How I'm Getting Weirder Every Day and Am No Longer Fit To Co-Habitate With Other Humans

Eventually I'd like to have a significant other that I return home to each night and wake up to each morning, but lately I've been thinking about living with another person. I have only lived completely on my own without my family or roommates for about eight months now, but I think it may be ruining me. I have reverted back to the ways of barbarians - or at best the ways of a crazy, socially inept person who is stuck in their ways and no one would ever want to live with. Perhaps I could be featured on some nature show where they do an in depth look at young single teachers who reside by themselves.

This whole train of thought was brought on by something I did last night. After returning from work last night, still in my mismatched, sweaty clothes from the epic tennis match hours before, my hair standing on end, and my eyes all squinty from working on a Sunday evening, I proceeded to jump around and sing a couple of songs while the water heated up for my shower. Not knowing the words, I mostly sang nonsense syllables. But this isn't the part about my behavior that worried me. After my shower, I sat on the couch in my pink elephant pajamas eating some Half-Baked Ben and Jerry's straight from the container when some fell on my pant leg, just above the knee. Determined not to waste the ice cream (with the secondary motive of not getting chocolate ice cream on the couch), I placed the container and spoon on the coffee table and tried to pick up the ice cream with my fingers. That, my friends, did not really work since the ice cream was melting too quickly. I then decided to lick it right off of my pants.

I am not the most flexible person, but I dare you to find someone who can easily lick chocolate ice cream off the part of their pants, let's say about a third of the way up the thigh. Even if they could do it, no one could look good doing it. So here I am, contorting myself into different positions in an attempt to lick chocolate ice cream off of my pajama pants. Mostly I wanted the ice cream in my mouth, but also, I didn't really want it on the couch, and I wanted to minimize the damage on the pajamas. After several failed attempts, I decided to start slowly removing my pants - just enough to give me a little more give in the fabric and also to lower the piece of melty ice cream closer to my knee so I could more easily bend and get it.

Eventually, I succeeded.

But my success got me to thinking. Would such behavior be appropriate if I lived with another human, and not just an overly opinionated feline that believes she is a human? If I had a roommate, what would she think if she had come home to see me on the couch with my butt hanging out, licking my pants? Something about it seems socially unacceptable. I think I learned once that it is frowned upon to lick your pants in public. Or maybe it was that you should never partially remove your pants in order to lick off melted ice cream? I really can't remember.

And so, if any of you have ever, will ever, or have ever considered living with me, I have compiled a Top Ten list of reasons I am not fit to co-habitate with other human beings.

1. When I eat, the food doesn't always end up in my mouth. This leads to incidences like the one describe above. Or it could just lead to me walking around with crumbs in my scarf or a soup stain on my collar.
2. I do weird things. Again, I'll bring up the incident described in detail. Also, I may or may not sometimes use a Dirty Dancing workout video, make hilarious attempts at doing push ups or other upper-body exercises, or just do clumsy things like walk into walls, slam my fingers in the cupboard door, trip over my own feet, fall off the couch, etc. Sometimes I find things like a jelly bean in the sheets or a piece of popcorn under the couch. Should I throw that away? Probably. And I would if there were another person there to judge me. However, since I live alone, I eat it. Usually I don't regret it either.
3. I hit the snooze button more than once. I set it for impossibly short amounts of minutes, but insist on hitting it repeatedly, rather than just hit it once and have it set for the number of minutes I know I want to stay laying in bed.
4. I use all of the mugs. I own a ridiculous amount of mugs for one person. Naturally, I have a set of four matching ones for when company come over, but beyond that, I probably have another eight or so. I don't know. I've never counted. The point is, there are enough mugs to go around, and yet most of them seem to be dirty most of the time. I drink a lot of tea, but I also reuse mugs fairly often, so I'm not sure how this happens. It must be a magic trick I can do. It isn't the best magic trick, but whatever.
5. I sing and talk to myself often, and it usually doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I tell myself things, talk to inanimate objects around the house, and sing really loudly. Sometimes, like Marshall from "How I Met Your Mother" I just sing strings of nonsense words. Sometimes I sing strings of nonesense syllables. I don't know what to tell you. I have a degree in linguistics and make a living teaching language, and yet on my own I revert to gibberish.
6. I make a lot of sound effects. Upsetting email demanding more paperwork be done - BAH! Not the food I want in the kitchen - RAWR! Computer going too slow - UUUUUUUGH! Walk into a wall or door - GROMP!
7. I walk around in various states of undress. There's no one here. And I am pretty good about remembering to close the blinds. It doesn't really help that I keep things like underwear, socks, tights, pajamas, and undershirts in the bathroom, but everything else in the bedroom. Still, I may start getting dressed in the morning, but give up partway through because I need my cup of tea immediately. I might come home where it is too early to take a shower and put my pajamas on, but too late to justify changing my clothes. Who wants to take out jeans and a sweatshirt, put them on, get them dirty, only to take them off again almost immediately? On the other hand, I don't want to do dishes in my dress clothes, and it is difficult to get comfy on the couch in work clothes. I could get spaghetti sauce on my dress or cat hair on my pants. So some nights I might walk around for an hour or so in tights and my bra. What? No one else except Squeaky lives here. It's not like the cat wears clothes!
8. I have too many shoes. Seriously. I have a lot of shoes. Where would the other person put their shoes? There's no room!
9. I play the same song on the piano or my ipod over and over and over again. While I like this, another person my find my compulsiveness annoying. I try to only play the piano or listen to my music loudly if I know Downstairs Neighbor is not home.
10. I fold my laundry and leave it on the arm chair for days. Where would anyone else sit? I have basically taken over the entire couch. Just because I usually sit curled up in one corner doesn't mean I don't need the whole thing. Every once and a while I need to sprawl out. But if my laundry is on the chair, my roommate would have to sit.....on the floor? On my laundry? On the piano bench?

As you can see, there may be some issues should I ever live with a roommate again or move in with a significant other. With any luck they'll be just as weird as me so they can't judge. On the other hand, do I really want to live with someone like me? Meh. I'm an acquired taste, but I'm not that bad, right?

When I ate ice cream earlier today, I didn't spill any on my tights, so the incident from last night has not yet been repeated.