Biohazard Zone

The Artist left on his mission trip Friday. While he’s out of town, I took the opportunity to clean out his room.

I’m sure scarybaldguy can appreciate the kind of weekend I had. He recently detoxified a teenager’s room, too. I found out why the boy has only been wearing three or four tee-shirts for the last few months of school—most of his clothes were in a big pile of random crap in the corner, and more crap had piled up in front of it so he couldn’t actually get to his clothes.

There were old food wrappers and chip bags.

There were several pieces of bread under the window.

There was black modeling clay on everything. He likes to make things out of modeling clay. It was on his books. It was on his clothes. It was on his floor.

His bed was destroyed; the mattress had collapsed and the box springs were concave. I think he must have been hurling himself into it from across the room because he couldn’t actually walk on the floor. We had to replace it.

I shoveled it all out, we replaced the mattress, and I swept and mopped the floor. I really need to patch and paint the walls, too, but I think that’s a project for another day. Now I have to put back all the stuff I didn’t actually chuck out (most of what I chucked was old papers and broken toys).

The Director spent the weekend cleaning out his room, as well. I don’t know if he was more motivated by my threat that his was next on my list, or by Alpha Geek’s bribe of a month’s worth of allowances if he got it all cleaned out, but he actually did a good job.

Alpha Geek also cleaned up his work area, which had been accumulating stuff while the giant servers of doom were blocking access to the room. Now the servers have been delivered and he can get to the walls again.

All this cleaning and rearranging was freaking Duchess out. She stood in The Director’s doorway watching him clean. She wandered through The Artist’s room, meowing anxiously at me as I sorted and scrubbed. She prowled around Alpha Geek’s area observing the proceedings. It was a lot of upheaval in an environment she’s just getting used to, and she didn’t know what to make of it.

At the end of the day I collapsed on the couch and called it quits. I glanced around and spotted Duchess, staring into Alpha Geek’s area with a worried look. Wanting to reassure her, I gave her my best imitation of a mother cat’s “come here, kitten” call.

It must have been a passable imitation; her little head swiveled around and she looked at me with the most astonished gaze. Then she ran to me and all but threw herself into my lap, purring and head-butting and kneading. We snuggled for ten or fifteen minutes. She seemed to feel much better after that.