Priorities.

Today I found mildew under my rug.

That rug and I have always had a hate/hate relationship.

When I moved in, I took one look at that fluorescent seventies reject and decided to loathe it. And loathe it, I did. It was huge and heavy and on more than one occasion it sheltered spiders under its edges.

Still, I kept it in place because without it the bare floor would be so naked and even though it was hideous it made the room feel more like a room.

And then today I was giving my room its monthly once over with the vacuum and I decided to make it a good one. I pulled some of my stuff away from the edges and pretended not to see the black undertones that were seeping through the bright yellow awfulness.

I finished vacuuming and then lifted the edge a bit, mainly to clean up the bodies of dead bugs that I have been collecting there, but in doing so I saw how black the floor was, too. Still, I hesitated, trying to decide if I could just put Ugly Betty back on the floor and go on sleeping two feet away from her poison.

Then I heard my mother's voice yelling at me in my head.

So, I reluctantly started moving all of my stuff off the rug.

And then I gained momentum. And then I got determined.

And then, before I knew it, I had donned cleaning gloves and was rolling up the entire beastly rug all by myself even after talking with T about waiting for E to get home to help me.

I couldn't.

I rolled it up, bleached two three-foot long spots of mildew on the floor, wrapped plastic around the black spots on the rug, taped the whole thing up and dragged it to an empty corner of the basement. I left her for dead and went back to my room, which was now miles wider and freer.

I bleached the entire floor, hoping to kill off anything that might be left alive besides myself. And since I am allergic to bleach, my hopes were high because either the bugs die or I will. In fact, I might anyway.

On that train of thought, I breaked from my work to light several candles and spray some natural cleaners over the stench of bleach. Then, for real kicks, I mixed up some ammonia-containing floor cleaner and used that right over the bleached areas.

I used to work for a cleaning company. After college I moved back to my hometown for a summer and got a job with a friend. We half-heartedly wiped down offices and cafeterias and bathrooms. Our only joy came from eating food clearly marked for someone else out of the break room and from mixing bleach and ammonia in the urinals and running away as they started to smoke.

Those were hard times.

Nothing exciting happened on my floors today though, so I just waited for them to dry and then began putting my things back into the room. It's officially a bug free zone and my bed has clean sheets on it, which is a challenge for me.

The dryers are also lint free and there isn't a cobweb to be found.

It was quite an undertaking for a Friday afternoon.

Which is why this Friday evening I am watching TV while I stay home with the two smallest and hope the wild bout of storms doesn't knock my power out in the middle of an important episode.