Necessity is a Real Mother

I have this awesome idea for a cool new product. You know those cat box liners, that once the litter has reached such a level of unspeakable filth that it can be detected from distant galaxies with the naked nose*, you can just pick it all up in the liner bag and throw it away?

Well, I want to make those for houses. Wouldn't that make moving so much easier?

It would need to be made of some flexible, stretchy space-age polymer, so it could conform to any interior. And I guess you'd need to cut holes for the toilets and sinks and oven and stovetops and such... although now that I come to think of it, that would defeat much of the purpose, as those are the major things that you end up having to clean. DAMN it.

But at least you wouldn't have to worry about steam-cleaning the carpet or Magic-Erasering your toddler's masterpieces off the walls.

Today we're heading down to Corpus to finish cleaning out the house. Can you imagine anything more fun? Actually I can. However, this is the price I gotta pay for all the wonderful things that have been happening to me lately; and to be perfectly honest, I'm somewhat relieved to experience a bit of a downside. So much good fortune makes me vaguely uneasy. I keep expecting karma to return from vacation at any moment and realize that things have been going way too much my way, and for reality to snap back into shape like a taut rubber band. Yowch! Not that I'm a pessimist or anything.

(The pessimist says the glass of water is half empty; the optimist says it's half full. I do a spit take and say, "Water?!?!?"

I'm pretty sure I stole that from somewhere, but I don't know where.)

As I've posted before, cleaning house is not really my forte. I'm not entirely sure what my forte actually is, though. Maybe pedantry (did you know that "forte" in this context is properly pronounced "fort"? It's French, meaning "strong." The Italian "for-tay" is incorrect because that means "loud"), or possibly digression.

But I gotta get at it today. Carpets must be vacuumed and steamed, tile floors mopped, masterpieces Magic-Erasered, toilets de-Black-Lagooned, countertops, stovetop, oven and bathtubs scrubbed, and the random detritus of two years - all that junky small stuff you never felt you should throw away but didn't make it into the moving truck because you didn't actually want it - ruthlessly bagged up and disposed of. It's going to be a rough day.

I really wish I'd thought of that house-liner thing before we moved all our furniture in here. DAMN it!

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