Boarder House Rules

The boarder is an old high school friend of my son’s. Nice enough…but a “little” quirky. He needed a place to stay, we had an extra room at the house…seemed do-able.  He has been a learning experience; he has been the inspiration for some house rules I never thought I’d have to create – the things you never think you’d have to tell someone not to do.

Some of the rules are borne of my least favourite game “Guess What I Found On The Way Home From Work”.  That game strikes fear in my soul. It never ends well, trust me when I say I lose every single time.  One of the rules that came from that game is “no skeletal remains in the house…ever”, I kid you not. Fortunately, the remains were not human so we skipped the 911 call, but still, no random jaw bones in the house. I mean it. No carcasses.

Bag of what on the street?  Oh, a dead cat wrapped in a red sweater left on a sidewalk.

He went missing for a couple of days, wasn’t answering his cell. We were within a couple of hours of filing a police report for a missing person when he finally called to let us know he had been hospitalized. He explained that he originally wanted to call to tell us he’d been kidnapped but decided against it. Thanks for that.

This week’s adventures in my boarder is crazy world…Mr Noodles in the bathroom sink. My son was plunging a clogged drain when some noodles surfaced. Yes, I said noodles. It’s a short list of suspects – only one person eats a crap load of instant noodles…and lives across the hall from said bathroom. So, we had a little chat and added another rule to this list of stuff you just can’t predict in advance.

My favourite mug went missing for several days…nobody, but nobody is allowed to touch my Queen of Fucking Everything mug. It was a gift from a friend who spotted it in a store and knew it had to be mine. It’s my pandemic zoom meeting mug. Depending on the nature of the meeting it may contain coffee, Irish coffee, red wine or if I’m feeling particularly festive – prosecco. For the record, I’m told if you occasionally blow across the cup as if to cool the contents, it sells the tea/coffee narrative well. The boarder has a bad habit of taking mugs out to the garage and leaving them there so I asked him, sure enough, my mug had made its way out there. Have I mentioned, no one touches my QFE mug. So, we had a little chat about that.

He tries. He really does. After having shown him how to use the French press a couple of times, he decided to have a go at it unsupervised. It’s not that I allowed it to happen, it was far too late by the time I came across the situation. He quite proudly announced that coffee was going to be ready in a couple of minutes. Now, using a French press is not complicated – there are only 2 things you need to know – the grounds to water ratio and how long to set a timer. Having walked him through it twice, I was hoping he stood a chance at getting this at least close to right. Nope. What he handed me looked muddy at best. And he waited for me to sip it…fuck. How bad could it be? It was bad. I didn’t want to offend him, he means well. To clarify, I like a strong cup of coffee, I used to work with a woman from Germany who said it wasn’t coffee unless the spoon stood upright in the cup and I grew accustomed to some serious coffee. She always drank what she called the “power cup” from the pot, the first cupful that accumulates before the pot is finished filling. You could have stripped paint with the concoction he handed me. Later I said “that was a pretty intense cup of coffee, how much grounds did you use?”…I don’t know, I just poured some in”…wrong answer. How about you stick to the Keurig.

This just in…I found a carton of milk in the fridge that looked like it had been opened by either a rabid honey badger or a raccoon on meth. Someone speculated fridge beavers were involved. Just as likely an explanation as any other. There are only 2 suspects…and both are in their 30’s. My son says he had nothing to do with it and that leaves the boarder…and I’m just going to leave it alone, that’s a conversation I just don’t need to have. At this point, I’ll settle for no dead things in the house and call it even on the milk. You gotta pick your battles. Dead things trump dairy. We did not have a little chat.

Another game I’m not a fan of …can you have a look at something for me? Oh, I would rather not. It could be a weird growth or a rash. Or better yet, the wounds from a suspension piercing experience. I’m not making this up. He found someone on the internet that hosted suspension piercing events in a warehouse somewhere. He decided to give it a go so he had these HUGE fucking hooks pierced through the skin on his back and was hoisted up on a boom of some sort and hung about for a bit like that. And paid for the privilege. I have no idea why someone would do that, I’m not questioning it…I am however stating unequivocally that I’m never doing it. Whatever it does for you I’m either never getting done or will find another way. He needed some help cleaning the wounds…it felt a little biblical, if you went to a really weird church. He had 4 sets of holes on his back that needed to be cleaned and dressed. I will say they weren’t as horrid as I expected given how he got them. He showed me the hooks they used…fuck, nope, just nope.

Let me get this straight, you weren’t being tortured, you actually did this willingly. In fact, you paid for the privilege. You tracked someone down, showed up at an abandoned warehouse in a sketchy neighborhood and paid to have someone to embed huge hooks in your back, haul you up on a boom and let you hang like that for a bit.

My son called me and suggested I check the vacuum cleaner…?? He suspects it may have been used for yet another noodle incident…there was some sort of racket upstairs last night which at some point involved the vacuum cleaner and he found noodles in his shoes this morning. Worth noting that I do not own a wet/dry vacuum, what I do indeed have is an upright vacuum clogged with wet noodles. Looks like we are going to have a little chat – in his very shaky defense, he used the older vacuum that’s already been replaced with a newer model – not as disastrous as it could have been. I’m not sure how anyone could wreak this much household mayhem with noodles. Apparently, there are going to have to be a very specific subset of noodle rules.

this just in, the boarder has imaginary dreadlocks….

~~ the nasty wench ~~