How to tell you're living with a psycho

If anyone else is unlucky enough to be in the same situation as me, all I can wish you is the very best of luck. Here are a few of the pointers I will try and stick to when meeting and living with the newbie...

1. If you have to look for them online- google them. A facebook or bebo page will tell you much more than a 10 minute chat. All those skeletons in the closet will hopefully come out. You'll see if they are secretly a cross dresser and more importantly, make the all important first impression. If they look weird, chances are they will be. As humans, we tend to be attracted to, and friends with people we like the look of, so a FB pic that gives you the willies is probably enough of a warning.
   
2. When they come round for a viewing, get as much info from them as possible. What they do, why they are looking for a room, and if they are still friends with the people they last shared with.
3. The job thing for me is something thats a dead giveaway- HM has had about 25 jobs (no joke). She would start something and not stick at it. The time she lived with us, she had 4 jobs. It may be the snob in me, but I'd like my HM to have a career path and not just for the financial aspect. Someone who slobs about and doesn't want to work will piss me off.
   
4. If you've found someone you like the look of, and they are moving in go out for a drink before any contracts are signed. Once you get chatting over a glass of wine they may divulge some info that they may have withheld without the social lubricant of booze. You don't want to hear that they are gonna throw weekly parties if you're a couch potato who lives for X-Factor on a saturday night.
5. Find out if they spend a lot of time in their room. My last evil HM seemed to only use her room for sleeping. All the TV watching was done in the living room, despite the 32" telly in her room. I had been lured into a false sense of security- I found her in the living room all day and most of the night.
6. Beware of someone trying to impress you. When we met evil one, I remember her saying that she had a Wii and Wii Fit (at this stage it was still in vay high demand) and she thought it would impress us (her actual words). You want a HM you think you will have mutual appreciation and respect for, not an ass licker (unless thats your thing).
7. When you're getting contracts drawn up, discuss everything. Bills, who does the cooking, shopping and washing up, any cleaning rotas you might have and definitely have a 3 month trial period. Agree to sit down a few weeks before the 3 month period to see if you are both happy to carry on with the lease. You don't need to give reasons for the 'split' but you chances are, if you aren't happy, neither will they be.
8. Discuss partners. HM is now with a friend of mine (which i'd find weird even if I liked her- the fact that I don't means i've now lost a good drinking buddy) who I introduced her to. He never moved into our house or anything, and I rarely saw him but this was only because of me telling her i'd better not hear them or anything about their relationship. If you don't want to hear the headboard banging against the wall, tell them prono.
9. Once they're in, be wary of what you share. Within 3 weeks, I knew more about her lady bits than a gyno might after 3 appointments. I also knew about her relationship with her ex and she told me on a regular basis about my brothers sex life.
   

Today is the day.

Well today SHOULD be the last day of dirty, lazy bastards rent but she left early! The joy I experienced when I walked through the door to see her rent and a key was unreal. It was like a dream come true. She has been slowly moving into Adam's house (more fool him) and is now his for the keeping, as i'm sure he will learn soon enough! My joy was short lived though- I soon realised that the fucking tramp hadn't actually moved out and taken everything with her. I was left with 2 cupboards with food in them that I had to sort through. To make it even more gross, I was looking at dates on things and found that some of it was BBE in 2005. She'd brought gross food to our house from her last hovel and abandoned it. Then there is the vase (whoever bought her flowers must have been taking the piss and i've seen nothing in it in the last year), the foot spa (gross doesn't even cut it), the plates and cups (i'm gonna go greek and smash the fuckers) and the pills. I twittered a picture of them. It was like Georges Marvellous Medcine in that cupboard, pills for every ailment and plenty of empty packets.

So now to find a new housemate...lets hope they are better than the last.

41 Days to go...

So I came home from a lovely holiday to find that not much had changed in my absence. Well changed for the better. House absolutely reeked, the whole way through of stale food, there was rubbish everywhere, floor looks like someone has pooped on it in places, the bathroom had a coating of scum so bad that I couldn't pee, so after being awake for 24hrs and flying about 4000miles I cleaned before I could pee and sleep.

