During a stint in Central America, my roommate contracted dengue fever. Luckily it wasn't the hemorrhagic version. For those not familiar with the infection, it is carried by mosquitoes and is pretty common in Latin America and some Asian countries. The unlucky person usually suffers flu-like symptoms accompanied by the feeling of their bones being crushed while experiencing the joy of endless diarrhea and simultaneous vomiting.  You'll often find those suffering from it on the toilet holding a bucket.

Dengue can be anything on a scale from symptomless to fatal. I'm glad to say that my bout did not include the toilet-oriented symptoms. Looks like my wife had it easy with me! Second time around, that needle on the scale tends to shoot towards fatal. And I'm still living with the same mosquitoes. 

The bone-crushing thing sounds more like chikungunya, another little treat delivered by tropical mosquitoes.

 

Waking up in a disgusting pool... yeah, been there and done that, and it was only slightly mitigated by the several layers of towel I had the forsight to lie on. That took nothing more than a food delivered tropical organism.

 

Who remembers The Furry Freak Brothers? Who remembers Fat Freddy and his Cat? Fat Fredy is thinking it's a good day, as the cat has not shat in his boots. The cat is waiting for him to put on the headphones 

 
 

Hahaa!

Thanks Zero, that made my day. But she's so pretty!

... I could try it.

Oh. Update on the sectional sofa couch monstrosity. Those Kirby vacuum salespeople came around yesterday evening and offered to demonstrate cleaning a floor. My wife asked if they'd instead do a sectional with that fancy upholstery attachment get-up. They agreed (free, mind you). Two hours later, done. They said they'd never do that for free again.

We didn't buy their kit, just thanked 'em for their demonstration (it's an impressive suction device for sure). This morning, everything's dry... still smells like some dude's unshowered sweaty buttcrackness. I feel contaminated just putting my nose near it. Fortunately, it's not in my house (moved it to the back deck, remember?) so I'm eating breakfast without gagging, but puzzling over what to do with that thing that's partially blocking my view out the window... hoping somebody calls on the ad posted.

My wife goes on a morning walk with the neighbor lady and she's got a sister who is "less than tidy" who needs a sectional 'cuz their couch is going with their oldest son who's moving out this week, and they're pretty much really poor right now. She finds out how untidy these people are and it sounds like a perfect match.

Wife tells me the story. We look into our accruing 2015 charity allocation/budget. It can cover the cost we put into the sectional thus far. Write-off! She makes a phone call. It's getting off our property and out of our lives this week (fingers crossed).

Years ago I had roommate who did not know how to clean. If you handed him a wet cloth and told him to wipe the table, he literally did not know the mechanical motions in your arm required wipe. I was baffled. I'll come back with stories later.

Wow I don't know if I can top showerpoop guy, but here are the tales of my old roommate Li.

Li was an exchange student from China, and as far as I can tell had never had to clean anything in his life and was just completely clueless. He also had a cat, and while he took precious care of his cat, he was also incredibly afraid of chemicals that could make his cat sick, so he never used soap or shampoo, never used dishsoap for dishes, etc. He eventually figured out that if he just kept using the same dish, then he'd never have to wash it. Later on, he figured out that if he just put everything into the rice cooker (at this point it was designated "his" because no one else would touch it), then he wouldn't even need dishes.

One day I finally got fed up with the mess on the table around the rice cooker (that flaky filmy residue from the rice cooker bubbling) and asked him to clean it. He looked at me dumbfounded because he had no idea what to do. I pointed to the residue on the table and told him to clean it up. He looked at it all confused, then scraped at it with his fingertips until he has accumulated a small pile and looked at me confused again. I hand him a piece of paper thinking he'd use that to scrape the flakes onto so he could throw it out right? Wrong. He puts the paper on top of the flakes and starts rubbing the table. I give up and show him how to push the flakes off the table onto the paper. Next I give him a rag with some water and tell him to wipe up the rest. He holds the corner of the rag, looks at the table, then meekly slaps at the table with it, just kinda whipping it around in the air. I'm just dumbfounded and take the cloth and show him how to actually rub the table and put some elbow grease into it. I'm angry and think he's just being an idiot, he retorts "hey, I never learned this in school like you ok?" and I'm speechless. He really truly has no idea.

He would shower just with water, and he didn't have a towel. He'd just "air dry" because it was better for his skin. I'm not sure if he ever did laundry... I think he occasionally showered with his clothes on to "clean" them.

His room was a disgusting mat of cat hair. The dresser seriously had an inch of hair on it, no exaggeration. He was sleeping in a matted pile of pet hair on the bed. Somehow the hair never stuck to his clothes though, and never got to the rest of the house... I'm not sure how he accomplished that. He always kept the door to his room closed, so I never knew how bad it was in there until he was moving out and I needed to show the room to potential new tenants. The first time I saw inside after I told him to clean up to make it presentable, I nearly gagged. I screamed at him that I couldn't possibly show a room that was covered in cat hair. Especially the bed that was white but covered in black hair. He replies "oh..." and kinda throws his blanket over the cat hair. "That's ok right?" and he was serious. He couldn't comprehend how that was disgusting.

That's all I can think of right now.