Mission:  Organization

A while back, Swistle wrote some posts detailing cleanup projects around the house. I liked the idea and loved reading her posts, so I thought I'd write my own. I hope it turns out as interesting as hers. It's a cleanup project and a testament to my husband's enduring patience, all in one. With bonus cat pictures!

Our second bedroom is basically a catch-all room, and even though I try to keep it clean in general, in reality what happens is that I clean it, it gets horribly messy over a few months, and then I have to start from scratch and clean it again. During the weeks of Giant Work Project Brainsuckage, anytime the living room needed to be straightened up, I'd toss the stuff into the spare room. It was getting pretty scary. Also, the plants overwinter in there, and I have to be able to get to them to water them.

There had to be a reckoning, eventually, and since I finally had two days off in a row (yesterday and Thursday), I decided to tackle the mess.

"Oh, hai. I is supervisin."


I have too much crap and hate to throw anything away that might be useful. Here's a perfect example of why I have such a recurring problem with clutter.

This is a really nice tool kit that my mom bought me when I was in college:


It's cool, but the case has had a broken latch for years:


Which makes it do this:



Also, we got this for our wedding:


So why do I still have all the tools in the broken case? It just seemed wasteful to throw it away...it was mostly good, and besides, it felt wrong somehow to take all the sockets and wrenches out of their molded plastic spaces. This type of weirdo thinking is part of why we have so much junk in our spare room in the first place.

But I finally went for it:



When I opened the toolbox to transfer everything over, I found these:


My dad gave me this little set when I was in middle school. There used to be a lot more screwdrivers, and I don't think I ever used the little socket screwdriver thing, but I always loved having my own screwdriver set.


When we went to Chicago back in the summer, Nick & J-Dog gave me a really cute kitchen cart, which has been lying in pieces in the spare room ever since. I finally put it together.

"Looks gud, but you shudn't stop yet!"

"You gotta puts all ur stuff on teh shelves. Here, I shows you."

Okay, short of having an eBay store or getting ready to move (nope and nope), why would anyone need this many empty boxes?! I mean seriously, this is getting out of hand. Wait...where's the cat?

"Dis plant tellin lies. Dere was no tastin going on.
I is innocent. Pure as driven snow."

And woot! Finally done:

"What potent blood hath modest May
What fiery force the earth renews"

Beltane, like Samhain, is a time of "no time" when the veils between the two worlds are at their thinnest. No time is when the two worlds intermingle and unite and the magic abounds! It is the time when the Faeries return from their winter respite, carefree and full of faery mischief and faery delight. ... When the veils are so thin it is an extremely magical time, it is said that the Queen of the Faeries rides out on her white horse. Roving about on Beltane eve She will try to entice people away to the Faeryland. Legend has it that if you sit beneath a tree on Beltane night, you may see the Faery Queen or hear the sound of Her horse's bells as She rides through the night. Legend says if you hide your face, She will pass you by but if you look at Her, She may choose you. (Witchvox)

When we moved into our apartment in May of 2004, I was very excited about having the yardlet out back, a tiny plot of our own, as wide as our unit and about eight feet from the building to the back fence. I had grand visions of flowerbeds and herb patches and sitting outside to enjoy the green space. It was short-cropped grass when we moved in, a blank slate, full of potential, but I still had a month and a half of school, a wedding to plan, and a job that called for four weeks of summer day camp. By the time I thought about the yardlet again, it was because rabidmonkey gave me a miniature rose bush and J-Dog gave me three little potted herbs as housewarming gifts. When I went out to plant them, I discovered that the yardlet was beginning to give up some of its secrets. I was delighted to discover four other miniature rosebushes, growing bravely back from where they'd been mowed to the ground.

Before the end of summer, a fence-high row of hibiscus had grown up along one side of the yard. A huge tangle of honeysuckle covered the corner where another fence divides our yardlet from the yardlet to the south of us. I was poking around out there one day and found about two dozen bricks, half-buried in the earth along the fence. I dug them all out and used them to build small half-circles around the rose bushes. I felt like I'd discovered a secret garden of my own, once loved by someone and then left to go wild.

