"And I hate the phone / But I wish you'd call" ~Joshua Radin "The Fear You Won't Fall"

Every time my cell phone makes some semblance of a sound (the half-hearted bzz! of the text message noise, etc.) my heart drops into my stomach, and my stomach expands to twice its size. I'm waiting on good news (that I can't type here yet but will update as soon as I have an official answer) and for my non-Becky roommate to complain about something else. I'm beginning to realize that I must be really hard to live with because everyone always has one reason or another to be cranky with/at me. My other roommate is moving out of the apartment on January 1st, and I'm moving into her room. We're showing my room as a result (since it will be the empty one), and my roommate keeps finding it necessary to stick her nose into the exact plans and timetable Becky and I have set up for showing people the room and for my cleaning it. This drives me NUTS because it doesn't directly impact her except that she needs to get a security deposit and is on and will remain on the lease until July because of strange things with the landlord. I can understand that she's concerned about it, but she needs to trust that when I say that I will have the room done by the time people come to look at it even if I have to be up all night the night before to finish, that doesn't mean that she can "warn" me three days ahead of time that if my room's not suitable to her liking that I'm staying in it and she's renting her room. I do understand her concerns--I *swear* I do--and I would probably worry about it just as much, too, but I would hope that I wouldn't poke my nose in every day and constantly check on what the other person was doing. Occasionally you have to let go of some control and put your trust in another person.

Before Becky moved in, this roommate, our previous roommate, and I got into it over my cleaning my room to show it. They gave me a schedule of when it "had to be done" ("thanks, Mom"), and the reality of the situation was that I couldn't have it done in time because of travelling, work, etc. Mind you, I told them this at the time, so my roommate should know that if I felt I couldn't follow through that I would own up to it. I've read enough responses to Craigslist room ads at this point (ugh) to know that everyone purports that they are "nice, easy-going, friendly, and clean." I said no such thing in my response to them when I was moving into this apartment. I stated flat-out that I am really, really messy and a huge pack-rat, but that I am trying to work on it and that I keep the mess to my own room. (To misquote Neil Diamond, "What's the use in lying?") I'm using this as another example of the fact that I am aware of many of my faults (or those things that others view as faults and do everything I can to be as accomodating of those faults as I can for others' benefit. Among my out-there faults is not my lack of honesty. If I can't do something, I usually admit it. If it's important enough to me or to others, I try to improve myself and fix the "wrong."

I got about four hours of sleep last night (which at least partly explains this need to complain that I'm giving in to right now) and left about one minute's remnants of clean-up when I left for work this morning because I was already running late and didn't want to be that late. I've been sitting here in fear all day that my roommate will walk into the otherwise clean room and send me a text message telling me that it's not good enough. The logistics of the whole search process (we're showing the room tonight) dictate that she can't do that (since the room she's in costs $100 more per month than mine--the one we advertised), but I'm still shaking with paranoia. Let's just say that despite all her wonderful qualities, my roommate's departure will make me happy, given how worked up I am over this little an issue.