Letter: Dear 2010 Self

Dear 2010 Self,

So a couple days before Christmas I visited an elderly woman in the neighborhood. In my church, I am officially assigned as her friend, her visiting teacher. I'm not sure how that is supposed to work, since she's got me by several decades, but I enjoy visiting with her.

Something that came up in our conversation was how we were both slumlords. By slumlords I mean owned property we rented to college students. Mostly I just wanted to call myself a slumlord cause it sounded cool, but according to our properties they were on the older side, but clean.

We shared horror stories of being the nice landlord giving a handshake deal to be compassionate, only to be burned by sloppy, careless, selfish, high on independence college punks.

Elderly woman: I stopped by the apartment where a bunch of girls rented. I checked the kitchen and couldn't believe it! I told those girls I was going for a sandwich and when I came back, they needed to have swept underneath the stove. I mean, that thing hadn't been touched in five years! Those girls all left except one little freshman girl who did the work all by herself. When I came back I told her I wouldn't let any male relative I know date girls who were so sloppy and careless.

2010 Self? All I could do was nod, smile, and slightly gasp. I didn't dare say that I never knew you could just slide that thing (i.e. stove) off the wall. My mom was a clean freak, but that department was never covered.

Can I just say that for years! when I had a messy pot on the stove, I cringed to see food particles hit that crack between the stove and the counter. I would pull out spatulas and try to fling the food out from the crack so I could clean it up. Sometimes it worked.

Sometimes it didn't.

Apparently most people know this cleaning trick, since the previous owners did the stove shuffle when they painted an accent wall in the kitchen (red) which was then painted over by me (blue).

So shortly after this visit where I am the "teacher" visiting the woman who knows more than me...well, I pulled that sucker off the wall quite easily, I swept a load of crap in the the first picture, mopped the floor, and then wiped the food sweat from the sides of the stove.

I had a little helper. Isn't he cute? He's my official boyfriend.

Please remember to clean your stove. You never know what desperate consolation prize you need to cling onto when the new year rolls around.

Signed,

2009 Self