and furthermore, I expect you to make an effort to be quiet in the mornings from now on."

He said, "FINE," and that's the last time I saw him, as he left for five days.

So he's getting back sometime today. I'm going out with friends, and don't know when I'll see him. We'll see how things go.

I guess my sisters left me a message on his answering machine, incidentally, and he listened to it remotely and then deleted it without telling me. I can see why he would get upset about other people being inconsiderate.