Planning Stuff

There’s something interesting that can happen when one is planning an event. It happens when people don’t say they’ll be there, but also don’t say they won’t be there. Sort of a passive way of getting out of things, hoping that the person doing the inviting simply forgets about the whole thing and moves on.

I’m in such a position this week and I’m finding I don’t know how to respond. I don’t want to force the hand of those who have been invited, but also don’t want to let this tactic work and drop it. And that’s even if this tactic is being employed, at least intentionally.

We’ll see by Friday how this one turns out.

Room

So I’m in my room now and both of my housemates are here. So far we have discussed mumu’s, men’s deoderant, and men’s tank tops and why some can wear them and some can’t. This is fairly surreal for me, particularly since my housemates are in my room talking about this while I’m typing about it unbeknownst to them (supposedly).

Could make for a good laugh should either or both of them read this later.

Seeking Transition

We got a new housemate this last weekend. What’s strange about this is that this housemate is a woman (which isn’t strange on it’s own, really, but this has always been a house of guys until now). What’s more strange is that this is the first time someone has moved into the house before the person they were taking the place of had left. So we now have four occupants of the house where there were three.

Now really, that shouldn’t be strange as we used to have four guys living here, but now it’s three guys and a girl.

So there is a time of transition happening here. This weekend is the wedding that will exit the housemate that is leaving. After that, things will hopefully calm down enough that the house that will be at that point will be able to figure out what it means to be a house.

Some backstory to that, we live in a somewhat intentional community here. That is to say, we are in each other’s lives. We aren’t just housemates, but are friends supporting one another as we travel in faith and life. So there is a need for the people living here to decide together how that may look, what it means to be of service to one another in specific ways (read “chores”), and any other ground rules that need to be set (such as how open the front door is to people we know and people we don’t).

Single Room

Tonight, for the first time in nearly two years, I will be sleeping in my own room. While I’m looking forward to waking up to space entirely my own, I’m also feeling a little sad.

The guy I’m sharing a room with now is guy who was my roommate in college for three of four years and the two past years, for a grand total of five (and no, neither of us are gay, we’re just good friends and get along well). So it’s kind of the end of an era.

At the same time, having my own space to wake up in and pray or excercise without people being able to see and ask what I’m doing or have to be quiet so as to not disturb me is priceless. Also the fact that it will be my mess in my way, which I can handle better than the messes of others. My current roommate isn’t sloppy, but we’re both used to a state of clean clutter.

All that to say, I’m looking forward to having my own room tonight. I think it will be good for all, in the end.

Bachelor Party

I spent the better part of this weekend at a bachelor party for the most senior (as in, lived here longest) of my housemates. He’ll be married on the tenth. We have been moving him out of the house since the end of the party yesterday. That has been complicated by the fact that the has a herniated disk (disc?) in his back, so he can’t lift anything. Apparently, this has been completed regardless of the fact that there seems to be a fair amount of stuff still in the garage that doesn’t belong to myself or the remaining housemate of mine.

Tonight, though, with the soon-married one essentially out of the house, we began the task of evacuating the master bed room that will be taken by the woman moving in next Saturday. We have the entire week and not a huge amount of stuff to move. Unfortunately, that also means not a great deal of time to move things in given that we have things happening every single night until Friday (at which point we’ll most likely be taking in a movie for a break). But we have good friends who will help us out if we need it and we really don’t have all that much to move.

All in all, it will be a hectic week (even without the question of who will pay rent where that has not been answered quite yet). The next will be a lighter week ramping up the wedding itself (which there is little for us to do with anyway so far), so I’m looking forward to things calming down just a bit.

They say the two most stressful things you do in your life are move and get married. That passes on to those around the soon-to-be married people, not to mention all the moving of usually single people that happens around them.

Rent and Things

In three months, one of my housemates will be getting married and, as a direct result, moving out. This will leave another roommate and myself as the only two guys left in the house. Combined, we do not make enough money to pay for rent, which is kind of sad when I think about it too much since our rent isn’t much more than a small apartment.