Transient Transplant

I’ve said it plenty of times in the past and I’ll stand by the statement:  I love living by myself.

At least about 95% of the time.

There are those times when I’m afraid I’ll choke to death on my dinner, or slip and fall in the shower and hit my head the wrong way, bleeding out until the smell of my body causes my neighbors to call the police.   But I digress.  If you dig deep into the early depths of my writing you’ll find plenty of stories about that.

So 95%.  Not a bad rate of contentedness.

I had a moment of weakness when I was convinced my neighbor was getting murdered a few months back, but that’s nothing sleeping with a bottle of mace and a butcher knife in my nightstand couldn’t help me out with after a few nights of no sleep.  It was fine.  I don’t sleep well anyways.

I may have dropped down to loving living alone about 93% of the time after that, but once I saw my neighbor in person, alive and well, I went ahead and bumped that back up to 95%.  After all, isn’t it true that most people who get murdered know their assailant?  So it wasn’t my fault he was involved in some bad business and that didn’t need to seep into my life.

I love that things are where I want them in my apartment.  I love that I can put up whatever artwork I want, or have a faux cowhide chair in my living room because that’s how I want it to look.  I love that I can walk around in whatever mess of a state I choose with no one to judge me except the occasional neighbor when I accidentally leave my blinds open.  The good often outweighs the panic of being the neurotic human that I am.

Then about a month or two ago I started to become obsessed with a strange smell coming from my garbage disposal.

This is particularly concerning considering my lack of cooking skills tied with my lack of using the disposal all together.

In my old apartment I never had this problem.   And I definitely don’t want to be the girl with a smelly apartment.

I walk in the door and take a huge whiff every day now, sensing where I’m at in the process of slaying this odor.  I also know my shortcomings, and I don’t possess the knowledge to be my best Betty Homemaker since I work late and am frequently in my apartment solely to sleep and shower.  I’d really be at 100% living alone satisfaction if I just had a maid and a chef as well.

My friend stopped by, who has logged in enough years of friendship with me that I will allow him in my home regardless of the fact that some days it looks like something straight out of an episode of Hoarders.

“Before I open this door:  it smells weird in here, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“You’re crazy.  It smells floral.  So what’s new with you?”

“You smell flowers because I just sprayed Febreze before you came here.  If you smell hard enough you’ll smell floral with a hint of ass, but I would encourage you not to try.  All that’s new with me is working and getting this weird fucking smell out of my garbage disposal.”

“Maybe it smells a little weird.  And maybe you need an outlet other than working if this is what you think about in your spare time.  Why don’t you put lemons down the disposal?”

I turned around and glared at him with a hint of crazy in my eyes.

“Lemons?  Do you not think I’ve tried lemons?  I’ve called upon the best minds I know and put lemons down that disposal.  I’ve poured half a box of baking soda down there and let it sit overnight.  I put the drain plug thing in there every day so that smells can’t seep back up.  But it’s down in the depths under my sink.”

My friend just laughed and shook his head.

“It’s funny to you because you don’t live in it.  I wake up in the morning, wondering whether or not my whole home is going to reek like something died in here by the time I get home.”

He had a valid underlying point:  I bring up the smelly garbage disposal to anyone who will listen like a crazy person.  Because I live alone, and because I don’t know how to take care of it myself, it eats away at me every single day.

So maybe I was down to 90% in love with living solo.  Because no one likes to come home to the scent of something rotting.

I bought bleach in a pint size which I didn’t even know existed when I decided to do away with it once and for all.  I poured that sucker down my drain and let it sit.

Quickly I had to open the door because of the fumes, but I’d rather smell bleach all day than whatever that rank smell was.

I sat on my couch and inhaled the clean scent more than I should have, thinking that this was what victory smelled like.

I left to run some errands, and when I came back was still pleasantly surprised at the miracle the bleach had done.

Now I come home every day to the smell of flowers and fresh air, not tainted with the garbage disposal death scent.  I no longer have to relive this saga to everyone that I run into when they ask “What’s new with you?”  Instead I can talk about actual things happening in my life, and may even have the time now to pick up a new hobby, as long as it stays as bay.