Be a good girl and share

I'm going to have a roommate in a week.  And I'm excited about it for two reasons.  It's my BFF Crawford and she's paying me.  And it's a substantial amount of money that will help alleviate some of the financial issues I've been having but it helps her too.  She'll be paying less for rent now and that's going to help her too.

Now, I had a "roommate" incident when I first moved in here.  It lasted about 3 weeks (if even that) because she bugged the shit out of me.  In my defense, I was JUST getting sober and I was still dealing with my feelings around the divorce.  I'm talking 2 months after the divorce was final.  I wasn't prepared o deal with another person's issues. And she had issues.  She was doing things that I thought were unforgivable. I couldn't support her decisions. And she was ALWAYS in the living room.  I wanted to just veg and she was there. I wanted to watch TV, she was there.  And the last straw was she asked me if I could leave the house for several hours so she and her married lover could do it in every room in the house, including my bedroom.  I threw that last bit in there for effect. She would have kept the shagging to her bedroom I'm sure.

Now...fast forward 4 years and I'm going to have a room mate again and I'm going through all the pros and cons to determine if this is the right thing.

Pros
1. I will have someone at the house and thus someone to hang with. It'll be nice to have someone to talk to after work.
2. I will be more financially stable and better able to pay on past due bills BUT will also allow me the opportunity to splurge on things. For instance, I can buy a new pair of sunglasses. Willow broke mine last week and I need a new pair.  Or a new pair of jeans.  I've been wearing mine for a couple of years. time to get a new one.
3. I think this is an opportunity to eat better. If we go in together for groceries, then we cook and we eat real meals rather then fast food or frozen entrees.
4. Crawford is a great listener and everyone knows I like to talk.  This is a win win.
5. Dog sitting.  If I need to work late or leave town, she's a built in dog sitter. And vise versa for her dog.
6. I just really love her and want to help out as much as I can. She deserves a break.
7. Probably the most exciting is that we turned cable back on. It had been about 18 months since I had it turned off and because she tends to be home more then at work, she would need to be entertained. So I've already used the DVR to start recording several series and one off shows.  This is what I did last time but never watched.  I feel more dedicated to it now so I'm confident I'll watch it all the time.



Cons
1. By having so much extra money, I'll tend to shop.  This is something I'm going to have to really watch.  As a Pro - Crawford might be the perfect deterrent.  Maybe she'll step up and tell me to stop?
2. She'll be there all the time.  It's going to be weird to have someone present all the time.  Now I think this is a Con because of my first roommate.  I hope I've outgrown it.
3. Just as I'm lazy, so is she.  I don't want us to get lazier.
4. She'll irritate me so much that I want her gone and the only thing that she can do is stay as long as it takes to find money to move out.  But I really REALLY hope that is not the case.
5. I have to move most of the stuff out of my craft room and I have A LOT of stuff in there.  Some of it is going up to my bedroom upstairs but I can't get everything out.  So I'm going to be sharing the room with her. I'd love to give her more room but it's just not possible.


There is more but you get the gist of it.  I'm looking forward to this, I really am.  But it's going to be important that we be honest and up front.  I need to be more tolerate if I find myself irritated.  This is a great opportunity for the both of us.  We're talking about a couple of months but we've also talked about making it through the end of my lease (June 2012).  That's almost a year and then maybe we get a bigger place together.  Just throwing the idea around.

So, I really should be getting organized and moving all the craft stuff around.  I should be doing laundry and putting it away.  I should be doing a lot of things.  Instead, I'm watching The Big C on Showtime. We have it free for a month. I'm going to get as much watched as possible.  Then I'll start with the On Demand Movies...this is going to be a horrible mistake but you only live once and so enjoy cable when you can.