My Five-Star Review For the Amazon Item I Have Not Yet Opened

The RUGSREAL 8x10 Living Room Area Rug Contemporary Area Rugs Modern Abstract Area Rug Throw Floor Carpet Machine Washable Area Rug for Bedroom Kitchen Nursery, 9' x 12' Multi/Red is, by any objective measure, a piece of shit. It’s one of those “Country of Origin: China” Amazon items whose entire selling point is its unrepentant cheap-piece-of-shitness. Money’s tight, what can I tell you; if it wasn’t for China, I’d be living in the Amazon box the rug arrived in. It replaces another cheap rug we had, which had become so matted and frayed I could no longer bear it. And so, in need of something quick and cheap, I went to Amazon.

That was Sunday.

I was told the rug would be delivered Tuesday.

But by Tuesday, 10:30 AM, I had long forgotten it.

“2025 off to a great start,” came the text from my son, along with video he had just taken from the window of his school in Santa Monica, looking out at the massive plume of black smoke a few miles away in Pacific Palisades, flames flaring up in furious elemental rage.

“Jesus,” I helpfully replied.

Within twenty minutes, the fire had grown from 20 acres to 200.

“It’s getting closer,” he texted moments later, followed by a crying emoji.

I didn’t know it at the time, but inside that approaching cloud was the home of our friends Jeff and Wendy. Old photos, memories, laughter, family dinners, holidays with friends - blackened, smoke-born, disappeared.

They moved to the Palisades thirty years ago, when their daughter Julia was born. They bought a small home, too small really, but it was what they could afford, and it was in the Edenic neighborhood by the sea Jeff had always dreamed of one day living.

“It’s getting worse,” my son texted back. “U cant see the mountains anymore.” Another crying emoji, larger this time.

By 2:30 PM – 700 acres.

By 3PM – 1200 acres.

You know the rest of the story.

Jeff and Wendy evacuated to a family member in Calabasas. An evacuation warning would soon be ordered for that community as well.

Soon my older son returned home, his college closer to the flames than our apartment, breathless at the front door, lugging his beloved upright bass. Note: this is not a good instrument for fleeing with. If you’re planning on fleeing, play the kazoo. But it was a gift from us, and is dear to him.

A sleepless night. By morning, more fires were reported, as furious as the first, so we decided to pack our essentials – photos, artwork, documents, medications into whatever suitcases we had. I was bad at this. I wanted to pack the walls, the floors, the ceiling. I wanted to pack the shitty dishwasher I hate and the ancient fridge that freezes everything you put in it and the tree outside the living room window where hummingbirds come to play and the spider who lives in the buzzing light beside the front door, keeping watch on all who approach.

Which brings me back to the RUGSREAL 8x10 Living Room Area Rug Contemporary Area Rugs Modern Abstract Area Rug Throw Floor Carpet Machine Washable Area Rug for Bedroom Kitchen Nursery, 9' x 12' Multi/Red. You can see it in the photo above, still in its box, beside our packed suitcases and the framed “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon my son drew for me when he was younger. On the wall above them hangs one of Orli’s art pieces, a stunning, powerful woodcarving of a mother breastfeeding, the lines of the drawing composed of the Jewish morning prayer for men, thanking God for not making them women. We’ll grab it on the way out, should that petty God come for us, too (though fair warning, Oh Lord: tangle with Orli, and thou shalt surely be sorry).

And across from them, in the Amazon box, my rug.

Cheap, thin, probably toxic, non-durable, probably hazardous.

Five stars.

Because however shitty it is, we still, for the moment, have a living room. We still have a front door where Amazon can leave our packages. We still have a floor where I can lay that shitty rug down, shake my head in disgust, look at Orli and say, “What a piece of shit.”

So five fucking stars. Would buy again if the fires don’t reach us.

Late that first night, I texted Jeff, asked him if there was anything I could do.

“Write something funny,” he wrote.

I replied: “All this horrible news about fires makes me really want to smoke.”

That was the best I could come up with. That, and this review of my shitty Amazon rug. I hope it helps, Jeff.

Yours in the fetal position,

S.

Update: Jeff’s written about his experience here. He’s not a “writer,” which is annoying because it’s so good. Fuck you, Jeff.

Also: For all that have inquired, Orli’s art here.

illustrations by orli auslander

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