A few days later, I came home from work and threw open the curtains and nearly burst into tears. The honeysuckle was gone. The grass was cut short again, and so were J-Dog's herbs. All the bricks I'd dug out and arranged were gone. I was furious, but there was really nothing I could do. I hadn't had a chance to mulch the planting beds, so the yard men had assumed everything was a weed. The only thing they spared (thankfully) were the roses. Eventually I went back out and salvaged a few more bricks from along the fence, but the sadness remained.

The next summer, the roses struggled mightily on, but the honeysuckle and the hibiscus were gone. Last summer, to my surprise, the hibiscus sprang up in one of the rose beds, about five feet away from its original patch. I mulched carefully last summer, and three of the four rosebushes survived another year. This evening I went out again, armed with a giant bag of cedar mulch. The yard men mowed today while we were at work, but luckily they left the bricks and the weed-choked rosebush beds alone. Weeding the tiny patches, I once again felt the promise and possibility of a garden. We'll probably never establish one here, since the yard maintenance is so unpredictable and we don't even have an outdoor spigot, but I'm trying hard to keep the roses alive until we move into a house of our own. I plan to dig them up and take them with us, because as romantic as it was for me to find them, I don't trust that the next tenant will care as much. Besides, I'm sort of hoping they'll bring some of their magic with them.



(If only I'd found this article last night instead of tonight:  "On May Eve, bless your garden in the old way by making love with your lover in it." Secret garden, indeed.)



Reading:  Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce

Playing:  Because of the Times by Kings of Leon

Watching:  Firefly. It's just as awesome the third time around.

Dumpster Diving Gone Wrong

You may have read about Upstairs Neighbor Guy before. He's a big improvement over the previous upstairs neighbor, the trashtastic chick with multiple elephantine children (sound-wise, not size-wise) and umpteen angry boyfriends. He does play his crappy music too loud at least once a week, but usually not for long, and there's that whole constant vacuuming thing, but overall he's a huge improvement. However, he has one incredibly obnoxious habit. He throws objects over the railing of his balcony. Most of the time, they clear our yardlet and fence and land on the lawn behind the building.

Back in December, I documented the appearance of a lampshade on the lawn:


Squirrel kegger gone wrong, or first sign that our neighbor is a freakin' froot loop?


Since the lampshade (and its attendant lamp), most of what I've found in our yardlet and on the lawn have been more ordinary if no less disgusting pieces of litter:  a KFC bucket, two huge pieces of sytrofoam, a broom handle, a large piece of that fake grass carpet that's used to build mini golf courses.

But then, last night / early this morning, around 12:30 or so, I was reading blogs and winding down for the evening when I heard the most godawful clang from the backyard. I flipped on the porch light, but didn't see anything. Figuring he'd definitely pitched something over, I checked again this morning. There's a damn toaster oven lying in pieces on the lawn. Who tosses small appliances over their balcony rail? Sweet cracker sandwich, this neighborhood is weird.




Now, this guy is a known Dumpster Diver. I'm afraid to think what his apartment probably looks like at this point, since I've heard numerous reports of him dragging stuff back from the trash bin. We threw out a folding chair with a wonky seat a few months ago, and MB saw Upstairs Neighbor Guy toting it home a few hours later. For the most part, I say more power to him. As I see it, Dumpster Diving is just another way to recycle / reuse stuff. But once he's done with whatever he's scavenged, I don't feel like it's too much to ask that he put it back where he found it.


I did a little Dumpster Diving of my own today, though it was more of a Spot Beside the Dumpster than a Dive. When I got home from work, there was a crib leaning against the fence behind the Dumpster. Someone threw away an entire crib. I was appalled. Granted, it's not the nicest crib in the world, but I'm sure someone would love to have it to fix up for their baby. It seemed like such a disgusting waste to let it get carted off to the landfill, so I ended up dragging it back to my apartment. I'm sure I provided immense amounts of entertainment to anyone who saw my scrawny out-of-shape ass hauling that damn baby bed down half a city block. My dad's going to come by with his pickup on Saturday so we can send the crib to Goodwill.


MB was out having dinner with our good friend / Evilducky's husband, The Englishman, so I called to warn him before he had a chance to come home and discover the crib on his own:

VBG:  "Hey, honey? I just wanted to let you know that there's going to be a folded-up crib in the living room when you get home, so don't freak out."

MB:  "A what?"

VBG:  "A crib. A baby's bed? I didn't want you to come home and be all 'What the fuck?' so I figured I'd better warn you."

