Make it out of this Rivertown

I don’t even know where to begin. And they say if you don’t know where to begin you should just start at the beginning, which gets you halfway to begin. No one actually says this so just accept that I totally made it up. Because I’m a liar, and god hates liars.

Last Thursday night I was on day two of the Packing Spree, which is not to be confused with any other kind of Spree. This Spree had nothing to do festively coated Smarties-wannabees and everything to do with knocking over a liquor store and stealing all of their boxes. I’d been boxing up books for two nights and was contemplating having a Nazi-esque bonfire in the parking lot because those things are heavy and I’m damn tired of moving them. But then about eleven o’clock I realized I was done, done with the book packing! Huzah! So naturally I moved away from other packable objects because the paper cuts those liquor boxes can give you are just plain angry kittens. Hence, I found myself staring inside my wee little closet with a total sense of dejectedness.

I should first explain that I’m not an abominably messy person. I put my dishes in the dishwasher, I pick up my dirty clothes and I make my bed at least eight percent of the time. However, I hate washing clothes with a passion. Not so much because of the folding or hanging up, but because it’s wicked annoying lugging bags of dirty towels and sweaters into the car and across town to the laundromat. I have many stories from the laundromat, none of them good. As such, there tends to be a small laundry basket devoted to things I’m currently unwilling to wash, things like polar fleece sweaters from last spring or the heavy bathrobe I wore during the winter. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to rot away down there, so I just leave them languishing in their plastic basket until the time comes when I’m ready to sacrifice an extra hour doing laundry or it’s sleeting and I need a hoodie.

Because I was moving I thought it might be nice to start off with a clean slate, so I started pulling out the bags of normal laundry for separation into dark piles, darker piles and bleachable items. Then I pulled out the purple plastic basket that normally sits shoved in a dark corner with all my Lazy Laundry and started sorting it as well. Blue bathrobe into the dark pile, black jacket into the darker pile, green towel into the dark pile, dead rat in the EXCUSE ME WHAT IS THIS DOING IN MY LAUNDRY BASKET I HAVE NO ACCEPTABLE PILE FOR YOU UNLESS IT INVOLVES A HIGH SPEED BLENDER AND SOME BLEACH.

The nasty curled up monstrosity landed square on top of my fleecy black hoodie and because I am a girl I’m allowed to tell you I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran in the living room at wicked fast speed. Think of me what you will but imagine a large dead ferocious looking rodent falling within inches of your delicate and unprotected bare feet and there’s not a single one of you out there, at least not that I’ll believe, who’d have been calm about that situation.

I sat in the living room for a good five minutes and contemplated what, exactly, I was going to do with the dead rat. Obviously get rid of it, but how? I couldn’t imagine wrapping my hands in paper towels and picking it up *retch* and carrying it outside. Just the thought of feeling it’s creepy dead little body, even through the layers of an entire roll of paper towels, was enough to keep me from eating for a solid day.

In the end I settled on sweeping it into the dustpan, the one I was going to soak in bleach after I carried it outside for a proper burial in the city dumpster. But before I took it outside I decided this was a situation that needed documenting. I grabbed my camera out of the closet and clicked it over to the I’m Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. DeMille setting. Then I sat down on my wood floor and got way more personal with a rodent than I ever anticipated. I snapped him from the top, from the bottom, from the side where you could see the malicious glint in his beady black eyes. I got close-ups of his snarled mouth and ginormous rodent teeth. I immortalized the length of his thick stubbly tail and the way his claws had curled into his belly in death.

And then I sang the Robin is a Big Girl song as I carried his pleasantly scented carcass through the back door. If you’ve never heard the Robin is a Big Girl song well, you’re totally missing out. I’ve got a voice like two dollar prostitute with a two-pack-a-day habit.