panic in the disco, part 4

I did not go to the liquor store last night. I did kill the rest of the wine while I stripped all the beds in the house, washed the sheets, and remade, scrubbed the kitchen floor, vacuumed the nasty hall rug and the rug under my dining room table*** with carpet deodorizer, and bagged up a few more bags of trash in the basement. As you know, the only time my house actually gets really cleaned (as opposed to straightened) is when I am having a panic attack or important visitors (like, y'know, the electrician).

I am feeling less panicked and less convinced a tree is going to fall on my house since a.) my basement remains dry as a bone, my sandbagging of the sliders having worked a treat so far through the intermittent downpours and b.) the forecast now is tropical storm, blah blah, 2-3 inches of rain, 50 mph winds, so as Mr Indemnity wisely forecasted on Friday, just a regular fuckin' nor'easter all up in here, more or less. Since D is up all night, I asked him when I was going to bed last night, mellowed out on wine and half an Ativan, to go check the basement every now and then and alert me if any puddles were forming. I figured if my sandbagging wasn't completely weather-tight, I could at least shopvac the puddles as they were occurring and stay ahead of it so it didn't turn into a huge mess. But, like I said, it was bueno. When I woke up at six am and realized I'd slept through the night *and* that it wasn't even raining at the moment, I was, shall we say, relieved.

But since a tree still *might* fall on my house, I think today I shall wash the hardwoods in my living/dining room. I'm tempted to wash the slipcovers, too, but I have to see if I'm willing to take the chance that we don't lose power when I'm in the middle of a wash cycle. I should probably actually go throw them in now while it's still quiet out there, huh?

And if heavy drinking does become called for, never fear. Not only do I have those couple beers in the fridge, I realized that I have an unopened off-brand bottle of Irish Creme (Cream?) in the closet that Mr Indemnity gave me for Xmas a few years ago, for reasons that are totally unclear. I don't know what kind of drinks I could improvise with it, but like I said the other day, where there's a will to get drunk, there's apparently a way!

Oh! And you know what else I found in my storm preparations and cleaning frenzy? A huge rubbermaid tub full of brand new, never used, *very* nice towels. Plus some pretty cloth napkins. Apparently my mom had them squirreled away, again for reasons that are entirely unclear. My life is like one long sad episode of Hoarders. (Do you know in the basement, my parents had the box to everything they ever bought? The box. Apparently there was a method to this madness, however. I found a box with a broken coffee maker in it. So, y'know, when the appliance breaks, you don't throw it away. You return it to the box that you also never threw away and put it in your basement, like a little museum of sad defective merchandise. I come by my crazee honestly, is the point I'm making.)

Stay dry. Stay drunk. Don't let any tree limbs hit ya.

xoxo

***When it gets very humid, I am convinced that hall rug and one corner of the dining room rug smell vaguely like pee. I am unsure of the origin of this pee smell. I would like to blame one of our various cats, two of whom have died in this house, or the one who boarded here. But in truth, I think my dad used to step in his own pee when he missed the toilet in his declining years and then track traces of it all over the first floor on the soles of his shoes. This is why I will never stop going barefoot in the house. If it ever gets to the point where I'm stepping in my own bodily fluids, I wanna know about it.