Another wasted weekend...

Ugh.

It's going to be an interesting week.

One of my roommates is going to be gone all week. The same roommate who has major hygiene issues. The smell that wafts out of his room is awful at best and nauseating at worst. While he's gone this week, I'll be donning my hazmat suit and going in with two bottles of bleach, rubber gloves, and Pine-Sol. I'm going to be cleaning his room regardless of whether he likes it or not.

Now the other roommate, whom I share my life and space with, has his own issues that need to be brought up and resolved. Okay, he's young but I'm sick of cleaning up after him. I understand that he works 40 hours a week in fast food. Ya know, I've been there.

I work 40 hours a week, add in another 5 hours for my commute...and then I am supposed to take them to work or run them all over town for stuff. Okay, I don't have a problem with running to the grocery store or Wal-Mart to get stuff. The grocery store..you want to keep cold/frozen stuff in that state. Wal-Mart is a few miles away across town.

In some ways, I feel more like the father of two boys than I do anything else.

It's amusing how the first roommate mentioned that I'm always crabby and that it seems like all I ever do is clean the apartment and that I should take time to relax and just do nothing. I'm so stressed out from taking care of these two (and myself) that I've lost all sense of creativity. My writing feels completely foreign and nothing will flow. I've tried working on websites I maintain. I don't care about them any more. I'm just frazzled out of my mind.

I nearly hit the ceiling. If I didn't do the dishes, vacuum and dust, clean the cat box, take out the trash, and all the other things that no one else in this apartment ever does...we'd be knee deep in trash and cat feces. I know that cleaning the cat box isn't "fun" but it has to be done and is it really that hard/complicated/difficult to unload and load the dishwasher? It must be as I wind up doing three loads of dishes every Sunday. Just like how I wind up picking up all the plates, glasses, and assorted food wrappers and containers out of the living room on Saturday afternoon. I won't even begin to discuss the Foreman grill or the grease that just gets dumped into the sink. Pardon me while I take some deep breaths and try to relower my blood pressure.

*aaaaaah*

Last night, I told the one roommate that he has to start picking up his room and cleaning his bathroom. (He's not cleaned his bathroom....in six months. The toilet was bleached once...I did it.) When I'm done cleaning his room, it will be clean and it won't smell like it does now. I'm working on the other roommate, he'll just take longer. He's one of those people who is just slow to adapt.

Through it all, I have a whole new respect for parents, especially those families where both parents work. How the hell do you do it? I'm only about three months into the current state of insanity and I'm ready to push one out and start some seriously intensive behaviour modifcation techniques on the other. I need a few days of vacation with no one home or I need to spend a few days away from home. Sadly, I know that if I go away, I'll be wondering what the state of the house is while I'm gone. I have a long weekend in two weeks. I'm going camping with friends. I'm going to take the Thursday off ahead of that as well so I can clean the house before I go.

It's a test. If the house is picked up, vacuumed, and clean when I leave...and it's a hellpit when I return. There will be a roommate who is asked to leave.

I have scheduled off the last full week of August. I'm off from evening of the 24th and I don't have to be back to work until the morning of September 4th. Part of me says that I should work it anyway and bank the money. The other part of me says, I need the vacation to get away, see friends, and not think about work or the roommates.

We'll see after the 10th through 13th and my camping trip. Maybe the lessons will sink in. I can only hope.