living with women

As I’ve contemplated getting married, and even as I have looked forward so much to getting to live with Kevin, I’ve also been feeling a little grief as I say goodbye to this era of my life that has been “living with women.” Sometimes when Jen and I are going to bed around the same time and debriefing about life, I feel like crying.

So this is an ode to my six years of living with women in the form of a list of all my roommates:

Jenny Kreinbrink : 315 Hayden House, East Quad, freshman year
Ariane Boese : Africa, 2002
Lindsay Horan : 424 Tyler House, East Quad, sophomore year (this had to have been the biggest room on campus)
Karen Ostafinski (bedmate) : LT Orlando, 2003
Heather Lieder : East Madison Street and Sagebrush Circle; junior and senior years, as well as my first year as a working person
Meredith and Carey : Florence, Italy, 2004
Jess Hibma (bedmate), Jen King, and Kristin Roelofson : LT Virginia Beach 2006
Jen King : Medford Street, 2006 – 2007

Each of these lovely women put up with me as I walked in my sleep, talked in my sleep, and generally made a mess.

And I can’t leave out all the people with whom at one time I shared a front door and refrigerator space: Jenni, Michelle, Carlee, Vanessa, April, Katie, Sara, Nicola, Judi, Anna, Julia, Kendra, Jineane, Kristen, Natalie, Dana, Kendra G., Kaitlyn, Julie, Shawn, Hayley, and Charis.

Many of them (more specifically, my most recent roommates) put up with my obsession with the Food Network, my awkward yoga poses, my guilt-induced, anal-retentive recycling habit, and/or my falling in love with a guy who lived across the street.