Saturday, August 1, 2009

Share-Housing vs Parenting

Things I learned From Share-Housing That Prepared Me For Parenting

  • Nothing that has ever happened in a diaper is anywhere near as repulsive and disgusting as the stuff that accumulated in the sink at my first flat. Or my second. Or the third.
  • Food remains edible a lot longer than the manufacturers would like you to think.
  • Sleep is less important than most people believe.
  • The refrigerator will not clean itself.
  • Not everything that is green in the refrigerator is fit to eat.
  • Stocking toilet paper? Plan ahead. A long, long way ahead.
  • Potatoes abandoned in dark places for too long become...unacceptable. Ergo, they are not good playthings for children.
  • Screaming does not necessarily mean something bad is happening. It's all about the tone and pitch.
  • A pile of salt on a red wine spill will help remove the stain from a carpet. On the other hand, the goddam carpet is going to get stained sooner or later, so why bother? Polished hardwood floors and cheap throw-rugs rule!
  • It is entirely possible to play cricket in the hallway.
  • But it's best to use a foam rubber ball, and to make sure your girlfriend (wife) doesn't catch you doing it.
  • Never, ever assume the bedroom door is locked. Or the toilet door, for that matter.
  • Just because the toilet door is only half closed, there's no reason to assume the place is unoccupied.
  • Silence indicates grave danger, unless you are alone in the house.
  • You can disguise almost anything into edibility with enough cheese, tomato paste and pizza crust.
  • Always leave at least one adult person sober enough to answer a fire alarm.
  • Riding in large commercial driers is enormous fun. Putting other people in them is even more fun. Small children, therefore, cannot be trusted alone with the lesser version in your laundry.
  • Shouting louder than the other person is not a viable method of winning an argument.
  • Eating things that fell on the floor is a lot less fatal than your mother always said.
  • Hide the TV remote before someone else does. That way you'll be able to find it. That's the only way you'll be able to find it.
  • They won't go to bed of their own accord. Sooner or later, someone has to announce that the party is over.
  • And no: they will never, ever put away their toys by themselves.
  • Being the only grown-up sucks donkey balls. You really need somebody to share the job.

19 comments:

  1. Oh so true. However, with this point:
    >You can disguise almost anything into edibility >with enough cheese, tomato paste and pizza crust.

    I say some things need the big guns: Bacon.

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  2. Well, yes. Bacon will solve most culinary problems, and the ones it won't you can usually fix with chocolate.

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  3. Heh, I learnt the Potato part in my first sharehouse.

    Scotty left for a few weeks for surgery on his head. When he came back (A week early much to my dismay, as my other roommate was going on a cruise with his mum for a week and I had the place to myself) he went into the kitchen and showed me something surprisingly pungent.

    Black Sludge oozed across the cupboard floor underneath the sink from the skins of potatoes that inhabited the area.

    Chase and I had never entered the kitchen for those 4-5 weeks Scotty was gone.

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  4. Why choose? Something to do with the sheer horror of trying to raise children in a share-house, I suspect. One or the other, okay. Both... nahhhhh. I'd have to kill someone. Most likely myself.

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  5. PS: Sir Medway, my own potato tale involves a general effort to clean The Flat, and a two-hour search for the source of The Hideous Odour. It was finally located by my mate Mick, who was instantly overwhelmed by the stench from the plastic bag hidden behind the bottles of half-empty booze, and ran screaming to the bathroom to empty his guts.

    Potatoes: Not As Friendly As You'd Think.

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  6. I meant between bacon and chocolate. Go on, ask yourself what would Share-house Elvis do?

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  7. Ohhhh, yeah. I gettit. Whoa! Chocolate bacon fried sandwich!

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  8. Wow, that was great training for Dad-hood.

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  9. Being the only grown up ruled! When I was single there was all the fun stuff, staying up as late as I felt like it, using all the hot water, never eating the crusts on my sandwiches, I got to watch what ever I wanted. The list goes on.
    Lucky for me I found a man just as 'ungrown' up as me!

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  10. Domestic: "being the only grown-up" in a share house full of other people your own age sucks donkey balls. Trust me. You know - the day you come home from college to discover your flatmates have fucked off down the coast without leaving the rent behind, and you have to spend the next six hours calling everyone you know to borrow cash?

    Or the bit where you come in after shift-work to discover nobody's cleaned the vomit in the bathroom from the party?

    I readily admit to being 'not the grown-up' on plenty of occasions. But the times when it did fall to me, and me alone, were really fucking irritating. And I would absolutely hate to be trying to bring up three kids by myself!

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  11. Your Sooth is indeed mighty Sir.
    "Small children, therefore, cannot be trusted alone with the lesser version in your laundry."
    Nary a truer word spoke.

    Yet a meres hares-breadth away you profanely blaspheme with "Potatoes: Not As Friendly As You'd Think."
    Taties are one of the few things that make me question my agnosticism. Perhaps it's the evil doers who fail to honour them in a suitable timeframe that deserve my wrath. Surely wasting such good & honourable starchy carb is a sin?

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  12. A sin that carrieth its own punishment. For the stench of the rotting potato doth defy all sanity.

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  13. No potato ever got to that stage in my sharehouses. In fact I picked up a long term potato addiction from sharehousing.

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  14. I found that sweet potatoes get even more unacceptable in even more fabulous ways than potatoes ever did.

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  15. Sweet potatoes? You health freak!

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  16. I'm pretty sure I cancel the health benefit when I cover the sweet potato in a pat of butter, a spoonfull of cinnamon, and a startling amount of brown sugar.

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  17. Steve....BROWN sugar? You're only digging yourself in deeper here!

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  18. He's decidedly a healthy liberal..uh oh.

    Great list, Dirkest. Who yells loudest isn't right. True, true.

    Love my taters and only once discovered black ones. Imagine the stench of the potato famine back when. Jaysus. Once you find them once, you make certain not to replay that event.

    You always make me laugh and that's such a great thing. Thanks buddy.

    P.S. Your friends seem a good bit of fun ass well. Go figure. Enjoy the banter. Keep it up BOYZ.

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