Posts Tagged ‘New Years’

This week my parents went on vacation. My mom has wanted to see the Grand Canyon for as long as I can remember and this was the year she was finally going to do it. So on Christmas Eve, after promising not to burn the house down or de-kosher the kitchen, I kissed them both goodbye and off they went on a magical vacation to Sedona, Arizona.

While they had a relaxing vacation (Trapezing through airports, hiking up mountains, and riding jeeps with boys that fart-more on this later) I, too, had big plans for this week. Very big plans.
First and foremost, it was Christmas. And New Years. And as a Jew, these are obviously very momentous occasions for me. Dresses needed to be bought! Carrot Souffle’s needed to be baked! Hair cuts needed to be had!

These, however, were small challenges around one very big one.

See, R.J and I have been together for some three years now and as we creep into our twenties it’s become apparent that living together just may be a future possibility. That is, of course, pending either of us ever making more than medium wage.

This week was going to be our trial run. Go ahead and pipe down with the hysterical accusations of insanity. Believe me, I’ve heard it all before. Mostly from his mother. Mostly from his mother holding up a sponge in the hallway outside of his bathroom. Mostly while she makes grand proclamations about how men never change and how I better learn to love falling into the toilet in the dark because putting the seat down is just too difficult for a pre-med student.

Despite the dire warnings, R.J and I wanted to try this out. Could we really live together for more than few days without killing one another? Would my incessant use of the laundry machine keep him up at night? Would his intermittent snoring keep me up at night? Did he have secret habits he as hiding from me, that would only come out during a period of co-existence? Would he accidently discover how completely insane I am? (Later, he assured me that he already knew the frightening extent of my crazy.)

And after one week of living together what was the verdict?

We lived.

Together.

Peacefully.

In a disturbingly harmonious fashion.

The kind that would make his mother pout and ask, “Why doesn’t he put the lid down for me?”

I did learn some things about him that I didn’t know:

1.R.J is a walker. He loves to walk. Given the choice, that kid will walk just about anywhere. To the grocery store. To the gym. He walked Coco with me every day. This is both good and bad. Good, because he’ll encourage me to get off my lazy butt if I wanted a sugar cookie from the deli. Bad, because he’ll make me walk when I want a sugar cookie from the deli.

2. R.J can sleep through anything. Lights on? Fast asleep. T.V blaring? Completely out. Sudden spam message on my computer? Dead to the world.

3. He contributes. It was mostly the little things, helping me clean up after I cooked a meal. Packing away blankets and bringing them upstairs before I woke up. Taking Coco out when I was too tired.

I would say that there was really only one negative to living with R.J and that was his cell phone. His god damn, freaking, flipping cell phone. See, R.J’s job requires him to be up at 6 A.M and at work by 7 A.M. Being the kind of guy who could sleep through a tornado, he generally sets about six alarms on his phone.

6:00, 6:05, 6:15, 6:20, 6:25, 6:30.

So on Thursday and Saturday I woke up to these wonderful alarms. And you know what is just so convenient? After each alarm, all I really needed was about four minutes and fifty-eight seconds to fall back asleep. Five. Freaking. Times.

R.J of course wouldn’t get up until he was good and ready. And just let his phone ring…and ring..and ring.

So on Saturday night I told him to make sure his alarms were off since he had no work on Sunday.

“They’re off.” He promised me.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure!”

Sunday, 6:00.

“R.J!”

6:02

“R.J, turn the alarm off.”

6:10

“R.J!”

“Sorry, Babe! I’m turning it off now.”

6:15

“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”

And sadly, by 6:20 the remains of my former love and his former cell phone were now just specs of blood and microchip on my once immaculately vacuumed carpet.

Or maybe I just bitched for an hour and then we both went back to sleep.

Yeah, that first part was probably just a sleep-deprived hallucination.

All in all, living together harmoniously is possible.

So long as I’m in control of the alarm clock, nobody gets hurt.