Roommate Trouble

It is time to shift house. For a long time, I've been struggling with living in this little 3-bedroom house with (usually) four other people. THB's Girl Friday is here most nights, and so is his best friend, and with our other Official Roommate, that makes five people in a 1200 square-foot house. With no closets (the closet thing really chafes me. Argh). It doesn't help my frustration that the other people living/staying here are younger than myself and therefore have different expectations than I do in roommates and living conditions.

That is not to say that I'm always cleaning the house. Just so we're clear; I like to operate in what is known as organized chaos, and it's sometimes difficult to explain why a pile of papers is in that particular spot on the floor (and has been for... awhile). And sometimes it's because I'm just lazy about going through papers, to be honest. Just because *I* know where something is in relation to the rest of my stuff doesn't mean that it looks tidy - often quite the opposite. But I try to keep my mess in my own room for the most part; other people live here after all. And my roommates do the same, for the most part.

But there is something rotten brewing in Denmark, my dears, and it hit the fan on Tuesday, spattering festered anger and passive-aggressive behavior all. up. in. heah.

For several months, or since I moved here, I've been pushing for us to suck it up and hire a housekeeping service. We're all busy and dislike cleaning, but THB and I have a higher dirt threshold than Other Roommate, so she ends up cleaning more than we do. She has, however, not brought up any frustration with this, and I've asked her several times if she feels frustrated by it. Without fail, she says no, that she likes cleaning and she's doing it to relax. Now, I am lazy and also dislike having to ferret truth out of people, so I've taken her at face value. So, the maid service idea has been pooh-poohed and nothing has changed. I brought this up again last week sometime, and they laughed me out of the room again. Then on Tuesday, the house was inundated by ants - they were fucking everywhere, and it was disgusting. We all pitched in to clean up, but there was a little sing-song in the back of my mind saying that if we'd hired a maid service, this wouldn't have happened (this may or may not have been true. Ants come inside when it rains, and it's been raining). I kept my mouth shut and started looking for 1-bedroom places on CraigsList that night instead of turning into a shrieking harpy.

Tonight, THB told me that he's been having a 2-day long email conversation with our Other Roommate, who told him he needs to step in as a landlord and not as a brother and fix this situation. She hasn't contacted me at all, not to ask to have a conversation, not to tell me I'm a crazy bitch, nothing. She also hasn't been home in 2 days. We are apparently in 4th grade and Not Speaking to one another, and I don't even know why. It's absurd.

I have an appointment to look at an apartment tomorrow. I really hope it's not shady so I can sign a lease on the spot. And I am beyond furious that this person has managed to make me uncomfortable in the house that I share with my brother.