Wednesday, September 21, 2011

She's a Dirty Girl, A Dirty Girl

I don't know exactly when me and Steven gave up. But at some point, we did. We don't clean our apartment. Not ever. Not at all. We are dirty people. Dirty, dirty people.

Tonight, a bug ran across the cushion of the guest chair in our living room. Now, I use the term "guest chair" loosely, assuming that if a guest ever did come over to our apartment, they would have to first move my notebooks, Steven's Redskins hat, and a shoe box from the said "guest chair" before they could sit down. The bug did not seem to mind the clutter, so I suppose the guest chair is for him. The bug is our guest. I realize that things have gotten bad when a bug runs aimlessly across your living room with no set agenda or real goals in life. (The food is in the kitchen, not on the living room guest chair...stupid bug!)

I could blame Steven. And he would just blame me. Hell, I've even blamed Brooklyn before for not keeping the kitchen floor 100% free of food crumbs. (I mean really, she is a beagle.) But honestly, we are all to blame. I'm a slob. Steven's a slob. And I've seen Brooklyn smell her own farts. We're all to blame.

I've got phobias. I won't touch wet washrags or sponges at all -- two key cleaning components. I know it sounds bizarre, but I'm more comfortable coming into contact with dirt and grime than soiled wash cloths, Comet, or bleach. Physically, I'm not a dirty person. I shower daily and keep my mouth freakishly clean, sometimes brushing 4 or 5 times a day. My teeth aren't just the cleanest things on my body, but quite possibly, the entire world as well. I just don't like to clean the house. And this could be the core of my greatest phobia...work. Cleaning is work and I only like to work at work. I know a lot of women enjoy cleaning; find it a release for stress. I find The Real Housewives of New Jersey a release for stress. Most women clean because they don't like a dirty house. I don't mind a dirty house. In fact, I've always enjoyed having male roommates because they don't give a crap how dirty the house gets. If we clean the bathroom once every other month, that's considered a triumph worthy of a case of beer and a Papa Johns pizza. I'm sure living in a clean house has it's benefits, but I can't think of one that outweighs me wallowing in my own pool of laziness.

Honestly, I am a dirty person. I think this would surprise most people. (Not my mom, of course, who used to make "absurd" accusations against me in my youth. My mom, who apparently has a Physics Degree in Dusting, once theorized that the living room was constantly dusty because the air conditioning vent was sucking all the dust out of my bedroom and shooting it into the living room. See, absurd.) But yes, I am a dirty and lazy person. For example, if I'm making a sandwich and a bit of jelly drips on the kitchen counter, how would you think I would clean that up? If you answered, "She would wipe it up with her finger and then let her dog lick it off her hand," then you are correct. That's how I clean up everything. I wipe it up with my hand and then I let Brooklyn lick it off. Presto, it's cleano! I've honestly considered picking up my small dog and placing her on the kitchen counter, just to see what she could accomplish. I'm almost impressed with my ingenuity in slob laziness. I am literally a human trash compactor. I'm an absolute whiz at smashing the garbage down in the bathroom trashcan so tight, that it's unnecessary to take out the trash for a weeks at a time. Landfills, you're welcome.

Steven is a whole nother case in slob-i-ness. I won't go into too much of his private business because he is asleep and can't defend himself. But I will blame his uncleanliness on two basic things -- trash purgatory and nut sack powder. For whatever reason, Steven can't throw things away. He just can't. He can open our mail, he can read our mail, but he can't throw the mail away. Old shoes? Keeps them. Broken pens, torn jeans, dead batteries, every paycheck stub since he was 16? He keeps all that stuff. Instead of ending up IN the trashcan, things sort of accumulate AROUND the trashcan. Hence the term, trash purgatory. If Steven puts something down on the coffee table, it won't just stay there for a few days, but for the rest of eternity. Me and Steven have no need to ever bury a time capsule in the backyard, our apartment is a time capsule of everything that Steven has ever come in to contact with.

The second problem is nut sack powder. Steven has a lot of sensitive skin issues. So after he showers, he douses himself with an assortment of medicated powders. There are powders for his feet, his legs, and my favorite...his nuts. And there is no polite way to apply nut sack powder, he's working with sensitive equipment at an odd angle, so he just blasts those things like he's putting out a chemical fire. The effect is that a constant haze of powder glazes our entire bathroom. You know in early spring when pollen covers every inch of your car? That's what it's like, except it's in our bathroom and it's not just in the spring...it's always nut sack powder season in our house! I get special pleasure knowing that before the powder settled on our bathroom floors, sink, and toilet, that at one point in time it all came in contact with Steven's balls. I know, that as a women, this should upset me. But I just think it's funny as hell!

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