Cake and Commerce

Roommate Update

It hasn't quite been two weeks, but already I can feel the stress lifting. Yep, the roommate from hell is gone! After one final act of selfishness -- 'borrowing' (without asking, of course) my air mattress and leaving his cheap-ass one with me (and trying to explain, via email, that really, they were the same, trust him, and if I wanted mine back I could pick it up at his new residence), he finally packed up and left. For two weeks after my ultimatum he 'lived' in my house -- coming and going at odd hours, using the internet until I removed the modem from the house -- and each day I found more of his stuff and left it in his room so he wouldn't forget it. He promised -via email - that he would hire a cleaning person to clean the bathroom and his bedroom before he left. This hasn't happened, and anyway, I've cleaned his bedroom, knowing that he was just too lazy to get anything done. A guy who passes the bar yet doesn't bother to register with the state a year after he qualifies is slovenly, not merely lazy.

All the neighbors are thrilled that he is gone. They toasted his departure and doors around the building have been locked ever since.

Wanted: Roommate who loves dogs and cleaning

(Warning: non-food story alert!)

The beautiful relationship that was my roommate situation is coming to an end.

And not a moment too soon.

If you read this blog, you know that I really can't stand my roommate but have been hesitant to kick him out because he takes care of my dog, Lula. I probably should say "takes care" in huge, balloon-sized quotes because his idea of watching the dog is opening the door to the outside and letting her run around the yard unsupervised. When he does supervise, he sits outside or paces while talking on the phone (which he does incessantly) and hardly looks up to see what Lula is doing -- or shouldn't be doing.

My neighbors, who are responsible for the landscaping in our backyard, have repeatedly asked him to watch the dogs more closely and to stay with them when he lets them out. This falls on deaf ears. Remember, this is the guy who takes a piss in the back garden when I'm in the bathroom and he really needs to go. He's also the guy who sleeps in my bed while I'm away and doesn't try to hide the evidence: an extra pillow, a magazine on my bed table, and my food, eaten and thrown away in the trash can in my bedroom. He's also the guy who orders a pizza at midnight and passes out before the pizza arrives, leaving the pizza guy out in the cold, literally. He's the guy who drank all my booze, and didn't admit it until I caught him. He's the one who throws stinky food trash out in the bathroom because he was too lazy to buy (or borrow) trash bags. He's the guy who sucked down two 40s of malt liquor watching TV on a Monday night. He's the guy so hated by my neighbors that they have thrown big dinners in the backyard --dinners I cooked for -- and didn't invite him. He's the guy who so vexed me with his petty thievery that I bought a lockable Gladiator cabinet to not only store my booze, but my valuables and large knives as well, and made it obvious that he wasn't getting a copy of the key. He's the one who told me not to "micromanage his %#$!ing diet" when I pointed out that Hot Pockets -yes, even the "Lean ones" - aren't good food for losing weight. Or good food. He's the guy who has so annoyed my next door neighbor that she told her upstairs neighbor, a Chicago police officer, to watch the backyard to make sure my roommate didn't vandalize her things in retaliation for her calling him a moron. He's the pathetic super-stud wannabee guy who studies Tucker Max (sorry, I refuse to link to it...you'll have to Google it on your own) like a study guide. And worst of all, he's the one who inspired me to tell my doctor that if I wind up dead by unnatural causes, he's probably the perp.

He's lazy, he's unthoughtful, and he ruins a good dinner party. That's why I haven't had one since August, when he so angered my guests that they came to verbal fisticuffs with him.

So why now, why after all the problems, annoyances, and inconveniences am I kicking him out? Because as long as the only person he was inconveniencing was me, I could tolerate it. But when his slovenliness began impacting my relationships with my neighbors, I had to give him the boot. I can control who lives in my place, but I can't control my neighbors. And as long as I'm living in my place, which I hope to continue to do for the next few years, I want to keep good relations with the neighbors. After all, they feed me, entertain me, dazzle me with the perennials they plant, ply me with great wine and are great company on a warm night on the back patio. By contrast, my roommate does nothing but annoy me and drive me from my own home.

