In Which I Plan A Murder

During my trial, these are the top six things I will have to say in my defence. They are the reasons I will eventually smother my housemate Apples in her sleep:

1. Cheese snow.

Cheese snow is a horrible, hateful invention spawned by my fantastic, top of the line, $900 food processor and Apple’s complete inability to plan two hours in advance. Because we don’t eat much cheese, we often freeze parts of blocks. Then Apple’s realises she wants cheese, but it really needs to thaw overnight.

Turns out if you put frozen cheese through a fine grater, it turns into this fine, powder snow-like flour. Words cannot accurately describe how horrific this stuff is. It’s like Heston Blumenthal became evil and decided to punish the world with cheese. I can’t even see the stuff without throwing up a little and needing to scrub my hands for an hour.

2. GTFO of my bathroom.

Apples is obsessed with my bathroom. We have one each and hers always looks like it’s the lone bathroom in a sorority house. Every time I am forced to go in there, I wonder if a kegger happened and who that person is passed out in the bathtub.

The odd thing is, she never seems to use anything in my bathroom, she just hangs out in there doing annoying things. Things like turning off my toothbrush when I set it to charge and moving things around. When I finish a shampoo or a razor head is dead, I line them up on the floor just outside the shower door, ready for the bin.

After dressing in my bedroom, I return to throw out said items, only to find them back on their shelves in the shower. WHY!? STOP IT! JUST LEAVE MY STUFF ALONE, JESUS CHRIST!

3. Every second counts.

Despite being blatantly oblivious to 1. Her carbon footprint and 2. All possible fire risks, Apple’s obsessively turns off every power point she passes... unless it’s a ceiling fan or a light, those she leaves on forever. God forbid I plug my phone in to charge, because I’ll come back two hours later to find the switch off and my phone still very dead on the counter. Likewise with my toothbrush, kindle, computer, the TV...

Seriously who turns off the TV power point at the wall, then leaves the ceiling fan on all day? Very rarely, she will turn off stuff WHILE I AM ACTIVELY USING IT.

This will likely be the trigger that ultimately causes me to snap.

4. No concept of time.

“I’ll be two minutes.”

“Two real person minutes or two of your minutes?”

“Two minutes, I’m just making tea and I will be right there.”

I literally watched a thirty minute documentary before she reached the living room. What happened in that kitchen? What sort of tea was prepared that took an entire thirty minutes? We will never know.

This happens every time I want to watch a movie or show that Apples insists she has to watch too. So four times a week.

5. Failure to return my things.

“Where are your tweezers?”

“In the top bathroom drawer.”

“No, I borrowed them two days ago from there and now I can’t find them.”

“...They will never find your body either.”

Things have a place. You use them, clean them, then PUT THEM BACK IN THEIR FUCKING PLACE! I know 99.9% of people empathise with Apples over my obsessive tidying and organisation. I can’t even express how little I care. My house, my stuff, my goddamn rules.

All your little objects: hairbrushes, make up, forks, whatever, they’re all sad if they can’t go back to their own little houses. Stop making my tweezers sad.

6. Starting house fires.

This is pretty much the WORST problem you can ever have with anyone who shares your living space.

Given I set the microwave on fire last week, completely destroying it, it also makes me a hypocrite. However that’s two fires to Apple’s eight thousand and fifty and I am honestly at the stage where I am frightened to leave her unattended in the house.

Eventually I had to ban oil heaters from the house, because Apples was always hanging her clothes on them. Overnight. At full heat. She was managing to scorch them at least twice a week, every winter—full on billowing smoke and black marks.

She also can’t be trusted with candles, because I came home to find the bookcase on fire once. Yes, an enclosed wooden bookcase, with a candle on it. Covered in books and newspapers. The other day I walked into the kitchen to find she’d wrapped a tea towel around the slow cooker and I burnt myself moving it, because it was already smouldering.

She acted like I was being unreasonable.

“Why do you put up with that?”

Sometimes people ask why I live with Apples if she annoys me so much. The answer is pretty simple. There is someone else who is even MORE annoying than her. Someone that no sane person would tolerate sharing space with, who makes Apples look like a perfect, sublime dream.

And that would be me.

If Apples wrote a list like this, it would be her magnum opus. It would be unfinished when she died, a startling, dystopian horror, thousands of pages long, dipping into the vast depths of human depravity.

I also put up with her because we’re related and I have to. Mostly, because of that.