Homelife...or something like it.

Picking my way through the obstacle course of our house with and armload of bottles and glasses is a difficult task, but at long last I break free from the morass of shoes, boots and unnameables in our front hall and win my way into the living room. My housemate, Dave, is sleeping on the couch, the television still on and with a beer bottle still in hand (although it seems that he has spilled the contents on himself at some point in the night). His position on the couch is so improbable that I am forced to wonder, at least momentarily, whether he was perhaps killed in the throes of some terrible spasm as he watched television in the small hours of the morning. The uneven chorus of grunts and snorts that he makes in his fitful slumber, however, are more than enough to dispel any such thoughts.

The living room presents its own difficulties, and I am suddenly tempted to drop my load where I stand and return to the relative safety of my own room. This time of year has always heralded times of particular squalor for us, as we all become far too engrossed in meeting neglected deadlines and studying for exams in classes long since forgotten to worry ourselves with such base details as hygiene and human dignity.

As I kick and pick my way through the living room to our ancient and crumbling kitchen I begin to strategize, formulating my plan on how best to disperse my payload so that it might go unnoticed among the other heaps and piles of unwashed dishes. Of primary importance is the avoidance of any telltale signs or the obvious placement of signature dishes where they may arouse suspicion.

The filth of the kitchen is such that should any of the five housemates begin to clean their own dishes they will be forced to clean countless others in the process in order to gain unfettered access to the sink. This has led to a burst of creativity from all of us in our attempts to conceal which dishes may have been ours, as we all secretly plot and plan, waiting to see who will crack before the others. It has become a contest of wills and an amusing, if disgusting, diversion from the unpleasantness of all the work that faces us.

I have decided to take one of my mugs back with me to my room, unwashed, as I am the only one who uses this particular one. I scrape my dish clear of any identifiable food scraps and place it carefully behind a stack of similarly homogenized dishes. Another oddly shaped glass will have to come back with me, I decide, as I am sure there were too many witnesses to me using it on Saturday night. I place my beer bottles into some cases stacked in the corner of the kitchen after dumping the remnants in the sink, the beer running over and collecting in the dishes stacked there.
Shaking my head as I negotiate my way back toward my room, I turn my thoughts back to my thesis, and what I should do next.

It is now 5:30 in the morning; one of the quietest times in the house and therefore one of the best to get work done. The best times to work are constantly in flux, as we are all seeking them out. It has been my goal to stay one step ahead. I used to stay up late, and wait until everyone had gone to sleep before I would try to work. Eventually we all began doing this, until at long last the group of us would all be laughing and talking together until six in the morning, waiting for everyone else to go to sleep. I then switched to getting up early, so that I could start working as everyone else went to bed, and this was very successful until all of my housemates began rising early as well. The cycle has continued, and now finally the morning has become tenable once again. The trouble is that I have completely destroyed my circadian rhythm and now rely on a diet of stimulants (coffee and ginseng) and depressants (alcohol and pot) to give me a close approximation of a healthy sleep cycle.