Posted 10:06 PM by Angie Schultz

Slopping Lust

We went shopping today (O Rapture!). Here, I swear, is what was on our shopping list:

flu
bras
sweetparts
out squaws
wanker
hagars
unclewar

And so forth. This is Niles's handwriting. (I do remember that "bras" turned out to be "bras"---for me, I hasten to add).

I have 4 cubic meters of stuff coming in from Sydney, although at this point if it disappeared into the aether I'm not sure I'd mind. I don't know where I'm going to put 4 c.m. of crap. How did I get 4 c.m. in the first place?? I went to Australia with one. Most of it's books. I hate books. I curse you, books! I have a whole storage unit filled with books I can't get to as it is, why do I need more books? I took books to Australia that I never read. Why did I buy more there? (I know the answer to that one: there was a book fair. That's how I got about 2000 of my books.)

Anyhow, the point is, Niles helped me label those boxes, so I can just imagine the joy when we have to schlep them around in the Texas heat, and choose which ones must be stuffed into the apartment, and which crammed into the storage unit.

Niles, do you know where the CD player has gone?
That would be in the box clearly marked "OO plogun".
This box is full of guilt.
That's your quilt.
Well, I don't expect we'll be needing either anytime soon. Will we need the "sweetparts" though?
Sweat. Pants. What do you think?
No. How about the box marked "darkwing flog"?
Don't you remember? That's your Darkwing Duck doll, and your flag.
Oh, right.

(Ha ha! I kid Niles. I know exactly where the Darkwing doll is.)

At least the books will be clear enough. If they're in a small box and are marked "looks" or "boolxs", they're books.

It took us a week longer to pack than we thought it would. The same thing happened when I left California three years ago. Much of this time was due to Niles's insistence that we carefully put similar things together, separate out things that would and would not be needed in Houston, and label every box with its contents.

Niles said that if it had been up to me, I'd have just thrown stuff randomly into boxes, every one of which would have been marked "crap". Yes, but we would have been done a lot faster.

After we sent the stuff on its merry way, it occurred to me that by carefully labelling the boxes we have invited thieves to select which ones are worth stealing. For example, there's a box marked (in part) "coins", which refers to my Australian coin collection. Since these are all coins I got in change, they're worth about AU$20, total (or US$10). The thief won't know that, though.

Come to think of it, this is where Niles's Sekrit C0d3 will come in handy. I'm sure that box will be labelled "worms".