Pack Rat

I don't remember what started it now or why I said it, but rather jokingly as Autumn and I were walking into the house I called her a Pack Rat. Irritated, Autumn glared at me and instantly shot back, "At least I'm not carrying around two dead cars." That's a common enough tactic to take during a petty squabble isn't it? Shift attention away from yourself as quickly as possible so you don't have to actually think about the point being made. Opening my mouth to say something in return I decided against it and just shut up. She was right of course. I do have two very dead cars now. That fire in the Cougar did more than just cosmetic damage it seems...

It is also true that Autumn is one of the worst Pack Rats I've ever seen.

Autumn's apartment is rather small. It's not that great of a layout inside but what it lacks in available space is entirely made up for by the gorgeous view of the surroundings.

Every closet in her apartment is jammed with personal belongings. This also includes a storage locker downstairs in her apartment's garage. It's all stuff Autumn rarely uses. Old clothes, an Amelda Marcos sized collection of shoes, hat boxes filled with random junk, far too many Christmas decorations, roll upon roll of gift wrap paper, a beading kit complete with hordes of various beads, boxes of photos from overseas trips she never looks at, shopping bags crammed with who knows what.... it goes on and on. Actually, it's impressive the sheer volume of crap Autumn has been able to hide. I've started to think of her apartment's closets as black holes gobbling up whatever is fed into them. Problem is they're defective black holes. Instead of consuming matter and spitting items out in another dimension halfway across the galaxy all that junk stays put making for one hell of a fire hazard.

Another of my amazing Autumn Pack Rat observations is a cycle her bedroom goes through periodically. Like a pendulum Autumn's bedroom swings back and forth from total disaster area to spotlessly organized living space. At any given time during the week whatever item is no longer immediately needed will be discarded. Dropped to the floor and left where it fell, her bedroom will transform into an obstacle course of bath towels, clothes, paperwork, and shopping bags until you can no longer see carpet with the naked eye. Eventually this clutter will be too much for even Autumn herself to handle and it will all be magically spirited away to hungry, gluttonous closets.

I can forgive all of that though. It's kind of amusing.

What I do have a problem with is the refrigerator in her apartment. That shit is scary. Autumn loves to cook and she's damn good at it. She's always in the kitchen mixing up something tasty from scratch. I'm constantly amazed at her level of kitchen skill. On the negative side, all those leftovers have to go somewhere. That somewhere is a white painted metal closet commonly referred to as a refrigerator. Autumn doesn't like to throw food stuffs out so more and more leftovers wrapped in foil or crammed into plastic yogurt containers pile up fast in there. Then she forgets about them. Bad things start to happen. The refrigerator has a tough time maintaining a constant temperature because of everything so it stays wet inside all the time. Real icky. Plastic bags filled with what was once fresh produce like cucumbers turn into brown and gray sacks of liquid mulch. Jars containing unidentifiable substances transform into rot. I'm genuinely concerned one of these days she's going to eat something that's gone South on her and end up seriously ill...