Three’s company, but four’s a crowd is precisely what I discovered firsthand when I came back to Athens for New Year’s Eve festivities. Alex’s friend who graduated returned for a dose of OU and made my couch into his bed—sometimes Emily’s too when he pushed the two sofas together for an after-hours guest.
I think I was most annoyed that his belongings occupied my couch, the very couch I like to dump my stuff on. The friend is long since gone, after donating both a BlackBerry and a Mac charger to our apartment electronics department, but the reclaim of my couch space is the return of apartment-wide clutter.
It’s no longer the resolution-making time of year, but I thought I’d share two resolutions we refuse to keep so far in 2012.
Doing the Dishes
Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, marks the three-week anniversary of the last time all of our dishes were clean.
I wish I were joking.
As the plate pile becomes a tower and plastic cups balance precariously on the edge of a tilted bowl, we resist the urge to cleanse. And we’re playing a game of chicken. It’s anyone’s guess on who will break first. Let me familiarize you with the players so you can make a fair bet.
Alex really doesn’t have a responsibility to do the dishes or an interest in having them disinfected. He is king of napkins and paper towels, paper plates and plastic Solo cups.
However, my yellow-handled silverware set is missing several spoons and forks. They are nowhere to be found in either my or Emily’s room, so the only two plausible explanations are that there is a serial silverware snatcher or that our third roommate has them hostage.
Emily, though, is the person who busts out the Dirt Devil at fifteen-minute intervals to sweep crumbs off the couch cushions. Normally, I would peg her as the first to give in based on past compulsive urges to clean immediately. She once woke me up by running the monstrous vacuum.
Recently she’s changed.
“I just don’t care,” she says in a monotonous voice with a slouchy shrug.
And then there’s me. Let’s not forget whose competitive nature has envisioned this contest. I will win. I hate scrubbing plates more than Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope despises the library. Besides, I’m used to living in a room that appears littered with shrapnel after a laundry basket explosion.
Fighting the Fast Food
We are fast food fiends. If anyone cares, this is my half-hearted plea for an intervention because at this rate I think I’m going to be as round as the girl who turns into a blueberry in Willy Wonka’s factory, although not as blue.
I can’t completely wash off the greasy guilt, but I can rest a little easier knowing that we have our own refined preferences, proving our taste buds aren’t completely destroyed from delicious, oozing cheese.
Emily and I enjoy the combination of pepperoni and cheese on a variety of different crusts from many different delivery-able pizza places. We don’t discriminate. Plus, we have the empty pizza boxes to prove it. We’re saving them all for a rainy day or possibly for drinking games.
Of course we love D.P. Dough too. In combination with coupons and daily deals, we’ve figured out how to get away with two calzones and two cans of Cherry Coke for $6.95. With such savvy bargain finding, it’s hard not to dial and ask for delivery.
Alex has a more refined taste and doesn’t longingly stare at our hand-tossed pizza pie. (Although one wary eye at our pizza and breadsticks elicit a mother-protecting-baby sort of wild-eyed glare.) Instead, he brings home Wendy’s in a white paper bag.
Wings Over is his favorite. Those black, Styrofoam carryout boxes are the bane of my existence, if I may be dramatic for a moment. Not the boxes themselves, but the way the yellow handle pokes out.
I lied; the boxes themselves drive me crazy too. He does this weird thing where he tears off the lid of the box so he can reheat two meals instead of just the one. Pretty smart thinking, actually. I really hate the scattered half Styrofoam boxes, though. Alex’s indifference for kitchen clutter will be crucial for him to win this dirty dishes conflict. Fingers crossed it doesn’t escalate into a full-on war.
Feel free to comment on your fault resolutions and take a guess at who will fold first in the dishes standoff.