living in community.

so living in community with someone is really difficult! there are two things that make it hard for me.

1. food. Mairead doesn’t cook. which is fine with me as my concerns coming into this thing were that either she cooked like Paula Dean or she only ate things like mayonnaise, spam, and canned peas. however, she’s not what I would call a creative or adventurous eater (for example, the only kind of pizza she eats is cheese). so it’s been stressing me out, trying to think of things that are interesting enough for me to eat but not so scary that she can’t eat them. I have to think of someone else’s culinary preferences instead of just my own. I mean, I’ve fed my roommates before but they were all guys and they ate anything I gave them. we’ve been working through it. I’ve been trying to make at least three items for each meal in the hopes she’ll like two of them (out of the turkey burger, sweet potato fries, garlic slaw meal she did really like the burger and fries bit. and even though she’d never had sauted zucchini before, she tried a bit of it and then suggested we buy more zucchini). when we have pizza, we have half cheese, half something interesting. she’s a real trouper.

2. Mairead graduated from college in May. and I mean, she graduated from COLLEGE. like going to football games, partying, not wanting to graduate. not only that, but she’s from philadelphia. born there, grew up there, went to college there, she did spend a semester in Rome but she did the stereotypical American study abroad thing where you hang out with Americans and don’t learn the language. so you can see, she’s going through a massive culture shock. she’s all of a sudden out of college, having to work, surrounded by nuns, in the midwest, no parties, no going to bars, lots of church functions.  oh yeah, and living with me.

so she’s having to figure out what being out of college means for her, and it’s rough (on her).  I try to help but I don’t really know how.  I try to be someone she can talk to about this stuff and hopefully she’s not too freaked out by life in cincinnati.  but it’s hard.