Things I've Learned From My Roommates. (A work-in-progress, naturally.)

I am very lucky to have three of my closest friends as my roommates--Allie, Audrey, and Kayla. Audrey and Kayla just moved up to the city a few weeks ago, but Allie and I have been weathering this city together for over a year. We moved up here together, as it were. (A story for another day. But oh, what a story.) And I very much love living with these three girls. Really, I do. (Despite the fact that Audrey sometimes seems to be acting on orders from a higher power that she make my life as miserable as possible in a variety of ways, least of which are burying me beneath piles of clothing and shoes and deliberately creeping up behind me in potentially spooky situations and then screaming loudly, giving me small but very real episodes of cardiac arrest.) (And also despite the fact that Audge hacked my facebook account this morning and posted a status proclaiming that I bite my toenails.) (And also despite the fact that Audrey routinely pushes me off the sidewalk when we walk ANYWHERE together, in a very forceful and unfriendly manner.) (But I digress.) I love my roommates. But they make me feel dumb. A lot of the time.

Not purposely, of course. I feel dumb in comparison to them. They seem to have all of this knowledge about things I know absolutely nothing about. And this knowledge, according to them, is common. Everyone knows these things, they tell me. But I don't. So the feeling of dumbness sets in. I have compiled a partial list of the valuable information that they have thus far passed along to me. It has greatly increased my quality of life.

1. If you want to be able to successfully remove your baked good from the pan in which it was baked, you must use Pam.

On Allie's first birthday here in New York--last September--I decided to wake up early and bake her a cake the morning of her day of birth. This in itself was a monumental decision, mostly because my baking and/or cooking skills are nil. Zilch. Nada. I spent a lot of time on the phone with my mom and older sister, getting their advice on cake mixes and supplies and flavors. I eventually decided on a yellow cake mix and a lemon icing, simply because Allie's favorite color is yellow. (Turns out that the combo of yellow cake and lemon icing is...odd. Not necessarily bad. Just odd.) I ended up burning the cake slightly, but this error paled in comparison to the huge chunk of cake that was left in the pan when I tried to remove it. I used one of those special silicone pans--the "no stick" ones, you know?--that was in the shape of a rose. Too bad the rose was missing a good chunk. My panicked solution to this problem was quick and easy. And also messy and inefficient. And also somewhat revolting. I just globbed on a shitload of extra icing where the missing chunk was--the upper left portion of the cake. This both looked and tasted ridiculous. The icing was sliding all over the place and sort of melting and generally looking completely unappetizing.

Allie, of course, was a good sport about the whole thing, and reminded me that it's the thought that counts. She gamely ate the cake, as well. And she also told me that Pam, as it turns out, is not an optional part of baking. It's rather necessary, actually.

2. If you use heat warmers to keep yourself toasty in the winter during your morning commute, do not apply them directly to your skin. Or to your tights.

When we lived in Ridgewood, I'd have to travel an hour to and from work each morning. In the heart of winter (even though winter HAS NO HEART), I was completely miserable. All I did was complain about the cold. Eventually, Allie's best friend, Gloria, must've grown tired of hearing about my whining from Allie, because she mailed me some of those heat warmers that you can put in your pockets to keep your hands warm. You know what I'm talking about? They have adhesive backs, sometimes, and you can just stick 'em to your clothing. I figured heat warmers were the greatest invention ever. But I wasn't going to waste a heat warmer or two on just my mittened hands; I wanted those puppies on my stomach, warming my core.

Allie and Gloria warned me that the heat warmers would get pretty hot. Naturally, I paid no attention to anything they said. On a particularly cold morning, as I was running late to catch the subway to work (but not faceplant-late, of course), I yanked up my dress just before I left the apartment and stuck two heat warmers on top of my stockings, right over my tummy. I was practically salivating at the thought of riding the subway blissfully warm.

In the panic and hustle of catching the train, I didn't even notice that the heat warmers were doing admirably well. In fact, it wasn't until I'd grabbed a seat on the train that I noticed just how well they were performing. Those things were HOT. My abdomen felt as if it were on fire. Painful, hot fire. (Is there any other kind? Probably not. But I needed those adjectives. Don't judge me.) I tried a number of new positions in my seat, twisting and turning and squirming and generally making a spectacle of myself. When this did nothing to alleviate the crazy-hot heat emanating from my stomach, I tried slouching ridiculously in my seat so that my tummy wasn't pressing against the stockings (and therefore the heat warmers) with as much direct force. (If you just read that and thought it made no sense, you are indeed correct. This did not work. Slouching had absolutely no effect on the heat warmers.)

I was desperate, really. Still slouching, I yanked my stockings by the waistband and pulled them tautly away from my skin. People were beginning to stare at me. There I was, sweating, slouching, and holding my dress and stockings six inches away from my stomach. I looked crazed, to say the least. And this STILL didn't work. Those suckers were still insanely hot. I ended up having to reach up my dress (Yes, this is a true story.) and rip the heat warmers off my stockings. You could hear the adhesive backing as it was pulled away from the cloth. Basically, it looked as if I'd just reached up my underwear and removed two pantiliners, one after the other. I couldn't even raise my eyes off the floor for the remainder of the subway ride. I was so very embarrassed.

And hot. I got home that night to discover two perfect oval burn marks on my stomach. Battle scars, if you will. Ah, winter.

3. If you don't apply primer to a wall that has been painted far too many times, it will peel. When you try to paint a new coat.

I got quite a few panicked text messages from Audrey one morning when I was at work: she'd decided to paint the living room wall with the paint I'd bought the day before, but it wasn't going so well. The paint kept bubbling up and then beginning to peel. In foot-long sections. I had no idea we'd needed primer. Audrey wanted to kill me, naturally. Especially after I made the infinitely stupid suggestion to her that she should attempt to peel off the paint that had bubbled up. We ended up with giant, gaping holes of white on our cranberry-colored wall.

Audge ended up having to prime the whole wall and sand down the edges of the peeled paint and a laundry list of other fix-it steps that I still am not fully cognizant of. The wall looks good now, though. Thanks, Audge.

This post has gone on long enough, so I won't tell you how I learned that pay stubs do, actually, serve a purpose and should be saved (and not thrown away, as I did with mine), or how I learned that cutting one's own bangs won't come out too good if one uses her hand to plaster the bangs against her forehead before snipping them (this will actually result in said bangs being exceedingly too short once one removes her hand from the pressed-down bangs). Nor will I detail how turning up the heat on the stove to cook one's pancakes, in theory, faster, may actually result in the smoke alarm going off. (And this is undesirable, especially when one has an urge for pancakes at one in the morning, when the rest of the apartment building is sleeping.) I will leave all of that to your imaginations.