killing the birthday balloon

i'm not next-to-godliness obsessive, but i like my place to look clean, even if it isn't. what's more, i worry about the roaches coming back and about my cat snarfing up leftovers. she'll puke on my bedspread or in my shoes if she eats anything other than her chicken-n-rice pellets. so i fingernail pick off the marinara spots, the curled onion peels and dead pasta that whoever cooked last night failed to wipe off the floor. i sponge the stove. i do the undone dishes. i vacuum. the thing is, i don't go all out. my room mates are way more thorough about cleaning then i am. it's just that they do it once in a blue moon. i don't think they even notice mess the way i do. but like i said, my work is spotty. i miss things. instead of mopping the floor, i spit on a spot and rub it out with my sock. the surface of the stove i wipe, but the grime in and around the burners i leave untouched. in the bathroom i whisk about the bowl, but miss stains on the tiles in back. in my room i vacuum under the desk, but ignore the dust rats behind the piano. i make the bed every morning. I punch up the pillows, but my room mates? they don't do this stuff. on the other hand they fuck a lot more than i do. they're wiped out from it i suppose and if i was fucking that much maybe my room would be a wreck too. i berate myself for being an old auntie, tsk-tsking them in a silent prayer that i'm setting an example, that they'll see that i vacuumed the hallway and soon they'll do it too, right? they don't. i rationalize 'ok rick. this sort of clean freak shit is a priority for you, but it's not for them. it bothers you, it doesn't bother them. so it's on your watch to get the job done. then again, who cares when the entire planet is on the ropes and people are being slaughtered in Afghanistan? a tidy apartment is a blackhead on the ass of real life. which brings me to today and the birthday balloon. i borrowed a big white balloon at work from one birthday party and gave it to my room mate who was having her own celebration in another part of the restaurant. i figured you gotta have a fucking balloon on a day like that. anyhow, she brought it home. it kissed the ceiling for awhile, lost helium and descended to the floor where it slept for weeks. i thought it would eventually turn into a rubber scrotum and die, but it didn't. it retained enough gas to lie around the house like a loser, useless and semi-flacid. because it said 'Happy Birthday' in black magic marker i hadn't the heart to kill it until today as i was tidying up. there it was in the living room, under a window, staring up at me as if to say 'you got the balls to do this or what?' i felt guilty, but i carried it into the kitchen on one arm like a baby. i plucked a knife out of the drainer and this is when it got weird. i shut my eyes. yup, i shut my eyes and looked away, same as when the nurse draws blood. it's not the pin prick, it's the sight of the needle going into my vein that gives me the creeps. so i pinched the balloon by it's scrawny chicken neck, closed my eyes, turned my head and stabbed. 'POP!' it wasn't that loud. it was more like a 'pip', like a bird fart and then it was over. i could swear it felt pain, as if i heard a small cry, like ET: 'ouch'. my heart sank. my lower lip trembled. i plopped it on top of an empty pizza box in the pantry, sad, abandoned and dead. maybe i was one of those hooded executioners in a previous life time and this was my scardy-cat karma.