Hello. My name is Samantha, and I live with a boy now. I live with a boy. Holy shitballs.
It's weird, living with a boy. I told Josh that so he knows. He told me that both my sisters told him the same thing. We feel like living here is luxurious and freeing and fabulous. Josh feels poor and cramped now.
We do everything differently. Everything. After dinner we went food shopping and 10 minutes in Josh said to me, "Wait, you mean you really shop like all the articles tell you to? I didn't know anyone actually did that, where they only shop the perimeter of the store." He gets cereal that has prizes in the box.
We stopped at the candle display to smell the candles. Danielle likes these fancy expensive Pacifica candles that she thinks smell good. We never buy them because they cost so much. Josh told me to get two. I said no, that they're expensive and we don't need them. So he asked Danielle how long she's liked them. "Like three or four years." Then Josh tried to tell me if someone wants something for that long, it becomes a need and not just a want. So I showed him how if we bought just two that would be more than half of our food budget for the week. Josh rolled his eyes and said he was buying some anyway. Obviously Danielle loves Josh now.
After dinner tonight Josh put all the dirty dishes on the kitchen counter and walked away. Alex and I started cleaning up and then I took the garbage out. Josh asked Alex what I was doing. "We always throw out the garbage after dinner," she told him. He asked why. Alex tried to explain. "Because that's when it gets done. That's just what you do." Later Alex asked why Josh didn't help us clean up. I think it's because he's used to someone else always doing it for him. When we stayed with Tom and Laurie we barely did any cleaning at all.
My sisters found non-flowered bedding that I like a lot and Josh deemed "not too girly." When I came back from work and opened the bedroom closet I found the inside door plastered with pictures of Audrina Patridge. I wonder if that's payback for the blanket having pink and purple in it, even though Laurie got green and blue sheets to go with it.
Josh is not all the way unpacked yet. He has piles of things next to stacks of boxes in the bedroom and living room. He keeps asking how we unpacked our stuff so fast. I stayed up last night until almost 3 am taking out all my mom's and nana's things. Josh went to a party. Danielle said when she got home at almost 2pm from the bagel store he was just waking up. Clearly to say we have very different lifestyles is like beyond an understatement.
Tomorrow Alex is going with Danielle to mother's help Craig's baby. I'm really glad we found somewhere to put her. Especially since I am working a ton this week to make up for all the time I've taken off the last couple of weeks between the camp recital, apartment shopping and moving. I almost cried at seeing my last few checks.
2 comments:
Oh snap, you're going to have to come up with a chore list quick. You and your sisters know what to do, but you're going to have to put Josh in charge of very specific chores to be completed by very specific times. Otherwise you are going to be very irritated very fast. He's also completely wrong on that whole "needs" thing. Obviously he doesn't know the Maslow triangle. I've wanted an ipod now for 5 years but it will never be a need!
Actually, I think Josh's description of something becoming a need is very insightful and not wrong at all, even if it doesn't match certain definitions or mean that you therefore spend food money on it.
Please remember that while Josh does have to learn to live with the fact that you are poor, he does not have to be poor. You can expect him to understand your limitations, you can teach him frugality and common sense, but there's no reason to force him to live as if he himself is poor when he has money.
Josh hasn't moved into your home, but rather you have moved into a home together. He knows less about running a household than you do, so while there will be questions from him about how to do things in general and why, you should decide on the rules together.
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