Picture of the day
It hit me when I unlocked my apartment door one evening.
The smell was not “dog shat the rug” foul, nor was it “old food in the garbage” foul… it was … just foul.
Sewage foul.
My sink exploded while I was at work. Water and pools of sludge were everywhere.
I think the proper term is “backed up.”
Memorial Day Weekend in Miami is also Hip Hop Weekend. I think the official title is “Urban Beach Weekend” but it’s basically Black Mardi Gras. So you know my mom is on the beach for the hot mess people watching.
She texted this to me this morning:
She saw this car accident in downtown Miami while on her way to the beach. My guess is that the upside down car braked just a tad too hard.
Somehow no one was hurt. Mom says that everyone from the crash was standing on the side of the road, horrified.
Oh, and down the road there were naked zombies…sigh. Only in Miami.
Last year I noticed the darkness around October. Today I was shocked that it was pitch black before 5 p.m. and by next month the sun will set around 4:30 p.m.
The darkness was awful during law school because most of our classes did not have windows. Now, it just means that I can light the vanilla candles early.
There are some intended consequences of the early darkness. Clubbing is awkward because it is dark for six hours before anyone shows up to the bar. I also wake up a lot earlier to maximize my daylight.
I feel like I’m 65 but I can’t order from the senior citizens’ menu at Denny’s. Sigh.
New condos are everywhere around downtown and interest rates are low, but I’m not convinced. Would I really want a condo by the mills?
I picked up my espresso machine and my carafe flew across the kitchen. It shattered on the floor.
I spent the next three hours searching for a replacement carafe.
Wal-Mart didn’t have it. Neither did Kohl’s, Williams & Sonoma, Macy’s, Sears, or Target. Some store sales people actually laughed at me when I asked if they sold replacements. I felt dejected.
And then finally:
The semester is over! Now I am busy working full time at the office and pummeling through the snow with the dogs.
Here’s an outline of what happened these past few months:
The week began quietly enough – I became an espresso snob, creeped the boyfriend out with my mouse catching, and attended my last formal law school class.
And then the “Minneapolis Blizzard of 2010” came.
Sigh.
The snow was so bad that the Minneapolis Metrodome collapsed. My friend Krämer moaned that Minneapolis only makes national news when something collapses, but I reminded him that we are also famous for Prince and recounts.
I completely cleared and salted my building’s sidewalks on Saturday, but everything was re-buried by Sunday morning. Apparently at least one tenant thought I that I had not shoveled at all:
Halvers wasn’t amused by the note.
Long-time readers of this blog know about my struggles with mice in my new apartment building. At first I thought my neighbor kept pigs and then the mice somersaulted through my kitchen.
I eventually started fighting back, which meant that the dogs got hold of the poison mouse blocks and I dealt with “no mess” mouse traps that created pools of stinky mouse blood.
In short, the mouse situation was a flaming hot mess for a very long time.
I sort of gave up during these past few months. I still kept all food refrigerated or covered and occasionally put out poison blocks, but I basically resigned myself to vacuuming up mouse crap every few days and using ungodly amounts of Lysol.
Then while at Wal-Mart this weekend I see a display of mouse-glue-pads.
I officially live in a winter wonderland.
This weekend’s storm dumped about 6 inches on Minneapolis, which Gertrude loved.
