This evening when Mike went to band practice I decided to work on the apartment. I had spent two hours this morning before church cleaning and organizing, most of which was putting away and rearranging the gifts I got yesterday at my bridal shower. The apartment is small and we both have a lot of stuff so it needs to be pretty organized. It can get out of hand quickly if we let it go.
Now, I absolutely hate cleaning. I hate it more since it's summer and since I'm not working I feel like a housewife. There's nothing wrong with being a housewife or a stay-at-home mom, but I never wanted to be one. Right now, between my friends teasing me about getting married and settling into domestic life and having to take on most of the domestic chores because Mike works, I've gotten pretty touchy about it. But cleaning needed to be done, so I set about doing it.
First I went grocery shopping. It took me a good five minutes to track down a cart, and then I couldn't find the tortillas for the life of me. I searched the Hispanic foods aisle, the bread aisle, and the place in the refrigerator section where they keep biscuit dough. I was seriously beginning to consider serving my taco salad on corn husks, which I had found easily, when I found a package of tortillas tucked away at the back of a shelf.
I got out of the grocery store and was putting things into my car when I noticed it had experienced its first street-parking incident. The paint on my back bumper was scratched and it had a huge chip taken out of it, a circle about 3" across. I cursed under my breath. It was probably the car that had pulled in behind me last night...I'd come out this morning to find that our bumpers were nearly touching. I hate the idea of the car already getting big nicks and dings before it's paid off. If I'm forking over money every month to drive that damn thing, it should at least look decent.
I drove home and couldn't find a parking spot in front of my apartment. I parked a half a block away. I lugged my grocery bags to my apartment, and when I got there I realized that I'd forgotten to lock my car.
Once I was back in the apartment I took out the trash - we have cheap bags that usually rip, and this time was no exception. I also put a shelf out on the curb, and managed to bang myself up while doing it. When I put away the groceries I noticed that we were rapidly running out of room in the fridge. Not because we have a ton of food, mind you, but because we have a bunch of packages with just one item left in it. We also seem to have a lot of alcohol, mostly Smirnoff and bottles of Woodchuck. Seeing all that unconsumed alcohol and knowing that it wouldn't have lasted a week in my grad school apartment made me feel quite old indeed.
After that I hung up a shower curtain and set about drying the cut sunflowers that Mike had given me last week. I wanted to hang them upside-down in the bedroom where they'd be exposed to less light, but there wasn't any place to do it. I hammered a nail into a beam in the ceiling, and whacked my thumb on the second or third strike. Eyes watering, I tried to run to the bathroom to put it under some cold water. Instead I tripped over some of Mike's pants that were on the floor and almost fell before catching my balance.
After my thumb was done throbbing I stripped the bed since the sheets were dirty and started putting on some new sheets that I'd gotten at the shower. I discovered that we'd registered for the wrong size sheets, and that these were too big. However, my temper was short and I didn't care. I folded the bed skirt in the center of the box spring to shorten it and taped it into place. I tucked in the fitted sheet. I did hospital corners on the flat sheet to conceal the extra length. I nearly buried Edison under my old sheets.
After it was all done I glaced at the clock. It was 9 PM. Mike was probably done at practice and was just hanging out with his friends. I decided it was time for me to do my very last chore so I could hang out too.
My last chore was to ease the congestion in the fridge by consuming some of that alcohol. Finally, a chore I could do.