MB:  "Can I still be like that?"

VBG:  "Sure. You'll have some time to practice."

It's a planet made entirely out of ice.

Okay, not really. But it sure feels that way when the furnace decides that it doesn't want to kick in and the overnight low is going to drop to about 9 degrees Fahrenheit. MB called the landlord about an hour ago and left a message basically saying, "Uh...the heater is not responding. Could you maybe send someone to check on that tomorrow?" Not fifteen minutes later, the landlord called back to see if he should bring us a space heater for the night. Never wanting to be a bother, MB told him we'd probably be okay with all of our blankets. And he's right. But it means an early bedtime for me, since my fingers are literally going numb from cold sitting out here at the computer. Bollocks. I'm glad our landlord is such a nice guy, but for serious: It is really. fucking. cold.

Moldy Goldy

On Thursday night, I went into our spare bedroom, planning to spend about an hour shoving boxes and leftover Christmas wrappings and books that have overflowed the bookcases into the closet in order to make the room habitable in time for MoMB's* Friday-evening arrival.

About an hour and a half later, I had just about finished hauling all of the stuff that was in the closet out to check for mold. Yes, mold. Some of you may recall this lovely scene, from last September:

(ominous water bubbles, bathroom ceiling)

It seems that when the upstairs neighbors "destroyed" their toilet (according to the maintenance man; I did not ask for clarifying details) and we had water running down our walls, bubbling our ceiling paint, dripping out of our doorways, and squishing around in our carpet, it was also seeping into the back corner of the spare room closet.

It would be a bit of an understatement to say that I was pissed off. Quite a bit of one. I was composing this entry in my head as I went through all the stuff from the closet, and it was going to be a doozy, too. But I worked off most of my anger, and by the time the closet was re-packed (with the lowest row of boxes wrapped in garbage bags for protection), the room cleaned, and the moldy cardboard boxes hauled to the Dumpster, I decided to just be glad that it wasn't worse.

The mold gods spared our camping gear, a box crammed full of stuffed animals given to me by MB and my parents, and a box of books. The only real casualty was a bit of a heartbreaker, though. In the back corner, we found a box where we'd stashed some of our wedding gifts. (Silly me, I thought they'd be safe, tucked away in the closet. GRRR.) One of them is this really nice photo album / storage box thing with a fancy silver frame as a front cover. It's even engraved with our names and wedding date. I hadn't put anything in it yet, but I'd always planned to fix it up with our favorite photos. When I pulled it out, the end of the box it came in had black mold all over it. I pulled it out, MB and I looked at the wooden back, and it had white dusty stuff all over. I started scrubbing at it and the stuff brushed off, so we thought it would be okay, but then I opened it and the fake velvet inside of the front cover has a patch of nasty ass yellow-orange fuzz on it, and there are spores all down the side where the picture pockets are. Spores, people.

I almost cried. We don't have a whole lot of nice stuff, even from the wedding, and we'd probably never be able to justify the expense of paying to replace it, so if I can't figure out a way to clean it up, that's pretty much it. If anybody knows how to get mold off of fabric, please give me tips. Everything seems dry, now, so I think if we could get it cleaned up it would be okay and the mold wouldn't come back. If we can't clean it up, I figure I'll try to salvage the engraved frame. I'm trying to be mature about it and not spend a lot of time stomping around and whining.

Besides, now I can post a totally gnarly mold photo and freak you guys out! Score!





In the closet, I also found this pair of jeans:


I almost put them back in, with a couple of huge sweaters I never wear and some thermal shirts I bought the year I did a research project for my geomorphology class that involved canoeing in November. After all, these were my first pair of hip-huggers. These were the very jeans that finally got me out of my late-high-school skater pants phase and into my still-enduring hippie phase. In memoriam, my skater pants:

(At Stonehenge, no less. I still wear that jacket.)

