Fiction Writing Exercise (06-24-10)

I wrote this fictional text with a certain house in mind...:

Sadie had spent days sweeping and mopping floors, opening boxes of once important things that now seemed pointless to hang on to, and she could tell the adversary was formidable. The house was malevolent. Not your evil-horror-movie-house malevolent, but insidious and discreet about its evilness. Despite her scrubbing them with scouring cleaner, baking soda, and even alcohol, she had been unsuccessful at removing the many smudge marks from the walls. It seemed that only paint would cover the damage.

She had encountered various noxious creatures: ants, tiny ones who had invaded her sugar containers, as well as the more destructive carpenter ants, and even the occasional spider, huge and hairy. She wouldn’t even be surprised if, getting up one morning, she found a scorpion curled up inside her slippers.

Haiku: The Homeowner's Lament (06-09-10)

A poem by Pascale Steig

Found a house, at last
Charm abounds everywhere
It sits on a hill.

Yellow wood siding,
A nice porch to while time away
On warm summer days

Wake up to the light
Filtering through old stained glass
Lavender, red, green, amber

To rest, -Home at last-
And finally settle in,
Unpack my boxes

Secret garden spots
It is ours now, all of it
Plants, shrubs, flowers, trees.

Glorious spring blooms
Peonies, roses and more:
Endless surprises.

Water runs downhill
Rainy weather, soggy ground:
Endless surprises.

Alas! Rain; more rain!
Water pours under the house,
A river, a lake…

Crumbling foundation
Carpenter ants, -worse: spiders-
Problems all around

A mess to fix;
“Sell it before it’s too late,”
Says one contractor

“Don’t think about it -
It’s been here a hundred years,”
Says another one.

I try to fix it
I paint it; I buy windows:
Presents for the house

I want to tame it:
The cantankerous old house
Hides its beauty well.

The Toxic Couch: Part Three (06-08-10)

My project was not going well. After letting everything fester under the carport for weeks, I convinced Gary to rent a Rug Doctor, so I could try my hands at a last ditch effort to rescue my couch and recliner.
I decided to treat the stinky mattress first. It was a nice, thick mattress; it looked comfortable and clearly had never been used before (by a human). Unfortunately, it had been in contact with the rusted springs inside the sofa and had been contaminated with the same sour smell as everything else. I laid it down on an old shower curtain on the lawn, and scrubbed the heck out of it. I then left it to dry on the green lush lawn, hoping that the fresh spring air would do wonders for it. There was nothing else to do for it but wait... Next, I scrubbed the sofa and the recliner. The leather responded beautifully, springing back into shape, a testimony to quality materials. But the dark places which had been stained and damaged, once wet, had the same sticky gummy feel as the cushion covers; the leather was rotten.

All those efforts were for nothing in the end; the repulsive smell oozed and wafted from the couch, mattress and recliner, no matter what.

The last episode in this saga: I reluctantly took everything to the dump. As I was driving away from the huge bays, I turned around and got a last glance of the couch without its cushions, with a mountain of trash all around, as a bulldozer was advancing in its direction.

RIP beautiful couch.

I drove the car to the exit window, paid the dump fee and briefly told my woes to the lady at the window. She laughed and said "I always tell people; you gotta give it the sniff test before you buy it!"

The Toxic Couch: Part Two (05-10-10)

Now, you may ask, what does NOT work on a cat-stench-infected high-end leather sofa bed and recliner bought on Craigslist? Here is the answer, from direct experience: Febreze (1 bottle); Nature's Miracle (2 bottles); Biokleen (3 bottles). Add to that, a couple of big rolls of paper towels to spread the products all over the leather.

I removed the cushions from their zippered covers and took them to the laundromat, with the idea that if they were thoroughly cleaned, the problem may be resolved at last. Armed with detergent and bleach from home, I loaded three large-sized front-loading washers with the cushions. I filled the soap and bleach dispensers with what I estimated to be the required amount of liquid to deal with the situation at hand, and for good measure, I added yet more soap and bleach in each washer's dispenser. I watched as the machines filled with soapy water, and as I saw the water level rise behind the glass door, I noted with slight alarm that there was an awful lot of foam.

