Why I should never live with other members of the species

It is my last night as a lodger, hooray!

Ok so my landlords weren't all that bad, they made me dinner tonight and have said no more about the tea spillage incident. I'm the clumisiest woman ever.

The whole lodging thing is a wierd setup. You essentially live out your days in your bedroom, afraid of creeping out too much in case you step over the invisible boundaries that cut you off of places to bump into your landlords. Even if you do recklessly bounce out of your room every now and then, you are guaranteed to see 'them', the residents of the house and exhange a few hellos and embarassed chuckles along the way. The most in depth conversation I've had with Mr Chan was about the assorted wildlife of the garden. I have this annoying habit of repetitavely saying 'Oh really??' in a high voice when I cannot find anything else to comment on in a lack lustre conversation.

Living with other people than your parents is a real eye opener, instead of showing up everyone else's flaws, you begin to realise what an anal, tetchy grumpster you are. Two years ago I moved into student house with an assortment of friends. These are people I don't even talk to anymore, I think the whole experience scarred us all. I fell out with my friend Lis because as a self confessed grumpster, her little ways got on my nerves. The cackle of a laugh, the gibbering alcohol stained nonsense that poured out her mouth. It wasn't long before bitchiness ensued. The squalid surroundings that became our home became outweighed by my own glowering anal cleaniness and resentment. I would be on my hands and knees scrubbing one of the boy's vomit off the carpet or scrubbing the brown tracks of the toilet bowl, muttering to myself like some mad housewife.

And then came little Miss Hump-a-lot, who really was a nice respectable girl, but her sexcapades at the reasonable hours of the day used to have me stamping and seething in my room. Not because I wasn't getting some, just that my lovely bitter nature was eeking out anyway it could.

So living with people other than your parents, it's not all shits and giggles and instead of coming away with a greater perspective and tolerance for your fellow bipeds, you think 'Holy crap, when did I become the passive agressive, bitter and sexually frustrated cleaning compulsive?

And a single pink elephant has cascaded off the conveyor belt!