to his sanctuary, his room, in
an attempt to rescue it
from the clutches of the vile monster
Uncleanliness the Dirty.
I'll be honest, I haven't cleaned my room in almost three months. As you might imagine, it has basically become a pile of clothes, papers, magazines, binders, garbage, ect. I decided that today would be an excellent time to clean it, seeing how I actually had free time.
Little does Luke know that the
SPIDER ASSOCIATION has secretly
been crippin' around his room,
plotting on an even larger scare
than their last attempt.
The first part of my 12-step plan was to get music playing to make the work easier. Luckily for me, I've been collecting my favorite songs on a playlist over the past year, so this step was just a matter of getting a laptop. Luckily, the lap top was free, and I was able to slip it into my room.
Step two involved two parts to it: first, clearing a space on my bed and then, two, putting everything on my floor onto my bed. It was a step that involved little more than time. This, however, is where everything fell apart.
It was going rather nicely. My clothes were in one pile, my school items in another. Then, I found a large pile of notebooks that I've collected over the years. I placed these on my bed when suddenly, a small figure crawled onto the top. My mouth slowly dropped in amazement as the fiend crawled underneath one of the notebooks. I snapped to attention and grabbed my shoe and quickly threw the notebook into the air. The spider started to crawl away as I tried to smash it with my shoe. The spider, however, got away.
It was now somewhere inside the massive pile of stuff of my bed, and I was powerless to stop it from crippin' around.
I'm sure you've felt that feeling when you think that something is creeping around you, that that little movement in the corner of your eye is something ready to attack you. Your senses seem heightened, and you feel every point on your skin. It seems like every little breeze that ruffles past you is something attacking you, or that shadow that darted part is a monster springing for attack.
That is how I felt as I stood in the center of my room, trying to muster up the courage to find the spider. I still wanted to finish cleaning my room according to my plan, but I didn't want to risk any dangers. I decided to change my 12-step plan to fit the disaster.
Step three was to finish cleaning my room, except putting all of these items a safe distance away from the spider-infested bed. I slowly went through the rest of the mess, checking doubly for anything wrong. Papers were lifted with the hand that wasn't holding a shoe poised to smash anything that revealed itself. The step continued without any problem.
Step four was to vacuum my room. Part of this was to actually clean my floor, which hadn't been vacuumed in almost four months and really needed it. The other part was to pull off a trick I learned from my last showdown with spiders in my room. Yes, after I finished vacuuming my room, I attached a hose to the vacuum. Now, the entire sucking power was concentrated in one small, portable nozzle. I realized that I needed more maneuverability and speed that a shoe could offer, and a vacuum seemed to meet this need.
Step five was to designate a sanctuary, a spider-free zone and then begin moving the mess on my bed to that area. The proceeding were slow. I decided to start with the paper/notebook/book section of my bed, lifting each one with care and then shaking it off. I has learned that spiders will flee if anything disturbs their environment. I next moved onto bags and backpacks. Each one was thoroughly examined, each item inside inspected with the eyes of a hawk. I could not risk letting one spider get through my defenses.
Items that were questionable (boxes full of wigs, bags with many pockets) were placed a safe distance away from both the bed and the safe-zone where they could be further examined.
I moved my blankets and pillows off the bed next; following them was my recent stuffed whale from Sea World, Finna. Next in line was the clothes pile. He had to be hiding in there, but it may be the most dangerous place to examine. I grabbed a laundry basket to throw the clothes in, and then began searching the clothes one by one. Could it be hiding in the ruffles of this shirt, or perhaps the pocket of those jeans? Maybe he's inside that pair of underwear or socks. Better smash them to make sure. No? Well, there's still plenty of clothes to examine.
The pile was soon gone, and the spider no where to be found. Only one pile remained, a pile of letters I have received from colleges over the past six months. I flipped each one over, prepared to attack anything that moved. Slowly, the pile began to decrease in size as each letter was tossed to the side. Then, the bed was clear. The spider hadn't been found.
Perhaps he was sucked up by my vacuum when I thrusted it blindly into the piles? I couldn't trust it, though. I had too keep looking. it was time to initiate Step Five, Sub-part 3: search under the bed.
I picked up my mattress and moved it to the side. I began to search the edges of the space under my bed, moving boxes when I had to and sucking up cobwebs when I needed to. Then, the spider revealed itself. It was hiding underneath the surge protector. I quickly sucked it up and then leaped for joy. I had caught the monster!
I began step 6, reconstruction of the room and organizing items into piles to be ready for easy cleaning. Step 7 was folding and putting clothes into drawers, which resulted in Sub-part 2: retiring old clothes and recycling of sentimental shirts.
Then began the careful cleaning of my room, steps 8-10. One and one-half hours later, I realized that this was not a one-day job. This job would take two days in order to finish. I quickly put the mess into a single pile in the corner of my room and prepared myself to finish it another day.
Do I trust my room? Oh, no. When one's sanctuary has been desecrated multiple times by the culprits of the same species, one does not feel safe for a while. I do, though, have a semi-clean room, and that is very nice.