His offense? Letting my sister's dog, the charming but devilish Diego, wander into the garden, crush the flowers, dig holes in the garden, poop in the garden, and rile up Lula so that she, in turn, did the same. The roommate let Diego do this on an almost daily basis while my neighbor watched from her kitchen and was forced, on occasion, to come out and scream at the dogs while he yakked away on the phone, oblivious.

Last night the dogs escaped out the front gate, left open by another neighbor, and ran screaming after a couple pit bulls out on their evening walk. My neighbor saw this and ran after them, yelling Lula's name. After the pit bull's owner yelled at my neighbor, the roommate finally caught up with the action, still on his phone. My neighbor turned to my roommate and let him have it, calling him a moron and a few other choice words. I wish I had been there.

I wasn't there -- I was up in the 'burbs visiting my friends Overboard and Mr. Hockey, who just had a baby three weeks ago. Watching them try to figure out what the baby was trying to tell them with his cries was a pleasant and fleeting distraction from the awkwardness at home. But I did hear the phone ring. Roommate -- I didn't answer it in time, but he did leave a message. I checked my voicemail anyway. My neighbor left a long and rambling message about her landlord, how he was going to have to take drastic action if I didn't do anything about the dogs ruining the garden, how the roommate had let the dog run out on the street, how maybe they would put the fence back up if that was the only way to stop the craziness with the dogs and that her landlord was going to 'really go off' on me. Hmmm. Not quite what I was expecting, but workable. Before I called her back I tried to think through solutions.

Here's what I came up with:

1. Remove roommate from home

2. Send Diego to Boston to live with his grandmother

3. Get a dog walker for Lula

My net outlay for this new lifestyle would be in excess of $800 -- loss of tenant paying rent and bills and dog care. But was my roommate worth $800 a month to me (or nearly $9600 per year)? No, not anymore. I'll forgo dinner out, new shoes, a new computer, whatever, to have my life and my home back.

By the time I arrived home I had made all arrangements, and was even able to reach Diego's mom, who is spending the summer in Shanghai. My roommate was leaving. Only he didn't yet know. Luckily he made it easy for me. He was still yapping away on the phone when I walked through the door. As usual, he didn't acknowledge me. I took the dogs out, talked with my neighbor, and went back upstairs. Finally off the phone, he approached me and said, "Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be working offsite rather than from home. When I moved in you didn't have dogs. One dog was fine, but I can't handle two dogs. Now I have responsibilities I didn't ask for, and I just can't do it." OK, fair enough. But how about some notice? If I hadn't been planning to throw him out, this would have been a very bad thing.

And then the excuses started. "The neighbor yelled at me. Told me I was a moron and and idiot and a retard and that I let the dogs poop in the garden. She screamed at me because the dogs got out into the street. Well I'm always REALLY careful and I made sure the gate was closed. But someone must have opened it and so the dogs bolted, and I'm not as fast as the dogs."

To that I said, "You know, that really sounds like an excuse to me."

He looked puzzled. "What do you mean, an excuse?"

I must have looked at him as if he were the biggest idiot to have roamed the earth. "You are saying that it wasn't you, it was other people who are to blame. That's making an excuse."

I cut him off before he could say much more. He did manage to get in some digs about how Diego barked too much and "wakes up 12 or 15 people in the immediate vicinity when he barks," which I wish were true - it may have spared the pizza guy the thirty minutes he spent waiting outside. I think the roommate was using the barking as evidence that the dog was not easy to manage. It just came out sounding sad.

As a way of preempting any further talk or excuse-making, I told him straight out that maybe he better find another place to live. He looked surprised, but then told me, in his most legally of legal manner, that he would need at least until the end of July-- JULY! -- to find a place. Stupid me, I agreed. Oh well, I guess I could still use the cash.

