[ ADVRIK ]
It was late, I was hungry, and there was a pizza on the way. "Just hold out another ten or so minutes," Is what I told myself, trying to convince the ravenous beast within me not to dig into the bag of Cooler Ranch Doritos that I tucked away for emergency snacking fits.
And yeah, I'm calling them Cooler Ranch still; bite me.
It was 7pm and well past my usual dinnertime, but I'd gotten so wrapped up in my work around the house that I hadn't noticed. Most of my day was spent in the front yard, something I'd told myself when I moved in that I wouldn't be laying a paw on until the inside of the house was back in a liveable state.
The lie detector determined that it was a lie.
Over the course of this past week, as my cleaning ventures took me to new wonders in the land that would eventually become the floor, I was encountering more and more issues with the interior than I ever anticipated.
In places where half-eaten food had been left behind, mold had grown and spread to neighboring surfaces.
There was some water damage on the wall below the window with the broken glass, which I had only discovered upon tearing up the termite-ridden cabinet. And don't even get me started on the tiny mummified Molebit carcasses I had found in various stages of decay at nearly every corner.
Once I got the final piece of trash up and tossed it away with the same stained, mildew-ridden carpet that had become its final resting place over who knows how long, I finally started feeling better about the place. There were actual hardwood floors beneath the cracked, oily linoleum tiles the previous owner had put down. I couldn't believe it. They had been (nearly) perfectly preserved, buried below eight inches of discarded snack cake wrappers and empty TV dinner trays.
That discovery, along with the lack of any further unwelcome (but ultimately non-too-surprising expenditures), I finally started to experience something that had, until then, felt foreign for so long: Happiness. Actually, more of a giddiness, actually.
After two passes with the strongest Pine-Sol I could find and topping that off with the most expensive hardwood floor cleaner the local hardware store carried(along with mold and mildew-killing spray), the house was finally beginning to smell less like a landfill and more like someone took every pine-scented candle in the world and lit them all up at once.
It was nauseating, but at least it smelled clean for the first time in who knows how long.
I started this morning out with a big pot of coffee, one I'd be returning to numerous times throughout the day. It was probably around 8am when I finally felt warm enough in my fur that I stepped outside into the brisk mountain morning air, the steam billowing from the heated contents of my mug.
Gwen, in her little mail truck, rolled up. We nodded to each other, and she went on her way, passing up my mailbox for the first time since I moved here.
That was when I started taking a more serious look at the small half-acre plot of land that spread out before me in all its splendiferous overgrowth. Spring in the mountains, especially in one as untouched by industrialization as this town has, meant plants of all varieties were going to grow and that they were going to grow fast. Weeds were so densely packed that it's impressive they weren't choking each other out!
As the day and then the week went on, I divided my time between cleaning the interior of the house and the exterior. When I'd had enough chiseling away at some dried oatmeal behind the kitchen sink or dislodging dead Molebits from holes behind the toilet, I'd take to getting my hands dirty in the yard. Now, I probably need not tell you this, but breathing in fresh air beats inhaling toxic cleaning chemical fumes any day of the week.
And if you're into the latter, seek medical help.
Once the yard was free of the thicker brambles, sticker bushes, and, oddly enough, raspberry bushes, all that remained were some peculiar, heavier obstacles. Things like rocks that had been spray painted, pieces of decaying lumber, and the random branch here and there. Now, I wouldn't be able to tell you one way or the other if they had been left here by the original owner, thrown into the yard years later by local kids, or if a summer storm had tossed them onto the property, but I wasn't about to start pointing fingers. Especially not at the young gerbil I kept seeing peek out of the front window of the house next door.
The sidewalk was full of trash with my name on all of it. It was so bad that beasts had to step off the sidewalk and onto the street to get around the mountain of stuffed-full trash bags.
On the one paw, it was embarrassing to be singled out and be the only festering boil on the otherwise pristine block. But on the other, the house was better for it, and the positives of that would long outlive the temporary pock mark that was the sidewalk in front of my house.
But man, I'll have to figure out something to do for the community at some point after this. I'd just have to bide my time until trash pickup.
Now, what happened next would probably be considered fate by some, but given the events that were to come, I'd be more than willing to wager against that.
Standing beside the massive pile of garbage, inspecting it as he tapped his claw against his chin as if in deep thought, was one of the most unique beasts I've seen in all my life, and I've met a lot in my time.
As he closely inspected my filth, I kept my eyes on him from the corner of the yard. He seemed utterly oblivious to my presence. That, or he just didn't care. It was when he actually started tearing into the trash bags that I finally stepped up and greeted the peculiar beast.
"Hi there," I said, waving as the little mole turned to me. His little black eyes were magnified behind a thick pair of glasses, and he had a haircut that wouldn't have been out of place in a boy band from the 90s. But what had nearly stopped me in my tracks was the set of tentacles that wriggled like worms on his face! Two sets, four on each side of his snout; They wiggled lazily about in an uncoordinated dance that, if I didn't know any better, was expressing some sort of emotion.
Whatever that emotion was, the beast said tentacles belonged to wasn't showing it any other way.
The pair of denim overalls he was wearing looked like they hadn't been washed in weeks, the striped shirt he wore beneath it not looking too much better itself. He looked at me with a distinct lack of interest, even in the face of being caught rummaging through someone else's trash.
He held up a hand and pointed at the pile of trash that doubled his height with his thumb, "This your pile o' shit?" His accent was vaguely New Jersey-ish.
"I, uh," I paused, taken aback by the to-the-point nature of the question. "Yeah, just a bunch of litter from the yard and house,"
"Like?"
I wasn't sure how to answer that one. "What do you mean, 'like'?"
"Are you dense? Is it food and empty packaging and stuff like that, or are you throwing stuff away," He emphasized 'stuff', "Ain't no one accumulating this much trash unless you're cleaning the house or moving out, so which is it?"
At this point, I was trying to figure out the best way to approach him. The last thing I needed was to upset a local. "Well you see, I bought the house here behind me and have spent the last week cleaning up. It was full of garbage like it'd had a group of squatters living in it. Tons of empty packaging, food containers, and general garbage covering every square inch of the place, and--"
His paw shot up, and he said, "All right, stop right there. Didn't ask for your life story. It's pure trash; I got it, thanks. Sheesh." He said as he straightened the backpack over his shoulder and started walking away.
"Hey, I, uh, I promise It'll get cleaned up," I yelled to him as he waddled down the street, nearly colliding with a crow that either didn't see him or had assumed the odd little mole would move out of the way.
"Whatever, bitch. This ain't my town; I don't care what you do to it." The crow's head snapped around in apparent disgust at the swear.
"Do you know that fowl-mouthed little fellow?" He asked.
"Never met him in my life. Just moved here." I replied.
No comments:
Post a Comment