Heck of a weekend… for other people, I’m sure. Mine was spent cleaning the heck up out of my place. My cousin accepted a job in DC at a veterinary hospital and is coming up this week on a “find housing” trip. I am very glad that she didn’t ask for my help in finding a place since I have no connections, but she did ask for crash space. This is something, barring emergencies, I’m not good at providing. My place isn’t large, and since our storage area’s been off-limits to residents for nearly the past year, all of my stuff is in my place. With the lights off, for most people my place is a deathtrap.

They just allowed us to move stuff back into storage a few weeks ago, but they made the new rule that we can’t store anything in cardboard boxes. Well guess what everything I had was in? So a quick trip to Target and recommendations from Michael netted me a few Rubbermaid tubs and I managed to clear out some of the stuff, even overcoming my pack-rat tendencies and throwing some stuff out. Even so, there are some things I want to keep that I don’t necessarily have space for, so they’re just going to be “things in storage” until I have a larger place. Some fun during my trips downstairs to take more stuff out, was seeing a resident who’d been dumpster diving carting some of my stuff back upstairs. I’m glad since I did put some items in the unofficial “please take” spot of our trash area out back, it’s good to see some things being reused by someone… just not me.

I also did my usual “6 loads of built up laundry” chore. I always promise I won’t let it get to that point since it only takes 60 mins total to wash and dry, but still when I get in from work, laundry is the last thing on my mind. And while I could have used every machine available to do these, I knew that if I had 6 loads of clean laundry upstairs all at once, they’d never get folded right away, not when I have MarioKart calling my name. So I used 2 machines and 1 dryer (which can handle 2-3 loads of wash) and kept rotating out. On one of my trips down there, I saw that clearly I didn’t understand the concept of “the building shares a laundry room” because a woman was not only using every single available machine, she was also about to take out my wet clothes and those of someone else. I said, cheerfully but loudly, “I’m here, those are mine!” and she responded with a heavily accented, “Oh is yours?” Now I appreciate the stupid gringo routine as much as anyone, but don’t use it on me when 1: you’ve seen me doing laundry that day and 2: I’ve seen you speaking perfect English around the building before.

So my place is firming up. I still have some cleaning to do, and I need to get a key copy made and juggle her visit with a concert tomorrow night and another friend in town, so it’ll be a busy week. My inner introvert may well be curled up in the corner and crying by the weekend, but I’ll drown it with a few gin & tonics and all will be right with the world.