In a post a couple days ago – I talked about the fact that some people in my life have been critizing me because apparently I have forgotten about my friends now that I have a boyfriend.   Well, the past 24 hours have been amazingly awesome – and barely involved him.  Here’s the recap:

As you know from this post, my roommate Brandon was moving out and being replaced with my friend Q.  Brandon isn’t really a bad guy or anything, we just have a difference in living styles.  So anyways, because Q needed a place a month ago, and I’ve been spending most nights at my boyfriends, Q has been living in my room and it’s been pretty tough for me not to have a home base.   I was especially psyched on Friday to dip out of work a little early and get to the apartment to clean and rearrange and get myself set up.

Unfortunately, when I got to the apartment I found that Brandon hadn’t totally moved out – and the place was a wreck.  I guess somewhere in the past month and a half that I stopped living here – everyone just stopped cleaning – and I totally get it – because it sucks to constantly be cleaning after someone else.  (Hense, one of the reasons I’ve been staying at the boyfriends.)  So, after Brandon left, I took stock of the situation, of everything I had to do, and I collapsed onto the floor in tears.  I suddenly understood how people become hoarders, because the amount of things I had to do to get the apartment in the condition I wanted was unbelievable.  I estimated that it would take me until 1AM to do by myself.

I mean, for an example, this was a pile of dishes:

So gross – why would you use dishes as an ashtray. Ew.

Collecting myself, I realized I needed two things to occur – first, I vented to my boyfriend about the entire situation.  Second, I sent an SOS text to the other person I know who is as much of a neat freak as I am.  Actually, technically, I can probably blame her for me being this way because I picked it up from living with her for years.  My text to Jen went out at 4:00.  She was at my house by 4:30.

Jen was a savior – her and I got to cleaning the apartment, and by 8:30PM we had accomplished the following things:

- Emptied out the fridge / freezer and pantry (5 trash bags)
- Cleaned the living room / dining room / laundry room (6 trash bags)
- Cleaned Brandon’s room to get it ready for Q (2 trash bags)
- Cleaned all the dishes that were salvageable, trashed the ones that weren’t (45 minutes and 1 trash bag)
- Cleaned the microwaves, stoves, counters, tables and bathrooms with bleach
- Completed two loads of laundry
- Vacuumed and mopped all the floors

Oh yeah – and did I mention we did this all in a house with no A/C because the air handler broke? (It was fixed by 9PM) Did I also mention that Jen is 7 months pregnant?  That is true freakin friendship right there.

So, because we finished early, we hit the casino until 2AM – and then came home.  I took all all the bags of trash (in the rain) and then took a shower, because I had to be up at 9AM because today was the all-you-can-eat Crab Feast at National Harbor with my parents, Mary, Mike and Don and Linda!

We ate crabs:

mmmm.. delicious crabs!

We bought cute hats:

Mary and I both obviously like the color pink.

Mary and I went on a romantic paddle right through the harbor:

Those lifejackets make us look like whales. I assure you, we are not whales.

And we took a pretty awesome group photo – (minus Mike and his friends, because they were off at the tequila tent…)

From left to right – Dad, mom, Don, Mary, me and Linda

And now, 24 hours later, I’m sitting in my clean apartment, in a room that’s mine, on my computer, posting this update.

Life is so fucking good.