There once was a princess who lived in a shelter....who muchly feared the mop...

And she wore a great deal of purple.
Actually, to say she wore a great deal of purple is like saying "A keeshond dog wears a great deal of fur."
She had purple hair down the middle of her back. But she didn't, really. It was just a wig, and she wore it about once a week at most. She had other wigs, too. A black one with bangs that made her look like Jenny Schecter, the psychotic bisexual from The L Word. A blonde streaky one that was very Californian. A long white-blonde one with aqua highlights---a Portia de Rossi hairdo, if someone puked up blue Icee on her. (Poor Portia. Can you imagine if someone ACTUALLY puked up an artificially-colored beverage on her pristine platinum head?? My god. To even think of such a thing is just...horrifying...)

Anyway, enough about the princess's wigs.

This princess had a back injury. Her psoas, iliacus and pirifomis muscles were constantly inflamed, in spasm, etc...basically, my friends, these muscles were NAUGHTY. If I recall correctly, they had a condition called tendonitis. And they had the rudeness to be located deep within the body, near the hip joint, out of reach of any cortisone needle, out of easy reach of a masseuse's healing hands....for years, the princess suffered with this affliction, and no healer could make it go away permanently. Oh yes, it would subside and fade off for months at a time, only to recur when she decided to bend a certain way to plug in a DVD player or pet the cat or, heavens forfend, climb the stairs. It even happened once in her sleep!!

She railed at the gods, the angels, the spirits, saying: "Not cool, you assholes. Not cool. If I were a being with special powers, I would not put people through this shit. You bastards are really creative."

The princess's housemates started to notice after a few weeks that she wasn't really doing her chores as scheduled. They also noticed that she was moaning and groaning and sitting about with ice packs on her arse, but they didn't really put 2+2 together. So they started dropping hints. The princess was out of her league on this one, and a bit afraid that she might be shoveled into the dungeon for failure to participate appropriately.

So the princess sat in her highly-decorated gypsy-bohemian cave at the top of the stairs, fans blowing, rain falling outside, on July 3rd, and wondered...."what shall I do about this impending chore drama?"

To be continued.