— पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठासी —
Shobhit worked a 5-9 shift last night. I spent the evening at home on my own.
Guru had puked in three spots when I got home from work. Yet another puke just minutes before Shobhit got home. And then, Shobhit came to bed around 12:30ish, and he woke me up by saying "Oh, shit." There was puke on the blankets. He told me there was also puke out in the living room. I was awake now, so I just got up to go clean that up, and asked Shobhit to put the blankets in the washing machine. There was a definite hairball in the puke this time, so—maybe naively—I am hoping we'll get a break from all the puke now that Guru's finally got that back up.
Shobhit had a pot of dinner ready on the stove. He had made Maggi with deep fried tofu in it, which under normal circumstances I would have loved. He had previously made an odd dish out of a bunch of greens and chopped carrots for himself, which he knew I would not like. He had mixed in what was left of that into this pot of Maggi, which bummed me out a little. I thought, maybe it's okay. A few greens won't hurt me, and I can add peanut sauce to it.
I made myself some chai. I ate the Maggi at the bedroom desk while watching last week's season 2 premiere of
Loki on Disney+. I did not care for the Maggi. I don't think I'll have any more of it.
By the time the show was done, it must have been around 7:00. I must have spent the next two solid hours fucking with the vacuum cleaner.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठासी —
— पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठासी —
It was long past time to vacuum the condo. It was in dire need of it last week, when I thought Jennifer would be visiting, but then she covid-canceled and I never got around to vacuuming. By last night, the carpet was kind of a horror show.
It's easy to assume people are exaggerating when they say things like that about the state of their house. Trust me when I say, I am not. I mean, we're not exactly in "wellness check" territory, or in the vicinity of how my mom's house was before she got state care workers to do housework for her. Even I have a line. But, it's past where most people's line is.
The problem was, the vacuum cleaner was clogged somewhere. The rollers worked fine, but nothing was sucking much, and certainly the external tube had no suction whatsoever when it was disconnected. This needed a fix.
It never would have occurred to me to do this, except that back when we went to Australia and the vacuum cleaner shorted out in the middle of vacuuming before we left, Alexia told me she disassembled it and put it back together and it was running again! Oh, you can do that?
So, I fetched a Philips screw driver and unscrewed several componenets of the vacuum cleaner, so I could access air passage points and find the clog. I removed three different components before I finally got it figured out, and I did pull out huge wads of dirt and cat hair from two different spots. Once it was reassembled, I can't say it worked as well as when Alexia first gave the vacuum cleaner to us, but, it was working better. There was actually suction in the external tube, which I could finally use to get dirt from nooks and crannies, the space under the couch, etc.
This was the final problem: after I reassembled the vacuum cleaner, I had three extra screws. I don't know where the fuck they go. I can't find any screw holes without any screws in them. But whatever, it doesn't fall apart when I vacuum with it.
I did mention taking the vacuum cleaner apart and having the extra screws on the group chat, which had a fair amount of activity last night. Gabriel responded,
This is the most non Matthew thing I have read from Matthew in literally forever. Ha! Well, necessity is the mother of invention, I guess.
I was up later than usual last night, which was a conscious decision on my part. I wanted to watch one of the two episodes of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that we were behind on, after Shobhit got home from work. He had to pause a few times for phone calls with his mom and his brother, as they are all still working on transferring shares from their late father's name (the man passed away in 1990) to their mom's name. Evidently India makes this process a gargantuan, months-long pain in the ass. Anyway, the show was really fun.
— पाँच हजार चार सौ अट्ठासी —
[posted 12:34 pm]
