Passive-Aggressive Much?

I don't respond to passive-aggressive behavior. I find its use to be insulting and a poor way of expressing yourself. (Friends would probably tell me that I'm passive-aggressive myself, but I'm going to choose to overlook that for now.) At any rate, this afternoon was a prime example of the sort of thing that annoys me.

I live in a four bedroom, two bath house. Which means that two of us share each bathroom. I share mine with GirlRoommate. In general, I'm a semi-clean person, not obsessive by any stretch, but I do clean up after myself in the common areas of the house, including the bathroom. One of GirlRoommate's pet peeves is that I shave over our sink, and trim my beard there. I'm conscious of the mess this can make, so I do wipe the counter down of beard trimmings fairly regularly. Our counter also contains the usual array of toiletries; shaving cream, toothpaste, contact lens solution, and Nyquil...

Apparently our bathroom has recently become a habitant for ants. While at lunch today, I received the following text message.

"We have ants in our bathroom - i killed about twenty of them - they r all over your medicine bottles - could u please clean the counter today @ some point?"

Not necessarily the cruelest of messages, but after I returned home a bit later from lunch, with the Hoyas game on the tv, she proceeded to storm around our kitchen, slamming dirty pots and pans around, throwing dishes into the dishwasher, smacking cabinets, while sighing loudly and cursing to herself. Apparently she was also annoyed with the stack of dirty dishes that 4 people can accumulate, although she claims that she hasn't made dinner at any point this week.

Somehow she perceived all this to be my fault, or at least was determined to make me feel like it was. Memo to the rest of you: Sighing and cursing to yourself won't make me feel bad for your burden. It does nothing but make me think you overreact. So my simple response was to keep watching my game, turn up the volume to counter the vacuum cleaner when she decided it would be helpful to clean a 3 square foot section of our kitchen, and wait for the game I care about to end, before I would clean the bathroom as she had asked.

You do not force me to do anything... if you want my help, you ask politely if I will... or you suggest that it might be appreciated if I could assist you. You dont just huff and puff and act as though you're the only one who is annoyed by mess, especially when you have never once acted to clean your own bathroom in the house. (Yes ladies, the boy is the one of the two of us, who vacuums, washes the mirror, and scrubs the tub and toilet).

Needless to say the rest of the afternoon has been spent in virtual silence, with her downstairs, and me upstairs. My other roommates have been blissfully unaware of the pseudo-drama. Lucky them.