Boring post about moving and apartment cleaning.

Okay! Apartment cleaning update, 'cause I know ya'll are following along with my saga. I'm posting it so I can remember how much trouble it was cleaning up an apartment after living there eight years with two cats and two male children who went from grade school to adulthood.

Both bedrooms completely cleaned out, with ceiling, walls and carpets vacuumed. Ditto for living room. Trash was picked up today and four more bags of trash went out to the cans. No more recycling left.

Found the cat pee smell in the living room MIGHT have only been coming from the black bookshelf that was the only piece of furniture left in the room. The boys had said they wanted it but then decided no, so I broke it down and as I was pulling the nails out of the cardboard backing I smelled the pee stink. After I moved all the bookshelf bits to the landing so I could vacuum the pee smell seemed to be gone in the living room. We'll see tomorrow.

Still left is cleaning the oven (damn, I had wanted to skip that but it's listed in my rental agreement) and the compartment under the cooktop. Vacuum, sweep, scrub the kitchen floor and take down the old curtains. Clean the bathroom and sweep and  vacuum landing and the stairs down to the outside door.

Call the landlady and set up an exit walk-through. Next Monday the last of the trash goes out.  Seven more days.

This post took a left turn at Albuquerque...

So. A daily regimen of writing.




Pictured: Knock-off Romulan Ale

Some days, inspiration refuses to show up, like that person who promised they’d do something important for you, like come to your party and bring the booze. Then they don’t and you’re left playing beer pong with room-temp tonic water and orange juice and Mad Dog and everyone feels awkward and pissed.

That analogy has never actually happened to me because my anxiety doesn’t allow me to throw the type of parties where it would occur and good lord, I would never even invite friends over for movie night if I couldn’t purchase a 30 case of Busch and couple of bottles of Two Buck Chuck.

But when inspiration doesn’t show up when I ask it to, it is as frustrating as I imagine the above scenario might be.

Sometimes inspiration does show up but it drags you through the swamp to the mulberry trees on the other side…like the hour I spent typing up that first analogy because I wanted it exactly right. So, you travel through the swamp and get all mosquito bitten and ruin your favorite boots because damn it, you can’t just buy mulberries at the grocery store and you want to make some homemade dye for your new renaissance faire skirt.

 

Okay, that scenario is totally in the realm of possibility for me.

I'm the one in the big hat. Well...I'm the one in the biggest hat. Those are the friends for which I would totally provide cheap liquor on movie night.





 

Oh, gad. Thank you, BroGirl62. Thank you.

Sometimes inspiration shows up way too early without calling first and follows you around the kitchen throwing ideas at you while you’re trying to make your breakfast of poached eggs and buttered toast and tea. The ideas are like dozens of popcorn pieces being thrown at you, bouncing off your body and falling to the floor and you want to gather them up and plant them and grow popcorn trees, but you really want some poached eggs! 

That’s what happened to me this morning. Because inspiration is a damn flake and I don’t even know why I’m friends with a mental construct. This is what comes of being bipolar. I can’t recommend it.

And now I have to drive the hour to my old apartment again, because this is cleaning week before I turn it back over to the landlady.

Nothin' to see here...

I miss my kids. I miss DB and Dexter. Yes, it's only been a month since I moved and I've seen them periodically. It's not the same as having them under my roof and making them dinner and hanging out with them watching SF Debris get his sci-fi snark on. I know they're eighteen and twenty-one and this would happen eventually. Shut up. I miss my babies.

not pictured: DB and Dexter. Dexter would never wear that type of sweater.

The above photo shows David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth. It has nothing to do with me missing DB and Dexter, but it captures the kind of cognitive dissonance we all three think is hilarious.

The unexpectedness has been removed.

It is one of those mornings where time just gets away from me. I was up at 5:45 am, now suddenly it's 7:21 am and I have to get ready for work.

Note to self: Do not start reading Cracked.com articles in the morning. You will never get any work done because you will always want to chase down the interesting links.

So...last week, when I was packing up the last of the books at the apartment, I came across my copy of A Clockwork Orange. I thought DB, being the vaguely counterculture, rabble rousing 18 year old that he is, might want it.