After our conversation was finished, prompted by a phone call from Diego's mom in China, I went upstairs to tell my hipster neighbors Mr. Sideburns, The Thespian and the Campbell Soup Kid about the news. They high-fived me with genuine joy. I had no idea, but they hated him too. He had left the doors open to the home numerous times, including leaving the back door open all night long. In our neighborhood, which is pleasant but not without major problems and frequent petty thefts, leaving a door open for an extended period is just not smart. Upstairs neighbor Mr. Sideburns keeps his bike down there, and genuinely feared that it would be ripped off. Mr. Sideburn's roommate, The Thespian, had heard the entire altercation between my neighbor and my roommate, and said that it was well-deserved. He confirmed that my neighbor had not, in fact, called my roommate a 'retard' -- the roommate made that up. It was from them that I heard about the pizza guy fiasco and how he totally neglected the dogs when they went outside. Yes, I had done the right thing.

And now I have one more month to live with him. I hope he will find somewhere else to stay. And hey, if you need a place in Chicago with a great dog and you love to clean, have I got a deal for you! You just can't be an unemployed alcoholic with a victim complex.

6/22 update: When I opened the door to my house yesterday, I was hit by a wall of ammonia and the most rank of rank smells -- yup, the dogs has pooped and peed everywhere, and the air conditioner was not on. The upholstery on a chair was torn up, Diego's bed was in shreds and the room had the appearance of a murder scene, sans sang. The heat of the room magnified the stink. Apparently the roommate left the house -- "to work offsite" (yeah, 'offsite'. when you are unemployed it is simply self-mollifying to tell yourself that you actually have a 'site' to begin with....) and stayed away all day. Yup, that was it. Done. I was not going to have an unpredictable, passive agressive person living with me anymore.

I called him and told him that he was done. That he had until the end of this month to get out. "That's only nine days!" he exclaimed. Yep. Since he was no longer going to help out with the dogs, he was no longer welcome to stay. The guy worked from home. What was so difficult about letting the dogs out during the day? One day I came home from work and found him watching '24' -- he had been watching all day long and had not done much to clean himself up. Why couldn't he have put it on pause and let the dogs out for a little? He could have used the air himself.

He tried to argue with me about it. "You have no lease," I told him. "You need to go." He raised his voice. I held the phone away from his ear. "There's no arguing," I said, "I'm done with you."

He didn't come home last night. Which relieved me. If I never see him again it will be too soon.

I was cleaning up a bit this morning and opened up the garbage and found the bin liner had fallen down. As I picked it up I heard the familiar sound of glass  bottles hitting....sure enough, the night prior (we take out our trash regularly - his soft drink consumption, beer guzzling, and pizza habits cause all kinds of trash buildups) he had downed two 40s of malt liquor (who knew each one was only $1.89?) and -- no doubt as a passive-agressive act of vengeance -- the last bottle of wine I had left out in a shared space, some plonk given to me by our consultants as a parting gift. It wasn't the value of the wine, but the meaning of the statement.

I pulled it out of the trash and put it on the counter. I left a note: "NOT YOURS", along with another note that said, "DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING THAT IS NOT YOUR PROPERTY." Yeah, I know I'm asking for a fight. But I did make sure to lock up everything of value before I left this morning. And my upstairs neighbors are holding on to other items of value that couldn't fit in the Gladiator box.

I then called my landlord and asked him to change the locks.

The death of Liqueur Batch 01-06

If you've read cake and commerce before, you know I like to make liqueur...fruits, spices and herbs are all fair game. This winter I found the mother load of Yuzu (citron) at my local Japanese market, Mitsuwa. I spent about $32 on the fruit, which makes only the briefest appearance in the cold winter months and retails for about $16/lb. I carefully zested the Yuzu, and squeezed the juice from all the fruits. I poured a litre of Vodka over the fruit and topped it off with a little Cachaca just for fun. I added several cups of sugar and placed it under the counter, where I aged it for a month.

