Lessons in Cohabitation: Expect the Unexpected

Another series I'd like to embark on is the exploration of the lessons I've learned during my first foray into cohabitating with a significant other.

In May of this year I moved from Atlanta, GA back to my Florida hometown (home county, really) and into an apartment-style condo with my boyfriend Patrick. Moving in with an SO is a big step no matter who you are, but to go from long-distance-love to boyfriend time all day every day was quite an adjustment to say the least. To say the very least. Some days it is glorious and everything I'd hoped for! But there have been other days that are just.plain.painful. But every challenge is potential for a new lesson learned - and that is what I'd like to chronicle here.

So these are my tales of adventure and words of wisdom taken from... cohabitation.


LESSON 1: Expect the Unexpected

Living with boys is nothing like living with girls. Not to state the obvious, but it's just not. I've had boy roommates before (no romantic involvement) and I do feel like this statement applies across the board from guy friends to brothers and usually boyfriends.
As a general rule, boys are
a) messier,
b) louder, and
c) considerably less dramatic than girl roommates.
They don't want to borrow your clothes, they don't get huffy and expect you to read their minds, nor do they whine about you leaving dishes in the sink/clothes in the dryer/[insert shared living space offense here]. They like to live and let live.

So those are the things you can expect. But they're still BOYS. And grown men in their mid-late 20s are essentially still little rambunctious boys, only they have jobs and pay their own bills [typically]. (So I suppose in some ways we aren't terrribly different from each other.)
Which means they laugh at poop jokes, like to wrestle, and don't mind a little mayhem in their lives. So things tend to happen that we as girls just wouldn't ever picture in our wildest scenarios.

For example: I never expected that I would get slammed upside the head by a soccer ball as I lay in bed at 6:30am on a Wednesday morning, while only partially awake and largely unaware of my surroundings. But alas, that happened this very morning! I can't think of the last time I went from zero to an INSANE-WITH-FURY screaming She-Hulk in 2.5 seconds... but oh yes - that happened as well.
It all went down a little something like this:
6:15am Patrick gets out of the shower, puts on his underoos and begins playing with the cat

6:20am I partially wake up, Patrick plants a kiss on my forehead and asks when I expect my alarm to go off. I groggily mumble something akin to "mmmsish-forthy" into my pillow in response. All seems well.

6:25am As I hear kitty-playtime escalating around me , I grumble a warning to Patrick to please not make the cat jump on the bed, as he can get clawsy during playtime. [See below for further explanation.]

6:28am Presumably Patrick kicks the soccer ball toward Hermes - which we both know he is afraid of - and Hermes flees the room. Patrick sets his sights on my sleeping form.

6:29am I feel a soccer ball land on the bed near me. I lethargically push it off the bed, not even bothering to open both eyes.

6:30am I hear a crash as Patrick kicks the ball onto his bedside table, and before I can even grumble my disapproval, he catches the ball on a bounce (from off the table) and kicks it up into the air over the bed... where it promptly smacks me in my eyes-closed half-dream-filled HEAD.

6:31am Hellfire fills the bedroom.
I hurl the ball across the other side of the room (thankfully not breaking anything) while bellowing "What the FUCK are you THINKING?!?!?"
I sit up, fling the sheets off, kick my legs over the side of the bed and proceed to continue in my raised voice with "Well CONGRATULATIONS, I am UP NOW!!!"

6:32am I storm past a sheepish Patrick out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. I yank open the freezer to find a solitary waffle left in the Eggo box (Patrick's go-to breakfast), which I seize and stuff into the toaster. At this point I realize I'm not even remotely hungry (probably from the adrenaline still pumping through my angry veins), but dammit I needed something to do in a huff. And what better punishment than for him to watch me eat the last waffle?

We spent the rest of the next hour in silence, save a couple childish and needless comments from me, like "Oh there goes my alarm for when I SHOULD be waking up!" Patrick merely continued to wodlessly iron his clothes and allow me to stomp around until I got in the shower.
He came to kiss me goodbye as he left for work, and I begrudgingly obliged and wished him a good day at work. Harumph.

Lessons learned today:
1) Not really a new lesson, but I am NOT a morning person. I had a similar reaction a couple weeks ago when I was awakened by cat claws IN my buttcheek after Patrick allowed playtime to get too close to the bed. Apparently, however, he decided he still needed a hefty reminder that I lack any amount of early bird disposition.

2) Soccer balls should be kept in either closets or car trunks. Clearly storing them out in the open is too great a temptation for kicking at innocent targets.

3) BOYS. ARE. DUMB. I can think of no better explanation for kicking a ball at a sleeping BEAR - let alone in the HOUSE, which moms have been preaching against since the invention of balls.