Me - "Bub! Have you read A Clockwork Orange?"

DB - "Not yet. I've been meaning to."

Me - "Here, you can have this copy."

Dexter (older brother) - "Hey, I'd like to read that too."

DB - Hands the book to his brother, "you can read it first. Just give it back when you're done."

Yep. Those are MY kids!!

This story sounded far more hilarious in my head, but I'm out of time. So here's a picture of DB attending a district 300 school board meeting a few years ago, to join his fellow Youth Labor Committee friends in protesting the proposed severe budget cuts.



Comrade Drakon Mal'chika

Did you ever...

Did you ever try to take one established household and cram it into another established household? It is more frustrating than you might think. Unless you were thinking it's tear your hair out, "WHY did I think it was a good idea to quit smoking THIS month" frustrating. Then you are correct.

We have a metric shit-ton of surplus stuff.  If your wondering how a metric shit-down converts to pounds, it is precisely however many pounds of surplus stuff we have. Lots and lots of kitchen items, furniture, records...actual vinyl records and also paper records of things you're supposed to keep, paycheck stubs and such. Toys such as Bionicles and myriad action figures from a plethora of movies and cartoons.  Pictures, both framed and in film envelopes and loose.  I have an entire dresser drawer, a fairly deep one, full to the top with photographs plus more in an under bed box. Dating back to the 1980's some of them. Many things to be sold at a yard sale, priced to move.

"How much is this jumbo Pyrex baking dish?"

"A dollar."

"These action figures?"

"Five for a dollar."

"This two-shelf bookshelf?"

"Ah, that's a good solid wood bookshelf. Very sturdy and in excellent condition. That is two dollars."

Bah. Must get ready for work now. Yet another trip to the apartment afterwards. Fourteen more days, fourteen more days, fourteen more days. When this is over I am getting a damn 90 minute massage.

Just when you thought it was safe...

Just when you thought you had run out of hangers and there were no more hangers and you might have to buy more hangers and you thought, "But how did I run out of hangers..."

Oh, my gods! A bazillion hangers! Okay, maybe fifty. Fifty...seven, let's go with that number. I haven't actually counted, but I'm sure it's more than thirty and probably less than a bazillion. That's totally a real scientific number by the way.  I heard it the other day on NPR. A visiting science dude said that when Julius Caesar blew out his death rattle as he died, he blew out a bazillion carbon atoms and that's why you weigh less in the morning than you did the night before even if you haven't pooped yet. 

So, fifty-seven hangers just hanging in my closet, clothes-less.  Unemployed, as it were. That's still a lot of hangers.  They wait until I leave, then they get all tangled up together like a Roman orgy.

"Et tu, Brute?"
 

Hangers. You just can't trust them not to murder you in the Senate.


Our story up to now...

So I got married. At the courthouse.

Yeah, more about that later what I really want to talk about is OH MY GOD the stuff I am finding in my apartment as I clean out 8 years of pack rat living. Seven bags of trash out of my sons' room so far and that really worries me.  Although, when they came over to help me haul stuff to the car yesterday they were entirely unconcerned over what the bags might contain. True hoarders would be terrified at anything being thrown away, true pack rats would be worried that something important had been tossed with the junk...maybe they're not crazy.  A large portion of it was old papers, broken toys, pencil stubs, broken pens, and all the other things boys think are neat when they're pre-teens. I think they moved the porn so I wouldn't find it. At least...I hope they did. Don't worry, Dexter is 21 and DB is 18...so it's okay for them to have porn. I just do not wish to know what kind of porn they prefer.  I'm going to stop saying porn now.

Some random stuff I found:

• 10 lids to plastic storage boxes, varying sizes.
• 5 pairs of DB's shoes
• 4 belts, only one of which fit DB now
• 4 pairs of headphones
• 2 wired computer mouses (mice? that sounds weird)
• A partridge in a pear tree

Okay, that last one is an exaggeration, but honestly, it could've been growing in the closet and we'd never have known.