ok, yeah, I'm done...
Since arriving back in Chicago in January, I have been subletting a furnished room from a friend. It was easier than trying to get all of my things out of storage and set up in the very moment I began teaching. I share the apartment with two other women. The apartment has also contained furniture and sundries--notably two cats--belonging to other former occupants who left the country for their fieldwork. The household generally stays relatively intact, though there is a constant question of what belongs to whom and when it might disappear for some reason. We had, for example, a general shuffle when one former occupant returned from the field to claim a good deal of the living room furniture, some kitchen items, and the cats. One current housemate, who researches food and has a well-equipped kitchen, then moved her own kitchen things out of storage and into the kitchen and moved her boyfriend's furniture into the living room. The other current housemate doesn't really cook or bake (and who can be a little lax on the cleaning front).
Now, I have been living in other people's households and sharing accommodations in one sense or another since... August 2006. I haven't seen my own furniture in so long I have forgotten that it exists, let alone what it looks like. I've been relatively comfortable with this.
But perhaps it's the conversation I had with one colleague about her commitment to living alone, struggle as she may with her finances. Or the conversation with another colleague concerned of late with stocking her pantry and sorting her wedding china into a recently-acquired china cabinet. Either way, when I went into the kitchen this morning to assemble some home-made huevos rancheros---the perfect breakfast for the rather-too-late night and the rather-too-early morning---the fact that I could not, search as I might, locate a goddamn manual can-opener to open a can of refried beans put me into a rage. That's it. I'm done. Come November, when I find myself another living situation, I am done with communal living. No more. I will live by myself, I will perhaps live with a partner, but I will have done with this hodge-podge, mishmash, patchwork style of household. Done, I say.
1 comment:
ah yes, I recognise that rage. In fact I had a remarkably similar tizz over a can opener this afternoon. I'm living in someone else's (super-fancy, ikeaed-out, but still lacking in heating) apartment at the mo, which is rather depressing after living solo with my own furniture, quirks and cutlery for the last year. Today it took me half an hour of turning the kitchen upside down to find/recognise the can opener, which then turned out to be one of those weird contraptions that's basically a few odd shaped blades arranged to maximise the chance of you slicing your fingers off without actually doing anything useful to the can in question. Bloody tuna - not very appetising. To buy a new can opener or not? that is the question. Whether it is worth the time and effort of building up yet another set of kitchen and household equipment in yet another country (so far I have three complete sets of queen sized bedding in storage in three different continents), or suffer the cuts and bruises of other people's pairing knives? Its a tough one. In your shoes, I'd have have cracked open the storage unit months ago. But then I'm the kind of person who keeps buying queen sized duvets.
Post a Comment