They also went with me to 6 1/2 weeks of geologic field camp in Montana. We have a history together, man. A lot of history, involving 8-hour treks up and down scree slopes, 100-degree desert days, cacti, and spear grass, this evil little plant that Google fails to track down. Spear grass had little hooks on the end of each blade. They'd catch in your clothes and slowly work their way in as you moved, so that every now and then you'd feel a sharp poke in your ankle, and you'd have to fish the damn things out of your sock. Anyhow, I really didn't want to throw my trusty, ratty jeans away, but I finally had to face the facts. Fact 1: My poor jeans had become more hole than jean. Fact 2: my ass is probably NEVER going to fit into a size 9 again. Then I remembered some posts from Fussy, in which she photographed clothes that she was donating to the Salvation Army and told their stories, so she didn't have to feel bad about giving them away. Eureka! And so, it was done.



I now present a closet that is finally living up to its potential:



This means that the spare room is clean! Woo-hoo! A New Year's Resolution achieved! (At least until we call the landlord to deal with the mold and have to haul everything back out of the closet again.)

(Also, because I feel compelled to share, this is the actual bed that MB and I shared for two years. TWO YEARS. We were skinnier then, but still...two grown people in a twin bed is a little bit much. Ah, the lean days of college...too big for a little kid bed, but too poor for a grownup one.)



*MoMB = Mother of MB (har har)



Reading: Multiple Choice by Janet Tashjian, the author of the fantastic The Gospel According to Larry and Vote for Larry


Playing: Lay it Down, Black Eyed Man, and Miles From Our Home by the Cowboy Junkies

The cleanest carpet in the Midwest

I think our upstairs neighbor has OCD. He vacuums his living room at least every other day, often at 10 or 11 PM. He vacuumed it yesterday, and now he's vacuuming it again. To my knowledge, he doesn't have pets, or kids. I'm all for a clean rug, but seriously? Every other day? Does he have a sandbox up there? An enthusiastic pet gerbil? Is he cutting cocaine on the coffee table and spilling some? (OK, better not think about that.)

He also seems to move furniture around a lot more than seems absolutely necessary, but hey...who am I to judge? After all, I only vacuum our carpet about once a month. Maybe he's tormented by our lack of housekeeping noises and is trying to give us a hint?

The Leak Report, continued

9:25 AM   It's worse. It's practically a gentle spring shower in the full bath. The carpet is sloggy and squishy and our walk-in closet already stinks of mildew. Goddammit.

~12:30 PM   Called MB and asked if the maintenance guy had been by; he hadn't. Asked MB to call the landlord and explain that it was getting much worse. Hoped it would make a difference.

~1:45 PM   Called MB again. Found out he hadn't called the landlord, because he didn't have the number. Even though I've given it to him twice in the past year in similar situations. Pause to collect pieces of exploded cranium. Give MB landlord's number and "suggest" that he call.

~3:25 PM   Call once more. All is well. The maintenance man has fixed whatever it was that was causing the ceiling to hemorrhage (though I guess we'll never know what it was, since SOMEONE neglected to ask) and has used some kind of "industrial strength hose thing" to suck the water up out of the carpet.

5:00 PM   Arrive home to find carpet still damp and squooshy, but bearing signs of obvious effort to correct the problem. This time around they also left a box fan to help with the drying process.

Currently: Burning candles and hoping things return to a pleasantly mildew-smell-free state as soon as possible; listening to MB watching Men in Black and reveling in the fabulousness that is Tommy Lee Jones's line delivery.

Apparently, there's a leak.*

Edited to add this helpful timeline:

6:45-ish AM Discover puddle. Replace sopping towels. Fume a bit.

6:50 - 7:10 AM Photograph puddle. Transfer, resize, and upload photo.

7:13 - 7:15 AM Post photograph in two different places on the internet.

8:00 AM Arrive at work. Reflect on the absurdity of posting a photo of the puddle in two places on the internet before actually calling the landlord to fix the cause.

8:12 AM Call landlord and leave a message.

3:15 PM Talk to MB on the phone. Learn that the puddle above was caused by the cat, who knocked over the bucket that had caught most of the water that leaked in during the storm last night. Think uncharitable thoughts about spoiled felines.

3:24 PM Talk to MB again. He has spoken to the landlord. Apparently there was a tree branch on the roof that was "channeling the water" down the side of our building. Surmise that nothing was actually done to fix the leak. Look forward to the next time we get to do this.

8:15 PM Edit this entry.


The day wasn't a total bummer. I found out this morning that a pair of dress pants I assumed I'd become too chubby for not only fit, but made my ass look spectacular. MB cooked dinner and it was delicious. We had baked chicken, shells 'n' cheese, green beans, and corn. It really started with the corn, because:



I finished the ninth book for my reading project today, which means I'm five reviews behind. Good and bad.

