Old Biddies and Laundry

Okay. I think I need to find a new residence in London.

This is just getting ridiculous.

I told the woman I live with (my grandmother), yesterday when she asked for my laundry, that she was NOT to do it, that I was going to do it myself. She mumbled in German and I went upstairs, thinking I would do my laundry on Friday, when the woman was out with her German people.

I came home from class today to a less than stellar reception. Chilly. Cold. I wondered why. I found out why.

“You need to hang you stuff up,” she says to me as I head towards the stairs. I turned back, so my voice would reach the kitchen where she sat reading her German paper, and said “Did you go up, into my room again? You’re not supposed to go up, into my room.” She’s 81, she has bad knees and a bad hip, so she’s not supposed to go upstairs, and yet (it’s either German stubbornness or utter German stupidity) she does anyways. And then gets mad at me for “making” her go up.
She says back “I didn’t know what was what and what was wash.” And I just started loosing it. I’ve had this discussion with her before, about not doing my laundry.
She claims I’m not allowed to do it because I “don’t pay for the water” and that my doing laundry would waste water. Keeping in mind, the old bat washes most things by hand.
So, she did my laundry. And was complaining that she didn’t know what was actually laundry because I had my clothes thrown around the room. She doesn’t understand that it’s the first, official week of classes and all of my jeans are on rotation, so yes, my shit’s on the floor but it’s where I can find it, because in the mornings I’m in panic mode. Each morning, I panic.

So she lectures me on hanging things up and I go back to the kitchen and stand in the doorway and say “You’re NOT doing my laundry! I TOLD you that.” And she just ignored me.

Yes, right, I have a “sweet life.” I go to university, my parents pay for all that shit, I have no student loans, yes. I should stop complaining. Yes. I should just say no to her. Yes. But it’s hard when the old bat’s 82 and doesn’t care how she affects others anymore. "No" means dick-all to her and she knows it.

Move out, some say. Why, says I. like I said, “sweet life,” right? I don’t have to pay rent. I don’t have to pay utilities. I don’t have to pay for food. “Sweet.” But what some don’t understand is that all of that is payed for by a German 82-year-old biddy who has, just this year, discovered that this fact makes her my overlord. A position I’m sure she likes. Being German and all.

I can’t do my own laundry, because I’d waste water.

Just tonight I got a lecture on my mug. MY MUG. Apparently, when I put my big mug from home in the microwave to heat water for a single cup of tea (as opposed to using the kettle and therefore too much water, of the stove and her led-covered-death-trap pots) I waste huge amounts of Hydro. Another thing I do not pay.
I’ve been semi-lectured, as a reminder, that I am not to take daily showers. Wastes water, “ruins skin”.
She tells me, when I come home from school, when I have to read, when I have to study, when I should be doing my work, all the while asking why I’m on my computer, that I “should be outside.” I don’t listen to her here. I just close my door and pretend I’m deaf.
She feeds me. “Sweet life.”
She feeds me various and undistinguishable fried meats and then tells me I’ve “gained a lot of weight” and need to “exercise exercise exercise!” And she refuses to let me just not eat.

“Just say no.” It’s hard to “just say no” when the old bat pays for mostly everything and is your mother’s 82 year old mother. Try it. I dare you.
Go up to your grandmother and, when she asks you to do something, “just say no.”
It’s hard. And even if you manage it, she might pull a move my wonderful grandmother likes to pull. You know, the “come oooooonnnnnnnnnnnnn” move, followed shortly by the “fine, I’ll just go all alone/I’ll just eat it all myself/I’ll just sit all alone/I’ll just do it all by myself/If you really don’t want to *sigh*”
It’s a fun one, let me tell you.

She also doesn’t want me going (borderline refusing to let me go) to the “Take Back the Night” mach on the 20^th. Something I’d really love to go to.

Fuck, man. I'm 21 years old. I want to do things for myself!
But, shhhh K, you “live a sweet life!”

God, you people don’t know the half of my “sweet life.”
La de da, candies, puppy dogs and icecream!

“Everything is absolutely, positively, without a doubt fantastic! Sunshine, rainbows and kittens. Perfect.” --SWS