Howard Hughes, he did what he do...
Mar. 27th, 2004 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thejunipertreeThe other night I had come home rather late from work, as I am prone to doing, and my mother had cooked and eaten dinner already. This isn't a problem as I don't expect anybody to wait around for me, let alone her, and to curb their desire to eat because I'm stuck at work. So, I made my own dinner (which was quite lovely, thanks) and put the pans I used in the sink to soak because they were kind of gnarly.
She asked me to clean up the dishes from when she and my brother had eaten, which weren't very many, and I agreed to do it. However, I managed to pass out on the floor shortly after eating because I was so tired, not waking up until around midnight. Getting up from the floor with numerous aches and pains from carpet surfing, I began to go about the process of getting ready for bed.
On my last pass through the living room, I glanced into the kitchen and realized that I had completely forgotten to do the dishes. Damn. A brief flirtation in my brain of just letting it wait until tomorrow, until the little OCD gnome that lives in my skull began shrieking in horror.
So, it's about midnight thirty and I'm standing in the kitchen doing dishes in my pajamas. And it brought back a long buried memory of when I was in high school, I knew this girl that everyone called "Moo". I can't remember her actual name, but no one actually called her Moo to her face and I didn't call her that at all.
But, I had gone back to her house after school, for some reason or another, with a friend of mine who was actually the connection between Moo and I. Moo wasn't really a friend of mine, she was a friend of this friend, and I only knew/associated with her because of that. It wasn't for any particular reason, we just had absolutely zero in common.
We go back to her house and I immediately notice that the hallway is positively piled up with all manner of things. And there's a sheet hung over doorway to the kitchen, blocking one's view from what's in there. Going into the living room, I find that it's a complete sty. There's plates of long abandoned food on the table, empty cans, papers, wrappers, cigarette butts on the floor, patches of ashes from knocked of ashtrays. You name it. I begin to feel vaguely distrustful of sitting on anything in the room, for fear of what may stick to me when I get up from my seat. And you couldn't pay me to sit on the fucking floor, no way.
It was probably the most disgusting place I have ever step foot in, it even trumps the crusty punk squats I've hung out at during my more *ahem* wilder days. As we're leaving, she goes into the kitchen and I managed to catch sight of what's behind Curtain Number One.
Fucking ew.
I can't even begin to describe the horror of what assaulted my eyes. I could only stand there, silent in disbelief that someone could live in such a state.
By no means am I a clean freak. I'm constantly being hollared at for leaving my many pairs of shoes all over the living room, reminded to straighten up my piles of books, and asked to please-clean-the-bathroom-now-and-not-in-three-days. But, I do have an internal gauge on what is acceptable and what is not.
Food being left out is completely unacceptable, especially in my house. We live in a ground floor apartment that has a severe ant problem in the warmer months of the year. Left out food would just be an open invitation for creatures of the more roachy variety to take up residence in our sock drawers and cereal boxes. Furthermore, I have a obscene obsession with keeping the stove clean. I dismantle that fucker once a week and scrub it down, not to mention wiping it down with some form of cleaner after every use (something I wish my mother and my brother would also adhere to). Dusting is also done about once every week or two, mainly because my and my brother's allergies are so nasty. My animal cages are cleaned weekly, including being broken down and scrubbed out in the tub, and the cats' litter boxes are changed every two days. Our bathroom is not full of hair and rings of bizarre, unidentifable sludge.
Of course, there are accidents. Especially with five cats living with us. Especially especially when one of these cats is rather old (going on fourteen years) and the other cats beat him up whenever he attempts to go near the litter box. Our carpet shampoo machine gets a lot of work, to say the least.
The apartment is cluttered, but notslovenly. And I just can't understand how a person could live in absolute squalor, to the point where their guests are afraid to sit on the furniture or on the floor. Unfortunately, I've been that particular guest on far too many occasions and it always leaves me with a sense of pitydisgustwonderment when I exit, stage right.
She asked me to clean up the dishes from when she and my brother had eaten, which weren't very many, and I agreed to do it. However, I managed to pass out on the floor shortly after eating because I was so tired, not waking up until around midnight. Getting up from the floor with numerous aches and pains from carpet surfing, I began to go about the process of getting ready for bed.
On my last pass through the living room, I glanced into the kitchen and realized that I had completely forgotten to do the dishes. Damn. A brief flirtation in my brain of just letting it wait until tomorrow, until the little OCD gnome that lives in my skull began shrieking in horror.
So, it's about midnight thirty and I'm standing in the kitchen doing dishes in my pajamas. And it brought back a long buried memory of when I was in high school, I knew this girl that everyone called "Moo". I can't remember her actual name, but no one actually called her Moo to her face and I didn't call her that at all.
But, I had gone back to her house after school, for some reason or another, with a friend of mine who was actually the connection between Moo and I. Moo wasn't really a friend of mine, she was a friend of this friend, and I only knew/associated with her because of that. It wasn't for any particular reason, we just had absolutely zero in common.
We go back to her house and I immediately notice that the hallway is positively piled up with all manner of things. And there's a sheet hung over doorway to the kitchen, blocking one's view from what's in there. Going into the living room, I find that it's a complete sty. There's plates of long abandoned food on the table, empty cans, papers, wrappers, cigarette butts on the floor, patches of ashes from knocked of ashtrays. You name it. I begin to feel vaguely distrustful of sitting on anything in the room, for fear of what may stick to me when I get up from my seat. And you couldn't pay me to sit on the fucking floor, no way.
It was probably the most disgusting place I have ever step foot in, it even trumps the crusty punk squats I've hung out at during my more *ahem* wilder days. As we're leaving, she goes into the kitchen and I managed to catch sight of what's behind Curtain Number One.
Fucking ew.
I can't even begin to describe the horror of what assaulted my eyes. I could only stand there, silent in disbelief that someone could live in such a state.
By no means am I a clean freak. I'm constantly being hollared at for leaving my many pairs of shoes all over the living room, reminded to straighten up my piles of books, and asked to please-clean-the-bathroom-now-and-not-in-three-days. But, I do have an internal gauge on what is acceptable and what is not.
Food being left out is completely unacceptable, especially in my house. We live in a ground floor apartment that has a severe ant problem in the warmer months of the year. Left out food would just be an open invitation for creatures of the more roachy variety to take up residence in our sock drawers and cereal boxes. Furthermore, I have a obscene obsession with keeping the stove clean. I dismantle that fucker once a week and scrub it down, not to mention wiping it down with some form of cleaner after every use (something I wish my mother and my brother would also adhere to). Dusting is also done about once every week or two, mainly because my and my brother's allergies are so nasty. My animal cages are cleaned weekly, including being broken down and scrubbed out in the tub, and the cats' litter boxes are changed every two days. Our bathroom is not full of hair and rings of bizarre, unidentifable sludge.
Of course, there are accidents. Especially with five cats living with us. Especially especially when one of these cats is rather old (going on fourteen years) and the other cats beat him up whenever he attempts to go near the litter box. Our carpet shampoo machine gets a lot of work, to say the least.
The apartment is cluttered, but notslovenly. And I just can't understand how a person could live in absolute squalor, to the point where their guests are afraid to sit on the furniture or on the floor. Unfortunately, I've been that particular guest on far too many occasions and it always leaves me with a sense of pitydisgustwonderment when I exit, stage right.
