I am a Danger to Myself and Others

I miraculously survived the long weekend, but not without nearly burning down the house.  Again.  Twice. 

To banish the burning pita bread smell that permeated the house from my previous adventure, I lit a few scented candles.  Then while attempting to exercise with the exercise ball, I pushed the newspaper over the flame with my foot.  The newspaper went up in flames.  I picked it up by the part that wasn’t burning, ran to the sink leaving a trail of ash in my wake, threw it in the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet.

The next day I  made tortellini for lunch and left the electric burner on the stove on…for three hours.  Not only a waste of energy, but a fire hazard.

I am such an idiot.  How I managed to survive past the age of 6 is anybody’s guess.

Now before you think that I’m completely incapable of caring for myself, I should say that apart from nearly burning down the house I had a very productive long weekend.  I not only tidied the house (put stuff away), but cleaned it as well. 

One fundamental difference between men and women is that men cannot see dirt.  Before the fiance moved in, he figured that as long as he kept clothes off the floor, the place was clean.  Tidy, yes.  Clean?  Not by a long shot!  

His whole apartment was carpeted and he didn’t even own a vacuum cleaner.  I avoided using his bathroom for fear of catching malaria or hepatitis.  When I began staying there more regularly I decided that something must be done.  Armed with thick rubber gloves, a variety of bathroom cleaning supplies (I had to purchase – there were none in the house), and a bottle of bleach, I got to work.  His small bathroom took FOUR HOURS to clean!  This place hadn’t seen a sponge in years.  I won’t get into the disgusting details but as you can imagine, it wasn’t pretty.  After that thorough clean, the weekly clean took a mere 5 minutes.

Now that we live together our cleaning habits have clashed.  I’m naturally untidy, meaning I leave clothes everywhere, and he doesn’t know how to clean.  He wouldn’t be able to identify a bottle of Windex or tell you where the sponges live.  He wants to get rid of the vacuum cleaner to make room in the closet for all our wine.  That’s not practical!

So I’m the cleaner in the house, but he makes up for his lack of cleaning ability by doing all the cooking and most of the laundry.  That’s why we work.  I can’t cook and he thinks the vacuum cleaner is a waste of space.  Without each other, I would starve and he would be neck deep in dust bunnies.  Not that he would notice.

Why I Should Not Be Left to My Own Devices

The fiance is the cook in the house (and the reason I’ve put on a good 10 pounds since he moved in).  I can bake up a storm, but when it comes to cooking dinner and the like I’m a bit of an idiot.  I can go months without having to go near a cooking appliance, so his fears that I am going to starve to death in his absence are somewhat founded. 

 All the shops are closed for Good Friday so I’ve been forced to prepare my own meals today.  For lunch I decided to warm up some pita bread to eat with Hummus.  How can anybody fuck that up?  Here’s how: put the pita bread in the broiler to heat it up and make it a bit crispy, sit down in the living room to surf the interwebs, then totally forget about the pita bread…until the smoke alarm starts blaring.  Perhaps I should stick to using the microwave.

I’ve been alone for less than 24 hours and have already managed to nearly burn the house down.   God knows what I’ll manage to do in the next 10 days.