Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I can taste victory

And it tastes good. The last 36 hours have been spent locked in battle with the disaster that is BHouse '09. I arrived Sunday night full of optimism, only to find that the incumbent occupants had decided that they were going to spend the last eight hours of their lease lounging in their own filth and smoking inside the house. Instead of, you know, leaving. Closer inspection only depressed me all the more. The third floor was unnavigable ("unnavigable" is now a word). On the second floor things I found included a "marijuana diary" (which will get its own entry soon), a "stool" which I discovered was actually a chair with the back snapped off, and a chair that had swollen with disease to the point where it would no longer get through the door. Outside was no better -- Katie and I affectionately dubbed the trashdump behind our cozy little home the "pile of shit."

That night I slept alone in the BHouse, a harrowing experience. Had Katie been there, I would have laughed at the possibility of burglars or pickpockets or any of New Haven's criminal horrors getting past her fearsome guard, but as it stood I wasn't sure what to fear more: death by shanking or slow asphyxiation amid the accumulated filth of my room.

**EDIT: It turns out Katie was there after all, making the blockade of broken furniture I constructed in front of my door entirely unnecessary. I find it rather telling that I was completely unaware of the other living person sleeping just feet from me amid the ricockulous amount of clutter and debatably-sentient mold.

The next day, we struck back. After a morning of epic efforts by David and Mai, the "pile of shit" had grown to about three times my size, and the second floor was beginning to resemble something I might allow a pig to live in. Because the outgoing subletters were supposed to have cleaned the place, they reimbursed us to have a cleaning service come. A few hours of hard work by a wonderful woman from "Magic Mop," and I discovered that the sketchy smelly little rooms on the second floor were in fact a cozy kitchen and a full bathroom. Things were looking up for our intrepid band.

A few more hours of (highly satisfying and stress relieving) reorganizing (read: breaking and throwing away the furniture and possessions of our predecessors) and the "pile of shit" was about the size of a schoolbus -- albeit the small kind they use for special children -- and the house was starting to feel a lot more welcoming. We made an epic Shaw's run, and den-mother Katie and fun-uncle David made a salad and warmed up some frozen pizza. Cleaning up was a team effort. I was sorely tempted to break into song, but I haven't seen "Enchanted" in a couple of months and couldn't remember the words.

Next, we split up and assaulted our rooms with an array of vacuums and makeshift cleaning devices (I couldn't find a broom so I used a napkin to brush the cigarette butts and dust bunnies into a pan). We were slowly but steadily closing in on victory when Katie and Ben realized that vacuum cleaners could double as devices to clean any remotely flat surface. Walls, mantles, desks, chairs, and mattresses quickly succumbed to our furious Shop-Vac-ing ("Shop-Vac" is now a verb). We ended the night with the "pile of shit" (after I tossed several garbage bags of random trinkets found all over the third floor) threatening to swallow the side of the house, and slept, smiles on all our faces.

3 comments:

  1. Slander! I was totally there that night. You had nothing to fear.

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  2. I think you were thinking of the happy little working song, Aditya.
    Bhouse '08 had a similar disaster upon arrival, but we turned out fine...

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  3. Whaaaat. You mean I feared needlessly? And by "feared," I mean "built a protective wall out of leftover furniture." Well don't I just look silly now.

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