At the end of the month I went to check it and oddly found the entire bottle drained of liquid. There was not even a thimbleful left. I wondered if perhaps I had not tightened the top of my bottle enough. So I went back to the liquor store, bought some Boru, a quadruple--distilled Irish (!!) vodka, and poured the contents in, along with some Meyer lemon. This was three weeks ago.

Today I checked it again. I figured I needed to give the bottle a stir to make sure the sugar was dissolving. Just like the last time, it was completely empty. The zest was piled up against the side of the bottle as if someone had poured it out and left it as is. I tested the top -- it was loose, and I definitely didn't leave it loose.

I had a flashback moment...recalling bottles of my wine that my roommate had drunk and only admitted drinking after I noticed that most of my refrigerated whites were gone. At least five or six that time. I thought he quit the habit.

And then I came back from a business trip on Sunday. The roommate has promised to clean the bathroom. When I came home the place was a mess, and the bathroom wasn't touched. Another bottle of my wine, a bottle I kept hidden in a cabinet in the dining room, was drained and left next to the sink. He had discovered my secret stash -- the place in the dining room where I kept alcohol that I didn't want him to touch. So much for that. But I didn't realize that until today, when I finally understood that it wasn't evaporation or a crack in the bottle that was disappearing my alcohol. It was the roommate.

I left him a confused voicemail...something like, "Uh, I found my liqueur complete empty...I'm leaving it on the counter. Also, I've noticed bottles of wine have gone missing. Let's talk later."

I called my friend Ed, who capably handled my hysteria..."Um, Um, Um, I think he's drinking my booze!" I said. Ed told me that I needed to confront him. Ken, who was sitting in Ed's office during the call, told me that he thought it was a deal breaker. I was ready to kill my roommate, or at least throw him out.

Let me explain. My roommate is not on the lease. He is my subletter. He pays less than 50% of the rent, 50% of the bills, and spends 75% of his time at home because he is currently without a steady job - he's doing some contract work for his old company, which he can do at home. He takes care of Lula, my dog, during the day, more or less. I've come home after a day at work to find that Lula has eaten my TV remote, several pens, and a pillow or two. He says that as long as he doesn't hear her, he figures she is okay. I've learned from experience that this is a mistake. Lula is usually causing the most damage when she is silent. She's stealthy like that.

So the last thing in the world I figured was that my roommate was a secret tippler. He has to be. I've noticed bottles of Cachaca gone, missing Vodka, an empty of liqueur, wine AWOL, and beer...well, that walked off ages ago. I haven't noticed him bringing his own bottles home. I haven't noticed him drinking at all, actually.

What the hell?

Another detail to consider is that I am not a heavy drinker -- typically I drink a glass or two of wine or spirits every week. I like coming home and enjoying a couple glasses of Sake or Whiskey or wine every once in a while. I keep booze around to entertain guests, not for my own boozehound ways.

So I confronted him directly. I told him everything, about the labor I put into the Yuzu liqueur, about the rarity of the fruit, about how I could only make it once a year. And you know what he did? He laughed! Granted, the guy loves Hot Pockets, Domino's Pizza, and fast food of all kinds; how could he ever understand that I actually cared about the liqueur? And when I asked him how it was (afterall, I didn't even get to taste it), he looked at me with a huge, self-satisfied grin, and said, "really good." Bastard!

He said he felt guilty, so he would keep filling it back up with vodka, but then he'd drink it, and then, well, you know. Eventually the well goes dry if you don't buy more vodka.

When I told my food buddy Ryan about the disappearance of my yuzu liqueur, he sent me this link for citrus of all kinds mailed right to your door. They have great fruits, but no Yuzu or other citron this time of year. Crushing.

The roommate has promised to repay me. That's not what I care about. I care about him taking my things without asking, and not asking for forgiveness after the fact. I care that I can't trust him, and that I now have to worry about what he's going to take of mine, or what I will discover in time. The fact that he doesn't respect me or my belongings is worrying, especially because he spends so much time at home alone when I'm at work.

At least he doesn't know where the absinthe is hidden.