The trouble with roommates

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS


My bread sparkles slightly in the light, and I look closer to find a single piece of glitter embedded in the bread. While it is entirely possible that the crafty friend who kindly mailed me this homemade chocolate-apple bread is responsible for this stray bit of glitter, I imagine that the true culprit is my current roommate. There is a constant parade of sparkly items through the house, and it is not all that unusual to look in the mirror while brushing my teeth before bed and find a piece of glitter glistening in my eyebrow or scalp without any recollection of having touched a single sparkly thing in the course of the day. This is, however, the first time that it has shown up in my breakfast.


Like previous roommates, this one often keeps me up at night, and is constantly borrowing things from my room. Things that never quite make it back to my room. She also has a penchant for swiping any spare change that might be laying around, and she has pretty much never done the dishes.


She's also three-and-a-half. 


Not always the easiest little person to  live with, but I think the feeling's mutual: last week she told me to go back to Antarctica (I might have suggested that she put on shoes to go to the grocery store). I adore her of course, in spite of her less desirable qualities.  


In a few days I will take off again, this time for Thailand with an entirely open itinerary that may or may not involve any number of other Southeast Asian countries. The sounds keeping me up at night will be entirely different, and while I will be concerned with what's in my food, I'm pretty certain it won't be glitter. 


I am very much looking forward to traveling again, to wandering amidst strange sights and smells, to the awkwardness that inevitably arises when trying to navigate a foreign place. But my time here, talking a mermaid into her bath at night, debating the merits of cake as a breakfast staple, and knitting with my sister in the evening, are the sorts of things I inevitably miss when I'm away. It is tough to strike the perfect balance between the foreign and the familiar, the exotic and the mundane.