Makeshift Oubliettes

(This post is backdated from early Sunday afternoon.  I had such a nice unbroken stream from the blog's beginning that I wanted to continue it - even if it means cheating a little.)

An oubliette, according to my dictionary, is a certain type of dungeon with an opening only in the ceiling.  The word comes from the French verb oublier, which means "to forget."  This is what you would do to the prisoner deposited into the dungeon through the hole in the roof.  I intend to do the same.

Since I'm not allowed to install a dungeon pit in my apartment (I don't think my downstairs neighbor would appreciate it), I'm constructing makeshift oubliettes in which to deposit some of the things which came with this apartment that I'd like to forget about.  Such as what? you ask.  Such as the broken drain plug from the bathtub (I have no way to stop it up) and from the bathroom sink (ditto), the tangle of cables for the TV (I haven't got a TV), and the ugly mosquito-netting room-divider-curtain that my landlady decided to leave behind (but she had to remove the curtain rods).  So I've designated two hard-to-get-to storage spaces, one in the bathroom and one in the hall closet, as oubliettes.  I'm going to wad up the offending items, wrap them in plastic bags, and drop them in the dungeons until they starve to death.

We have been cleaning all day, and the whole family is fed up.  We've made very good progress, but almost none of the work we've been doing is work we should have to do - it should have been done before we got here.  Tomorrow we're going to go down to Williamsburg to visit family and decompress, since we're all sick and tired of cleaning - and ammonia fumes.

To compensate for my fed-up-ness in my own idiosyncratic way - pictures to come - I impulse-bought an African violet.  It looks very nice on my freshly-cleaned windowsill.  It makes me think that everything is going to be just fine, once the cleaning is done.  But I feel like it (the African violet, not the windowsill or the feeling that everything's gonna be all right*) ought to have a name - any thoughts?  We have named one of the kitchen cabinets - the one under the counter on the right of the stove whose little door betrays the vast space behind it (the entire corner of the kitchen, really).  In the process of cleaning and re-papering all the cabinets, the vastness and darkness of this one in the corner have earned it the nickname "The Black Hole of Calcutta," which I intend to use in the future (the origin of the term can be found here).  I haven't decided if I'll shorten it to "Black Hole" or "Calcutta" yet, but I do think the name has a certain ring to it.  Now what about that African violet?

*Music reference, anybody?