Henna feet are just plain good:






Reading: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett (starting tomorrow)

Playing: Celtic River, Plans by Death Cab for Cutie, the Garden State soundtrack



And last of all:

Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?

Look, everyone knows you two are lovebirds. Why not do the brave thing and admit it to the world? The times are kinder nowadays. There may be the odd ultraconservative bigwig or overprotective mom, but so what? Piss on 'em. Come on out of the closet. It's ok.


Take this quiz!

Addendum, Caveat, Etc.

First: Also, when your ex-husband/boyfriend/whatever--whom you threw out last summer after a spectacularly entertaining screaming fight--comes around at 9:00 on a Sunday morning and bangs on your door insistently for 20 minutes...it's not your fault, and clearly you have every right to ignore him, but DAMN it sure does rack up points for the Miss Trashtastic Pageant.


Second: Our neighbor is not that bad. I know this. While this stomping/jumping/shrieking was pretty much a daily thing back before Christmas--for two months...almost every day--we recently had weeks and weeks of relative decency. She doesn't threaten us, she doesn't deal drugs (as far as we know), and most of the time her children don't throw trash in our yard. Most of the time. So, while I do occasionally feel the need to vent and complain about her, I fully admit that it could be so much worse.

I am, however, COMPLETELY FUCKING OVER the assholes who sit in the parking lot blasting their car stereo bass. OVER IT.


Third: I've been browsing local real estate websites lately, ogling houses for sale in the city and outlying counties. A good friend of mine appropriately calls this "the grownup version of playing dress-up." I have a general guess of what we'll be able to afford when we finally are ready to really start shopping, and I've been snooping around to see what's available in our price range. Right now, it looks like it's:

        >>small, soul-less, 80s-built, one-levels in niceish neighborhoods
        >>larger--but still smaller than we want--slightly bland houses in those questionable transitional neighborhoods that can swing either cute and young-family or shady and lock-your-doors-24-hours-a-day in a few years' time
        >>huge, roomy, beautiful historic houses in scary-ass neighborhoods where people get shot or engage in standoffs with the police. (I am not making this up. The neighborhood where one of my best friends grew up had this happen just a few weeks ago. Luckily, her parents moved to an area of town that's pretty much at the top of the dreamy list when we were in college.)

There's also the mystery houses, the ones that are too good to be true. I drive by one of them every day on my way home from work. It's this big old place on a corner lot. It has 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a fireplace, built-in bookcases on one wall of the living room, wood floors, high ceilings, and a big bay window off the front room. It's a block away from a library, and faces a huge park that is ringed on all sides by big, nice-looking houses. The yards look neat, the houses look pretty well-maintained, the cars parked out front aren't total clunkers, and the park seems well-tended. It looks every bit like an area on its way to being gentrified. But no matter how nice the weather has been--even on days when the riverfront near work is packed with people--from January until now, I have never once seen children playing at the park. Never once, even though there is a nice playground in the middle. No kids playing, no dog walkers, nothing. Ever. So there's more to it than the fact that the house is listed at $65K and has been sitting on the market since about Christmas.

But then...oh, then...there are the dream houses. Like the one I found last night. The huge 3 bedroom, 1 full/2 half bath, 1899 farmhouse with a huge wraparound porch and a full basement for $99,900. The commute would suck, and the utilities run about $250 a month. But oh...that house. That house...how I covet it.



One more thing, and then it's time to watch Lost on DVD

Is this not the most glorious piece of carrot cake you've ever seen?



And because I'm a nerd, I measured it:


Since carrots are vegetables, I'm not going to feel bad for eating this while I watch TV.



Reading: Lirael, sequel to Sabriel.

Just Finished: Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett

Playing: a new mellow mix CD

Dear Upstairs Neighbors

If you want to let your horrid, brattish, one-diapered one-in-elementary-school children stay up past 11 PM, that is entirely your own business. However, when you let them jump up and down repeatedly, run around in circles while stomping as loud as they can, and shriek at the top of their lungs, it becomes our business.

Fuck you, and good night.

PS Your music is great. Know what would make it better? If you'd KEEP IT TO YOUR GODDAMN SELF.