Today is Day 5. So far I don’t feel sick, and I am hoping it was just a 24 hour thing because there is so much work yet to do. The Denizen and the dog are still sleeping in there, so I have some calm before the storm resumes.
I am still optimistic about finding the iPod. The Denizen says she wants to get one of those beeper-locator gadgets for it once we find it, so it will never be lost again. I actually have some (it saved my marriage when Karen kept inadvertently hiding the TV clicker in our bedroom) and offered to buy batteries for them.
Will we find the iPod? Have I contracted some dread disease from four days of exposure? Will I be crushed by dirty laundry? Will all the socks match?
Later…
I’m going in… I give the Denizen ten minutes to eat breakfast, and we go in together. I find more dishes, and a curious number of chip clips. I have knocked over and restacked the Valentines Day deck of cards nine times. I keep washing my hands in the hope that I will survive the repeated exposure.
I find what I think is a coffee can with melted chocolate inside. At least three more bottles partly filled with water, one with a chunk of ice in it — I can’t explain it. Empty soda cans, and plenty of coins — I have been told I am NOT allowed to keep any money I find.
I toss another plastic garbage bag of laundry over the balcony and the bag splits, but most of the laundry stays inside it. I am pretty sure we are about to close up our tenth bag of trash, and it was announced a few minutes ago that the trash barrel outside won’t hold any more.
If we can get to the south wall today we will have two major disaster areas left, plus a bunch of minor ones. The toy box is supposed to hold dress-up stuff, but it is stacked to twice its height, plus the shrapnel piled into mounds on all sides.
Then there is the cl… cl… the cl… (shhhh! I am pretty sure there is a closet on the north wall. Or it is a monument to all the fallen girls who never cleaned their room. You can go near it — not too near — and read the names of fallen comrades. Oh wait! That’s the names of candy on fallen candy wrappers…
I found another chair with no legs. It had a sign begging for money to buy food to live.
We now think it unlikely that the iPod is on the south side of the room, though it is not entirely impossible. Our plan is to continue on that side for now.
Or perhaps to set it on fire.