Conni Covington Was A Bad Roommate

As I write this, it is 2018-12-08 14:14 Hours Eastern, a Saturday. I have a typical Saturday-Sunday weekend off, so I am free from my day job today. Just now, my roommate, Conni Covington, has re-entered our apartment after having stormed out about 30 minutes ago. She took out a small frying pan from the cabinet and started cooking a veggie burger in it, right next to me, where I just got finished cooking some ground beef I will use later, taco-style. She was mad about supposedly not being able to use the stove to cook her lunch a half an hour ago, but I expected her then to simply just use the other burner just like she has done now. Her temper-tantrum was completely unnecessary, a nasty, unexpected surprise. She did not give any pre-warning that she would like to use the stove, or any notice whether or not she desired to have it all to herself or not. I still don't know whether or not she thought it would be objectionable to cook while standing beside me, also cooking. She was just in some kind of an enormous rush to go somewhere, I guess, but only for a little while(?), and did not plan ahead with sufficient time for cooking(?) or enough time for eating. I feel so unsafe now. I finished cooking the taco meat and left it there to cool on the back burner so I can put it into a Glad container later without melting it. Now I have locked my bedroom door just in case she grows even crazier. I'm so frustrated with her bad behavior. She is an exceptionally bad communicator who constantly treats me like I am an unwelcome intruder in her mansion instead of a co-equal renter in a low-cost old apartment 8-block that I pay my fair share for. **Sigh**. She already dictated to me that she cooks on Sundays, with no opportunity for me to express any other need on my part. I'm OK with that time, it turns out, because I can just cook on a Saturday and then stay out of the kitchen almost completely when Sunday arrives. I can just quickly grab some pre-prepared items to eat, grab some ice for a drink, maybe microwave a dish for 2 minutes each time I need to eat, or even less than that, on a Sunday. So that was the new normal, a strong established pattern that she demanded, and I was simply able to accommodate that by capitulation without confronting her. The path of non-resistance was simple and low-stress, I could absorb the affects of her strong preferences, and also keep my cool. Now, I've had lots of roommates in the past. Some have been awesome, some have been average, some have been bad, and some have even been criminal. I have some past roommies I miss and want to see again, and one that I have an outstanding court judgement against. I have both been the renter who pays the other roommate my rent (as is the case now), and the person who has to get the other roommates to pay me so I can pay the landlord. I want you to understand I have a depth of experience here by which to compare Conni Covington to others, and that I am being a reasonable thinker who isn't overly emotional about evaluating her performance here as a roommate. Conni has so far paid her half of the rent and not stolen anything from me, and I don't anticipate that she will. So at least she is not a criminal. But I can't actually trust her, because she told a lie of omission about a material fact of consequence about the lease and what it would be like to live with her. She failed to disclose that she owns a cat. At first, when I was checking out the apartment, she hid the cat entirely. Later, when I saw the cat, she claimed it belonged to a friend and she only watches it sometimes, like 1-3 days out of every 2-3 months. The truth is: she owned this cat (and also owned this cat's siblings who previously died) for years. And she says this cat has kidney problems. She lets the cat run her life (and interfere with mine). Conni leaves her bedroom door open at least wide enough for the cat to come and go at will at ALL times, but for a few moments in the day when she changes clothes. The litter box is in the front room. And this effectively transforms all of the common areas into Conni's personal bedroom space. If I want to use the bathroom, I'm going through Conni's bedroom to get there. If I use the kitchen, I'm also in Conni's bedroom. If I enter the front door, I have entered Conni's bedroom. This effectively destroys the entire value of the lodging I expected my obligation for half the of the lease to give to me in return for my hard-earned cash. To top it off, when she leaves the apartment, she sneaks out as quietly as a ninja, so that I am also deprived of the benefit of using the common areas when it is slightly less like her bedroom because of her absence, and thus slightly less stressful to me. I think she misled me about her cat ownership because she was financially desperate for cash as she was busy finalizing her divorce. And I suspect that she earns poverty-level wages teaching German at UGA. The thing that really annoys me most of all, is that she has not even given me a key to the mailbox. I am a grown adult man, older than she, but Conni Covington thinks another independent human being is going to be OK with her interference with their postal delivery. She keeps a filthy napkin on the table, long after it has become a bio-hazard. I have a strong impression that she thinks she's saving the world from global man-made climate volatility, one dirty napkin preserved too long at a time. I have a very demanding, physically and emotionally challenging day job. I am very good at my work, though. It starts early in the morning, and lasts until the afternoon, Monday through Friday. I bicycle to work and back again, to save money by avoiding automotive costs. I have enough economic, physical, and social stress without the needless extra harm Conni gives to me. I had such high hopes that this could be a mutually beneficial and rewarding collaboration when I moved in, but her significant dishonesty and bad behavior have destroyed most of the trust a normal relationship needs to have in order to be healthy. I'm trying to manage my money, my diet, and future while keeping my composure. I think I've been more than accommodating and have managed my own behavior & stress responses better than most people could if they were in my shoes, given what she's done. I've got bigger fish to fry, in the long run. I wrote this blog post to get these negative feelings off of my mind, so that I can forget about them for now and take actions that move me toward some nice long-term goals. Home ownership, app development, maybe I could take my first trip to New York City or to Europe in the summer of 2019. At the same time, I hope to do my civic duty to pre-warn anyone who might become a roommate of Conni Covington that she might treat you the way she has treated me. I am entering this text as a saved blog post today ( 2018-12-08 ), and scheduling it for a computerized future automatic release on the day after this lease ends ( 2019-07-26 ), so that whatever else happens to me in-between now and then or after, the rest of you might benefit from this information.