Curiouser and Curiouser

The woman I live with is a piece of work.

When I decided to live with her, people said "Chrystina, if there's anyone who can live with someone so different, it's you." Which I took with a fairly large grain of salt because I knew I was getting myself into some crazy shit. As it turns out, Lady X has managed to find someone perhaps even better suited to it than I am to live with her. When I told Lady X that I was leaving, she found my replacement in a day and he moved in the next day (to the guest room). Luckily, we get along and we'll now be singing together in a choir. More on that later...

Here are some clips from my life in the last two months:

• She's lived here for over 30 years--and you can tell. I don't know how many roommates she's had, but I've heard of at least 10 of them. However, the doormen tell me that no one really lives here for more than 3-4 months. I'm not setting any records with 2 months. She apparently kicked a guy out after a month because he opened the door and he was stark naked.
  

• She smoked for 40 years--up to as many as 5 packs a day. And the yellow ceiling in the kitchen can attest to that.

• I know you're wondering if there are any cats involved. I can thankfully tell you no on that one. However, if there had been a cat, that might have been the straw that broke this camel's back before I got into it. Oh well. Live and learn. Write blog posts.

• She likes to teach Asians. The reasons she lists are: They worship the ground the teacher walks on. They work themselves to the bone. And I think they "like me because I'm short". (So.... smart, hard working people like short teachers. Right.)

• She's constantly dropping the names of people who were famous in her world, but are entirely unknown to me. The only one I've ever recognized from her stories of her fancy friends is Aaron Copland--and he was admittedly just an acquaintance.

• She gets psychotically angry and sullen when I don't put my keys in the tray by the door.

• Once, when I mentioned something about if I change my Boston cell phone number, she corrected me with "when". I then made the mistake of explaining that I might not change it and she went ballistic telling me that I was "cutting off half the world" by not changing it.
  

• One time, I was walking in the door and I said hello, mentioned something about the paper she was reading, and then my phone rang. Since it was the girl who I am now going to live with and I didn't want to miss it, I excused myself and took the call in the other room. Then, graciously, I went back to talk to Lady X. By that point she was enraged that I had ignored her to take a call. I let her know that the call was important and I didn't mean to be so rude. She was not convinced and acted like I was the world's biggest bitch for taking a phone call. She topped it off with "so she's more important than me?"
  

• She refuses to call my new neighborhood anything other than in the Lower East Side when it's squarely in the East Village because she thinks I'll take it as an insult. She also constantly reminds me how very far away it is from the subway--it's 0.25 mi from the subway, which is .05 mi longer than her walk to the express stop.

• Lately, she's been clearing out her summer wardrobe to make room for the next season. With that task, she's decided to give away several shirts and other clothes. Since, strangely, we wear approximately the same shirt size, she's given me several of them. I knew better than to just say no, but as it turns out, I actually like them, and she loves it when I wear them. They're funny, but I kind of like funny.
  

• She (even though she was mad about the keys and such) just came over to offer me a box for the move.
  

And then she's nice. It's just so weird. She really is a nice person, but I don't think she's been treated very nicely all her life. She's a little out there and definitely had eccentric parents, so who knows which is the chicken or the egg, but she's more than I can handle and I'm glad to be out of it as of next Monday.