Well, my fiance moved in over the weekend, and it's having profound effects on my life. First of all, it freed up about 3 gigs on my hard drive, which is good, because I have entirely too much shit on my computer.
Secondly, there's the addition of another person (and another cat) living here to add to the mix. For three years now, I'd lived alone (unless you count the two cats I've had for a couple years) and the transition will take some getting used to. No longer can I run around butt-naked at 3:00 AM burping and farting to my heart's content. No more staying up until all hours of the night playing World of Warcraft and watching shitty action movies. No more life in its totally natural state, free of pants. Once again, I have a roommate. Another person to think about and plan around. However, this isn't just a roommate situation. This is a woman I'm in a relationship with and am pledged to spend the rest of my life with. This is someone who, in theory, I'm supposed to be trying to impress. Uh-oh. Now she finds out what a slovenly, unkempt pig I really am. And on top of this, she's a girl. This may sound obvious, but I had only ever lived with guys before. Even growing up, my only sibling was a brother. So all of a sudden, I'm being exposed to all these new and foreign concepts of living. My television is playing shows I don't think I ever could have predicted. I never thought I would see "The Simple Life," "Big Brother," or "Full House" being played on any television in my home. But to be fair, she probably rolls her eyes every time I get onto my computer to kill dragons and fire elementals for a few hours.
However, clearly the most culture-shocking transition of all has been that of my apartment from a bachelor pad to a couple's home. Anyone who visited my apartment a week ago would be hard-pressed to recognize the place, except for the scarce holdouts of my really dorky bachelor life, the Zelda and Lord of the Rings posters, the legendary Hot Poop rag, my certificate of ordination with the Universal Life Church (bet you didn't know I was an ordained minister) and my handicapped parking sign decorating the living room wall.
However, for every last bachelor-life-holdout, you can find eight things about my apartment that are COMPLETELY different. My old bed is gone, replaced with the queen-sized bed my fiance brought with her, complete with silk sheets, silk pillow-cases, and a matching skirt. And here I thought skirts were something women wore. No, apparently it's also something you put on a bed. I didn't know this. It's also very important to decide which sheets you are going to be using on the bed BEFORE putting on the skirt. Very important detail. While on the subject of the bedroom, before the merger, I had a dresser in my room. Now, I've got two. And the new dresser is twice as big as my old one. And not only are my fiance's clothes filling her dresser and two-thirds of the closet space, she's also annexed two of the drawers in my dresser that I wasn't using. And then there's her 85 pairs of shoes. She swears up and down she actually wears all of them, but call me skeptical. Also in the bedroom has been a new laundry system that is supposedly better than my old system. You see, under the new laundry regime, dirty clothes are supposed to go into the dirty clothes hamper, and when the laundry is done, shirts and pants are hung up in the closet and shorts, socks, underwear, etc. are placed in drawers in the dresser. What a bunch of horse shit. The old system was so much better. You see, under the old system, dirty clothes went on the floor in the bedroom, or on the floor by the computer where I took them off over the course of the night, or they went on the floor wherever the hell else they happened to fall. When clothes were washed, they were carefully thrown onto my living room couch, where they were dumped out of the laundry basket and strewn with care. You see what a better system I had? I know, it's amazing how she doesn't see the undeniable ease and logic of such a system. But alas, it appears the new communist laundry regime has taken a firm foothold, and I will have to deal with mass daily confusion when it comes time to get dressed.
Moving to the living room, one immediately notices a major difference from last week. The floor has been vacuumed and the dining room table, previously earmarked for whatever happened to fall there, is frighteningly void of random crap. Scary, I know. And the changes are going to be even more drastic when the shelf goes up on the wall with, are you ready for this? Her dolls. Yeah. God, what the hell is happening to my apartment?
Moving to the kitchen, the changes become quite alarming. Clean floors. Dishes and silverware that actually match. Cookbooks. No trash lining the counters. Food that is not only legitimately edible, but actually tastes good. A cooking timer. And a bread box. One of my friends had never even heard of a bread box before I told him I now have one in my kitchen.
However, of all the changes in my apartment, none are more disturbing than the abomination that used to be my bathroom. It has a fucking color scheme. Everything is green. Green shower curtain, green towels, green floor rugs. And oh yeah, I have a fucking rug on my toilet. It has green covers on the seat and tank. Why in God's name anyone needs a fucking rug on their toilet is beyond me. I'm pretty sure if God intended us to have rugs on our toilets, he would have made porcelain fuzzy.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, to those of you still in school, not yet introduced to the harsh realities of the "real world," enjoy your safe little bubbles while you can, because the fact is, eventually you'll grow up. And when you grow up you'll have crappy jobs, bills, and a fucking rug on your toilet.