When I had it out with Paul about the mess, he did say that it was all dirty rotten housemate, so I wrote her a note saying sort it out, have some respect or leave. But Paul got scared. See, she owes us money, few month's rent, and money for utilities etc, so he took my note down, saying it was bullying her and I couldn't do that beacuse even if we have a gurantor form signed etc, she would be able to fight it. I don't know if he's right or not (but in the rare case that he is) I've rephrased the note. And here it is:

Caroline, you still owe rent and are therefore in breech of your contract. As well as this, please start to tidy after yourself before you head to adam's. Note saucepan and steamer.
I came home from holiday and smell from house could have killed. Ps I'm not anal, like Monica, I just don't fancy e.coli or salmonella.
Please move the things from the landing. If there is a fire (caused by smoking inside perhaps?) we will die. Also, move your laundry. It should be dry by now.
This is my house too and it is an embarrassment. Have some respect for the house and your landlady. Wether you spend every night of the week here or not is irrelevant-if you're going away for a while, take your food out of the fridge if it will go bad by the time you're back and while you are here, if you use bathroom, it means you contribute to the mess so it is only fair that you clean it. Same for stairs. And kitchen. Ps you owe Paul £176.10.

Non payment and we will have to go to gurantor.

tearing my hair out...

This blog is very much somewhere that I rant to and times like this, i'm extremely grafteful for it! Today was the first day in a few weeks where I had nothing urgent to do and I could catch up on the episodes of ER i've missed and I also gave in and decided I couldn't stand seeing how filthy the bathroom is. People think i'm mad, that I can let it get to the state it gets to (where your friends come over and fall over clothes etc.) but it's a case of ignoring it until it simply can't be ignored any longer. I contribute 1/3 of the mess and dirt in there, and I accept that. I also accept that my brother doesn't exactly pull his fair share of the housework (kitchen, ok. Stairs being hoovered, it's my domain) but then again, i've been cleaning up after him since I was able to understand my mum when she told me to put something of his away, so i'm more than used to it. I guess i'm also a little sexist. I think that a girl would/should be cleaner, and see when something needs a good scrub where the typical man can just ignore it.

So today, i scrubbed that bathroom until it was clean. Took out so much rubbish and threw all the dirty clothes into the hallway. I've never understood how people can leave their clothes in the bathroom after a shower, but what baffles me more than this is that the HM seems to remove underwear and take it to her room, but socks, jumpers, shoes etc all stay there. Now, i'm not certain that the underwear does get moved, and it's going to be like UFO's- never completely confirmed or denied (i'm not rooting around in her clothes) but it seems like it does. So if you move knickers, how hard can it be to move the whole lot?

I also left a note today on our message board saying "Paul and Caroline, Stop leaving clothes in the bathroom AND it's not fairies who clean it...it's fucking driving me mad. I'm not your mother, do some housework". So coming home from a night out to find a rather delightful picture of a fairy on the notice board, along with "it is fairies who clean it", i think this rant is justified. Fair enough, a bit of a reaction is good, i've clearly riled her (although she says it was the BF) but is there any need to be so damn rude when i've had to move your disgusting razor and veet to clean under them?

Another breakthrough this week- "The Cull". We had been talking about it for a while, and eventually set the plan in motion this week. Before making any preconceptions about me, i'm not utterly crazy, i've been driven to this...
I bought chain, and a lock and have taken all the dishes, except 4 of everything (plates, cups etc) and locked the rest in a cupboard. Seriously though, it's the first time i've seen the kitchen remain tidy since the gap between gary moving out and current HM in and I love it. I love being able to get up in the morning and not have to find a space to put a plate, no more balancing things on top of the cooker and no fear of finding a mouldy cup hidden behind something. HM doesn't agree thought. Despite having discussed it with Paul (I know for sure since she mentioned only having one spoon in her old house), HM has taken a strop and finds my idea hilarious. I don't even care that she's laughing at me because i'd rather that than live in filth any longer.

It's also gone beyond the point where she thinks i'm a bitch because I just don't care about her opinion. I simply cannot fathom that one person can have so little regard for her surroundings, or have such low aspirations. Working a few hours a day with no desire to get some other qualifications or another 'proper' job just puts me in awe. I'd like to think I (and most other people) have a rough plan of where we'd like our lives to be in 10 years time. I imagine she's still planning on doing things and never following through. I actually can't believe I thought we could be friends. Paul thinks she's afraid of me, and to be honest, if I were her, i would be too. I have no respect for her, because she has none for me or herself. She hides behind the BF and saying he drew the fairy shows this- she's not prepared to take responsibility for whatever part she had to play in it. Instead of saying 'i think your idea sucks' she laughs at me with him. So as childish as it may seem to lock away the cups, being so sneaky and unconfrontational is even more of a cop out.

It's been a while...

It's been a few weeks since my last post, basically because we are convinced the housemate in question has discovered this blog, not because she's cleaned her flithy ways.
Last night, i went out after work and came home to what could be the straw (or potato) that broke the camel's (or my) back. She had been to the shop and bought a fairly big bag of potatoes and proceeded to boil them (from what I can tell, with skins) mash them with my butter (freshly bought since all the other butters have been left sitting out for days) and throw in a tin of tuna. Now, i'm no tuna fan, and to my horror the house now smells of tuna, because after cooking this horrific feast, she left some on a plate and in the saucepan. So we've got caked on potato fairy will struggle to remove and the smell of tuna to contend with. Not cool.

