Keepin' It Real

Renty is starting to annoy me a little bit. It was inevitable, I suppose. When you live with someone long enough, their weird little quirks are bound to bother you after awhile. But I really didn't have any major complaints about Renty (besides the cat molesting) until he got laid off a couple weeks ago.

When he's working, Renty only makes coffee on the weekends. But while he was unemployed, he made it every single day, several times a day. Now, I love the smell of coffee. I don't drink it, but the smell is heavenly. My favorite aisle in the grocery store is the coffee aisle. However, Renty drinks Folgers. Which is probably great for the wallet, but it smells like hot tuna when it's brewing. The first weekday that he was not working, I came home from my job at 5pm and asked Captain Carl if he was making the dreaded tuna casserole. I hate tuna casserole. I hate anything that has heated tuna as an ingredient. Captain Carl just looked puzzled and said no.

It took me a few days to figure out where the fucking tuna smell was coming from. Every day I would search desperately to find what was causing it. I ran lemons through the disposal, I pulled everything out of the fridge, I dumped baking soda in the litter box and the washing machine. But I could still smell it.

Then one day I stayed home from work and noticed that whenever Renty started up the coffee pot bam!...hot tuna. Nasty. Lucky for me, the smell goes away as soon as he turns it off.

But guess what? Renty never washes the coffee pot. NEVER EVER. And the coffee pot belongs to us, not him. So once a week, I get pissed off and angrily wash the dried hot tuna smell out of it while muttering to myself that it wouldn't kill him to buy decent coffee now that he's working again.

And then there are the drinking glasses. I've never seen one person use so many glasses in a day. One day he used five, all for water. Every time he came downstairs, he would put an empty glass on the counter, take a clean one and get a drink.

Oh and let me just mention the ice thing. Renty loves ice in his drinks. Especially when it's 1am and he decides he needs a glass of water. I've been woken up several times by him dumping ice into a glass in the middle of the night.

The man cannot do anything quietly. He slams the microwave door like it weighs 50 pounds. My office is on the other side of the kitchen wall and when he's in there banging around, I'm cringing from the noise.

His kids are the same way. His youngest runs around upstairs yelling "Dad! Hey Dad!" every five minutes. Last weekend I think I heard "Dad! Come on Dad! Spongebob! Dad! SPONGEBOB!!" about a hundred times.

But I still like Renty. You know why?

• Because he calls his son "tiger" and sometimes when he's been drinking, he calls Captain Carl that too.
• When we have drunk karaoke nights, he joins in and sing songs like "My Humps" and "Gold Digger". Let me tell you, there is nothing like a drunk white guy singing a Kanye song.
• Speaking of "My Humps'...that's also his ringtone for his ex-wife.
  
• He agreed to share his bathroom with the Kiddo because we needed his bathroom for our new renter, who would not take the room unless she got a private bathroom.
• Whenever he meets the Kiddo in the hallway upstairs, my son is all "Hey man, what's up?" and Renty is all "Oh nothing, just keepin' it real" and I giggle every time.
  

P.S. Our new renter should be moving in today or tomorrow. She's almost 40, a librarian and hangs out with Emo. I shit you not.

P.P.S. Don't forget to keep it real, yo.