I was alone in the laundromat. I could see some foam pushing through the soap dispenser door on the top of one of the washers; I tried to wipe if off with my hand, but the foam was coming through anyway. A card on the wall behind the washers said that the place was under surveillance 24 hours a day. A glance to my left confirmed the presence of a camera overhead. I casually walked over to the thrash can by a folding table and pulled out an old pair of jeans that had been tossed away.
The foam had worked its way through the dispenser door and was now pulsating down the front and side of the washer and pooling on the floor. I tried to wipe everything, like it was just no big deal, once in a while glancing at the camera overhead. As I was busy wiping, I caught sight of mountains of foam cascading out of reach, at the back of the washer and the one next to it... Needless to say, once my load was done and the cushions had gone through a dryer cycle, I was out of there in no time.
But the cushions had come through with flying colors. They were clean and smell-free. There was hope, after all.

Filled with visions of myself sitting on my luxury distressed leather couch and telling people about my good fortune ("Would you believe, I got this $4,000 Restoration Hardware set on Craigslist of all places!), and bolstered by my success with the cushions, I decided that I might as well also take the leather cushion covers to the laundromat.

I walked in like an old pro, put detergent in the dispenser, inserted money and washed them, three times for good measure. I stood in front of the machine like it was perfectly normal to have this unappealing, even gross, stuff churning inside, and watched the yellow-brown water swirl about behind the glass, every turn of the drum causing a shot of brown color to ooze into the foam. Once done, I carefully stretched the wet covers and ran them through a gentle dryer cycle.

But despite the thorough washes, the part of the cushions that had been at the back of the sofa and recliner still smelled awful and rank and was gummy and sticky to the touch and stained my fingers with an oily substance I tried wiping on my jeans. When I got home, I asked Gary to help me gently stretch the covers, to then let them air dry on a chair in the sun. Cripes and aggravation! Inadvertently pulling too hard on one of the gummy corners caused the leather to tear!

The Toxic Couch: Part One (05-02-10)

One evening, while cruising the Internet, I saw an ad on Craigslist for a fabulous-looking leather recliner and sofa bed. The ad caught my attention: "We are literally selling these for pennies on the dollar. EXCELLENT condition except for the areas that have been treated as a scratching post." True, looking at the photos, one could see that the arms of the recliner were extensively scratched, but still, the set looked pretty cool.

We'd given our worn out couch and loveseat away before moving, and this pair looked like a viable replacement. I insisted that Gary and I go to check them out all the way to Hillsboro despite his less than enthusiastic response when I showed him the Craigslist ad.

The house looked new and decent enough, and the guy how opened the door was friendly. Yet there was something odd about the inside. There was no carpeting in the living room; the perimeter of the room was edged with what appeared to be unswept matted pet hair. The exposed plywood was grimy and had large dark oily stains in several spots. My mind registered the incongruities, but I dismissed them when I saw the sofa bed and recliner. The set had that casual elegance of quality expensive furniture, and the leather color was a warm brown and distressed finish. I immediately liked them.

The only problem with the sofa bed and recliner, the owner said, was that the resident cat had clawed the arms extensively. But this was an expensive set he assured us; it set came from Restoration Hardware, and cost thousands of dollars. They were reluctant to part with their furniture, but hoped that by parting with it, they would be able to train the cat to not scratch the new furniture they were planning to purchase. How old is the cat, I politely asked. Twelve, he said. Again, a little warning sign flashed in my mind, but I merely chuckled at the answer, looked at Gary, and rolled my eyes at the idea that one could train a twelve year-old cat to do anything.

The guy opened the sofa bed, and, -I swear there are times when I wonder about my powers of observation-, although I noticed that he had a difficult time working the mechanism due to very visible rusting of the springs, I didn't wonder why there was rust in the first place, or why the leather was darker in some areas on the back and in the recesses of the couch... So, like a dummy, I paid the guy $160 cash. We quickly loaded the furniture in the truck and trailer under pouring rain, and off we went, Gary and I couchless no more...or so we thought.

When we got home and unloaded the pair from the trailer, as we lifted the sofa up, we got a whiff of a pervasive horrific smell. Upon close examination, we found that the inside of the sofa and the recliner had been used as toilet by an animal, most likely the same cat responsible for the scratches.

To make this sorry story short, despite weeks spent airing under the carport, the sofa and mattress were unsalvageable. They exuded the most repellent toxic fumes that made walking by them enough of an ordeal that one would prefer going around the carport rather than be exposed to the stench.

But wait! There's more!..