And while i'm here, there is also the small matter of £660. Rent for 3 months which has yet to be paid. Is it normal that landlords have to ask for the rent, or is it common courtesy for the tennant to remember that the rent is due on the 1st of every month?

Also, milk. I think that the one pint carton of milk are made for single people who drink one cup of tea per day. The litre cartons are for the people who occasionally eat cereal. So in a 3 person household, where there is at least one large bowl of cereal per day, and approxamately 3 or 4 cups of tea each, the 2 litre carton is a bit of a necessity. Unfortunately, said lazy housemate, never buys these, instead choosing to bring the small crappy cartons home. This drives me round the bend. It actually kills me. I don't understand why she does it.

The walls in this house are also quite thin, and when next door had a party the first thought in all our minds was that she was upstairs with her fella makin boom boom noises. Gag. Not what you want to hear (or think you hear) right before you go to sleep. And an update on Toilet Roll-Gate. She's taken to hiding it. We can come in and there are no rolls, and magically a single (normally peach coloured(why not buy white)) roll appears.

So Cazbot, if you read this post, cough up the rent, clean the fucking dishes, wash the floor once in a while and since you use the bathroom too, i think it'd be nice if you cleaned it once in a while. And stop leaving your clothes on the floor. I tell Paul all the time and it's finally clicked with him, it's really not that difficult to take your dirty clothes up stairs and keep them in your room, not a communal space. The tumble dryer is in the garage, and the remote is normally in the kitchen or on the stairs so feel free to use it instead of drying everything on the smallest landing in the world. And ps, the landlady is more than entitled to do spot checks so hopefully she won't see anything too messy next time she's here.

Does anyone need any penicillin?

Dangerous because I am literally about to lose the plot but also because of the tea pot. I believe I mentioned it in an earlier post. It's been sitting with fruit tea in it for about 6 days and now there's also some mould in it. She also said she cleaned the fridge a few weeks ago, but then poured milk in the salad drawer and big beastie (for those who don't know, it's a horrific pre-mixed vod-bull drink. barf) under the salad drawer. So the milk had gone manky and her attempt to hide it using a fridge de-odouriser simply wasn't working. I also found some bacon in the fridge and the smell of it actually brought tears to my eyes and puke to the back of my throat.



And another thing bringing me to varminting- what we've appropriately named 'Thong Butt'. If we thought the falling down jeans were nasty...when ass crack is replaced with about 3inches (no joke) of thong it's beyond disturbing. You just shouldn't have to face that when you're watching the soaps having a cuppa! Tonight, she just hasn't bothered to come downstairs, so on the off chance that you've stumbled across the blog- either start cleaning the house and pulling your weight or get the hell out. Even taking your manky clothes out of the bathroom would help, or when you eat the toilet roll, throw the empty roll in the bin. Unfortunately, it's more likely that the trauma of having to go to 'work' and get up during the day has taken it's toll on her...

Back to work.

Well HFH (housemate from hell) was supposed to start back to work *cough* today, taking notes for the wee first years with dyslexia. When I rang her this afternoon at 3:30, she was still in her frigging bed. How does that work? Lazy cow.
This weekend has been a relaxing one, i didn't have much interaction with her (sigh of relief) but last night, it was her boyfriends birthday. Adam, who I had first, had been skiing for the last week and by all accounts was having an absolute ball! So on Friday night, Paul got to witness the cracks in the relationship appearing when she came downstairs and burst into tears because Adam was acting all weird. What do you expect, you gave the poor guy the willes. She was all loved up with her ex (who incidentally should be canonised for putting up with her) and then you announced you loved Adam. Of course that was going to send him running for the hills, the French Alps incidentally. But last night, she got all dressed up, did her hair, the works. When i say dressed up, i mean put her "Fuck Me Boots" and a jumper dress on instead of the manky jeans where her ass is hanging out so I thought they'd be going out for dinner or a drink. But instead he came in, laughed at me and my hangover, eat some sweets and then she dragged him upstairs. He was here quite a while, and although there was tension between them, I had to listen to them giggling so I didn't think anything was up. But, today, i got a text from Adam's housemate asking if they broke up. Apparently Paul and I aren't the only ones who think she's completely nuts, Adam and aforementioned housemate also see the crazyness!

Now that she's single again, hopefully she'll take the time and do some dishes. Its long overdue. And maybe in future, a belt and less pretend sickness will help you to find a guy and not scare him to death. It's girls like her who give the rest of us the 'crazy woman' label.