I didn’t really have anything to do. Sure, I had some projects to work on, but they weren’t pressing. They could wait. Jonah was working, probably. I had to see David Charles tomorrow . . . I figured I probably needed some mental preparation for that. He’d said he was on a quest? Were we living in an RPG now? Who goes on quests? Why? For what?
I could have probably found someone to do something with, via texting or posting a “Hey, I’m bored, who wants to hang out” status update on Facebook. But that felt like too much effort. Did I really want to see people? Did I really want to go out? Did I really want to brush my hair and make sure there wasn’t paint on my face?
Nah.
I was sitting on my bed, and now I took a careful inventory of my cave . . . which is, well, not exactly a room. It’s my dad’s basement. That’s not as dreary as it sounds . . . for one thing, it’s completely finished. He gave me the basement because it’s rather large and he figured I’d need a lot of room for making things . . . and also because he didn’t want me spilling turpentine on the Berber upstairs. Among other things.
So I live in an L-shaped basement. The horizontal rung is carpeted and where I keep my bed, a nightstand, a chest, and a dresser. The corner of the L has a full (albeit small) bathroom on the right side and a door leading outside on the left. The vertical run is linoleum and it’s where I keep all my art supplies and my desk. At the very top, there are stairs that lead to a door that leads up to the main house.
Joy, bless her, was absolutely appalled when I first moved in to my dad’s house and she found out that I was living in his basement. What, a room inside the house wasn’t good enough for his own daughter? He’d treat a dog better, she assured me.
But I like the basement. I may even love it. It’s big. It’s quiet. It sort of makes me feel like I have my own apartment. Sometimes I tell people that I do, just because I can. And it’s close to a bus stop, which is a lot more than I can say for Joy’s house. And this basement is more than three times as big as the bedroom I had when I lived with her.
But right now, this basement was a mess.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made my bed . . . or changed the sheets, for that matter. I had more clothes in the hamper and on the floor than I had in my drawers. The carpet — well, the whole floor, really — was in desperate need of being vacuumed. I had two trash cans down there and they were both overflowing. The bathroom was just short of a disaster — I needed to clean the shower, the mirrors, the toilet, the floor, the counter . . . okay, I needed to clean the whole damn bathroom. And as for the rest of my cave, well . . . let’s just say it more or less looked like an art supply store exploded in there.
I decided to clean it.
Labels: january brings few faces
