SCIENCE: Being Secretly Food-Disgusting is Worse than Puberty

So I like to think of myself as a relatively clean person. Sure, I may occasionally wind up with 6-10 outfit parts on the trunk at the end of my bed, the worn beater tossed onto the considered-but-discarded dress and the tights I whipped off the second I got home, the whole thing rising higher and higher until it threatens to topple, killing the unsuspecting citizenry below...

...but that's just a tidiness issue, if you ask me. There is a clear line between tidiness and cleanliness, the one defined by neat stacks of papers, the other by which mold colonies are taking hold on the tacky-feeling surface beneath it. Unmade beds are an issue of the former, uncleaned toilets of the latter - I won't delineate every example of the one or the other, but you get the idea - like porn, you know it when you see it. Unlike porn, it's not a particularly fuzzy line.

So on the cleanliness front, I like to think I do okay. The litter box is scooped every other day, I toss fruits and veggies and cheeses and what have you that are turning out of the fridge (even though it pains me to do so, as I have a Mr. Krabs from Spongebob moment of seeing each uneaten item as real, tangible money), I even get down on my hands and knees with a carton of comet (in an environmental frenzy, I decided to give up all WORKING cleaners, i.e. Scrubbing Bubbles, in favor of "green" alternatives - I also gave up paper towels - but I can't bear to reexamine my comet; it's too functional) and scrub at the tub every once in a while.

Okay, that last one might not be the place where I am my cleanest. Point is, I try.

So you can imagine my horror when recently I reached into my cupboard in order to whip up a batch of rice. Opening the bag, peering in for the best angle to turn my cup-measurer for easy entry, something looked off. I looked a little closer - was this suposed to be a blend? Or are some of those grains just a little toasted or something...

And then I saw one of them moving, writhing, to be more accurate, clinging and swinging on the inside of the bag with his nasty-rice-maggot suckers as if he was in the f**king circus.

Don't worry, I threw the bag, and any other cupboard item that was looking at me funny, away.

But it's times like these when I feel that I was truly incapacitated by my mother's stay-at-homeness, and my resultant lack of anything approaching a real-world view of housework. I won't even get started on my laundry failures...

-Posted by Jilly