Okay...OKAY!

Alright already!

You're right, communal food doesn't really work. At least not in our experiences...but it seems to be working for my roommates. A few clarifications:

1. I was merely venting yesterday. If it was a real problem, I'd talk to them all about it in person (I did this with a dishes issue we were having). Absolutely NO snippy notes. I agree wholeheartedly.

2. I've tried most of your suggestions in the past - with success - I had a mini-fridge in the dorms where I kept most of my food, my roommate last year and I split the fridge in half and if we used up something not ours we replaced it in a day. I think, though, that I'm not going to buy another mini fridge for just 9 months. And, well...it's awfully tough to split up a fridge into 5 sections and have everyone have enough room for their groceries. I think each situation has it's own good solution, and this one, for me, is to try and ease up on the OCD about food. I can live just as easy on cereal (and I'm not really picky about cereal when it comes down to it) as I can on granola. Sometimes there needs to be a compromise to preserve a relationship you love. Picking and choosing your battles - now there's a lesson I could use some practice in. At the same time, I think if it gets bad, I'll put my name on everything (in my roommates' defense I got home last night and there was an unopened jar of blackberry jam a few weeks old with my name on it) and I think my roommates will understand. And I do indeed eat some of their stuff sometimes. Which leads me to the next thing...

3. I think living with other people who grocery shop separately from you introduces a "grass is always greener" kind of mentality about food. You buy what you think you want, or what you're used to buying; and then they buy something you hadn't thought of - something your eyes glazed over as you scanned the grocery aisle...and it's new and sexy to you and immediatley all your food seems dull and unappetizing. It's the same thing that happens at the lunch table at elementary school - the trading of different items in lunches to make exactly the lunch you never realized you wanted until you saw it in other people's lunchboxes. Anyway, I think this is the phenomenon that perpetuates the communal food policy in many houses. It gives us OPTIONS we wouldn't have with the food we buy ourselves.

In any case, thanks for letting me vent, and sharing your stories, and offering up advice. You're sweet to think of me.

I'm working 12 days in a row (currently on day 10 of 12) so I'm prone to blowing off work this week...keep your eyes peeled for more posts! (Of course, now that I've said that, I've jinxed myself into a week of business and lack of creativity for good posts.)

No Kenny, that's MY pot pie!

(Alternatively titled: The post in which Kristy discovers that "communal food" is not for her.)

I have moved into a brothel.

Well, OK, it's not REALLY a brothel, but in some states it is - 5 unmarried women living together in the same residence. Remember when I was writing all about how moving sucks ? This is where I moved.

Let's start with the good: I love the house we live in. Yes, it's a fixer-upper. But it's cute, and we have all-new windows (key for keeping in the heat this winter), and good appliances, and lots of space. And it's in a GREAT area with TONS of finger-lickin'-good restaurants. And I love my roommates. They are considerate, intelligent, fun girls who are both honest and kind.

OK...here's where the pseudo-rant starts. When we moved in, we discussed the fact that with 5 of us sharing one refrigerator, there might be an issue with space for cold food. To that end, my roomates suggested a "communal food" arrangement - wherein we would all be privy to the food in the house, and if we ran out then the next person in the house who went grocery shopping would pick up more of what we were out of. (We are keeping a "communal food" list on the fridge so that we can write up when we run out of something.) Also, if you bought something that you wanted just for yourself, you write your name on it and it's yours.

In some ways, this makes sense. We all eat pita and hummus. No sense in each of us buying a big tub of hummus and a bag of pita and taking up tons of storage space when we could buy one tub of hummus and two bags of pita and just refill as needed. A few of us drink soy milk - I personally only drink the vanilla kind, and let them know, and it was agreed we'd buy that for the soy milk drinkers. So, that part of it makes sense.

I think, also, if you are young and carefree and of the mindset that food fills you up and as long as it's not moldy you can eat whatever...this also is a policy that works. But, I'm the crotchety old lady of the house and I have a little bit of OCD about food in that I only like certain things and specific brands of certain things and Iwant those things to be there when I want to eat them. It's just how I am. So, for me, this policy does not really work, because I'm not so flexible about what I eat.

Example: I woke up yesterday and went to the kitchen to start my morning routine (hot granola with vanilla soymilk, then shower, then get dressed, then work). No granola. That's OK, I'm not entirely inflexible. It's not freezing outside, I can have cold cereal. I pour a bowl of honey-nut Cheerios and go to the fridge.

(I should interject here that I had not been in the house much that weekend due to work and other functions, and I'm pretty sure I didn't eat there at all so I had not had time to take inventory of what we had to eat.)

In any case...you can probably guess where this is going: no vanilla soy milk. That's OK, I'm actually pretty bendy and easy-going when you think of it - I'll just take lactaid pills and have regular milk on my cereal. Except - wait - no regular milk either. Here are the options for my cereal that morning: orange juice (hate it), light cream (yes, like the kind for coffee), water. In the end, because I can't function very well without eating something to get me going in the morning, I ate the Cheerios. DRY. Like an infant. It wasn't the most miserable experience I've ever had, but it did make me grumpy.

And it got me thinking - when was the last time I went to the grocery store and didn't buy vanilla soy milk and granola cereal? We've been out of the granola cereal for a while, and I have been refusing to buy it because I know I'm not the only one who eats it and it's rather expensive. Are we also usually almost out of soy milk and I just always buy it because I need it?

So here's the dilemma: do I wait it out and suffer through OCD convulsions of having to eat bizarre things I wasn't planning on and don't necessarily want until they buy the things I like to eat again, or do I buy them knowing I'm paying for other people to eat?

I honestly believe that my roommates don't do this on purpose, mind you. I think they're just not as old and crotchety and grumpy and OCD about food as I am. I think if they wake up and can't have their hot granola with vanilla soy milk, or any cereal at all, or even any breakfast at all, they're just fine. And so the communal food idea works for them. But for me, I like my food to be there when I want it.

It might even work for me if there were just two of us living, so we could check in on taking the last bit of something. But there are 5 of us, and food is expensive, and I'm starting to get grumpy. I'm already the only person who writes their name on things they want for themselves. But I have no other choice! And honestly, I'm not convinced that policy works anyway...since I wrote my name on 2 cans of Spaghettio's (I told you I had OCD about food - Spaghettio's is a comfort food and when I want it nothing else will satisfy me) and they're no in the cabinet anymore. There are other cans of Spaghettio's there, but none with my name on them so there's no way to stop someone from eating them and then there would be none when I went to get them.

Of course, a lot of this could stem from the fact that I'm an only child and don't share well. I mean, I can share with one other person, but when I have to share with 4 other people...I have much less control over the stuff I'm sharing and it freaks me out. Do you think I can blame my parents for this one? I could certainly try - if they'd had another child maybe "communal food" would work for me.

Or, maybe....I should have known better at 28 than to live with more than one other person. =) OK, mom, you're off the hook.

In any case, it's not something that will kill me, and I do love the girls I live with and love where we live...so in the end I think the whole communal food mess is something I could learn to live with to keep living in such a great environment. Old dog, new trick. Go figure. ;)