Visitor

There is a strange New Zealand man in my house. He is in my living spaces with his odd accent and his putting the word 'ay' after every sentence, and his calling his shoes 'Jandals' instead of 'Thongs'.

He's not here uninvited, though - he's staying with us for the next two weeks. He's a friend of the bosses who has taken a job with the company, and while he waits for his permanent accommodation to be ready, he's staying with us.

It's strange to be sharing a house with someone that you don't really know. My best friend lived with us for a couple of months once, but this is different. This is a stranger - a friendly stranger, but still a stranger. And Mrs Martin spent a long time back in grade one teaching us about stranger danger.


I always knew that i didn't want to share my space with a random stranger, and that's why I never lived in a shared house. I never had any desire at all to.
I'm a quiet-ish person in my down time and I like the place i spend my time to be quiet too. And I guess that's pretty easy if your roommate is quiet too. But the thing with sharing a house with someone is that sometimes you want to break the silence, and you can't just do it - you have to be reserved about it. And to be honest, there are some things that really shouldn't be done quietly (and which I very much struggle to do quietly) in order to get maximum enjoyment out of them.

So here I find myself trying to live my regular day to day life in my house and trying to ignore the innate desire to play hostess non-stop (an inborn urge that I'm pretty sure comes from my mother's side of the family). And I'm a little vague on the rules about sharing living space with someone. Do I have to treat him differently than I would if it was just a friend staying for a week while they were in Melbourne? Do I insist that he buys all his own food and drink and basic household requirements like he would if he was a renter? Do I have to do loud things quietly so that he feels more comfortable, even if it makes me less comfortable? And just how many times can I ask him to say 'six' and 'flip a car in a ditch' before he gets annoyed at me giggling at his accent?

Barking Mad

The dog next door is barking and I cannot concentrate on what I'm writing. It has been barking since I got home at 6 tonight and it has barely stopped. It's a wonder that it hasn't passed out. It was barking yesterday when I got home from work, and the day before that and the day before that. It is constant and it has begun to eat at my patience because it has been doing this every day, all day for the past 2 months. Generally things like this don't bother me but this dog barked from the time I woke up on Saturday (8am) until the time I went to bed (12am) non-stop. Without exaggeration, the dog could not have been quiet for more than 10 minutes during the day.

If i yelled non-stop all day, every day for 2 months, I don't think I would have a voice left. Do dogs lose their voice? Is it possible for this dog to bark itself quiet? Maybe tomorrow the barking will sound a little hoarse, then the next day it will be faint, and the day after it will just sound a little like a frog is croaking nearby. Maybe I will look out the window and the dog will be lying down with a mug full of warm honey milk and a packet of soothers looking sad and sorry for itself.
Maybe it will go to the doctor/vet and the doctor/vet will tell him that if he keeps barking, he might lose his voice permanently. Maybe he will buy a laptop and decide that emailing and blogging is a much better substitute for barking himself stupid and he will quietly browse the internet all day long. Maybe he will realise that his barking is a result of his mother not loving him enough, or feeding him for long enough, or maybe he will realise it's because he is lonely and he will be happy because he has the internet on his laptop and he can join a doggy dating site so he never has to be alone again.

Maybe he will just be quiet so I can think some sane thoughts.

I have begun looking around the house every time it barks to see if I can find something sharp and at this stage I'm still not sure if the sharp object is for the dog or for my own ear drums. I'm pretty sure that a few more days of this and I will know the answer for sure.