Who Wants To Eat Off The Floor?

Goddamn Blogger finally got wise to me and switched me over to the new layout/scheme.

I hate it.


Anyway, yeah, so who here wants to eat off the floor?

It is so sparkling clean that we totally can.

Totally.


We are renting a house.
The owners decided that a house that had been owned/occupied by an ill elderly lady for YEARS, until her passing, and then left empty for another year didn't need to be cleaned.

At all.

Before we moved in.

I never actually saw the place before we paid for it. My father in law took a gander and knew that the size of the house, and the fact they would accept dogs, was enough to make it work.

And we were damn lucky to find a place that would allow two big, stinkers. And the dogs, too... nyuck nyuck. (I searched for months and months trying to find a rental house that would accept dogs, and all but one other owner said no. So we had no real choice. The yard is great for the dogs, and we need the space in a house, but DAY-UM).

But I knew my feet felt icky on the floor.

I busted out the Swiffer wetjet, bought new solution, and swiped an area of floor downstairs about 2 feet wide by about 8 feet long.

I think swiffer pads now come in an assortment of colours. I unknowingly picked out "filth".

All I could think of was:

"Holy hell this place is so disgusting, I can't live here even temporarily, dear lord I feel dirty and this place is creepy and there are spiders and ewwww and it's so nasty, and I hate cleaning and ahhhhhhhhh"

along with:

"I have to take a photo and blog this shit".

So, there ya have it.
My mouth is watering already. Pull up a cushion and a fork, we're having mud-spider carcass for dinnah!

Now, to take nice, long, hot bath.

You know, after I spend an hour scrubbing the SHIT out of it with bleach...


_________

Pin It Now!

Holy Shit, BC spiders. #iwantmymommy

Holy hell, Batman.

I want to take you back in time for a moment. Imagine a young, lethargic, hopeful, bedwetting me.

I was young (once), and I wanted to hang out with my sister and her boyfriend. Said boyfriend (who may or may not have been a car thief, who am I to judge?) brought over a movie to watch.


ME: Neato Bandito!


And I was invited to watch with them.


ME: Wowzers! Totes cool!


And so I watched. And I regret that shit to this day. The movie?

SOMEONE GRAB THE RAID!!!! Don't let the pretty pastels fool you. This movie has scarred me for life. (Image via)

I checked every ceiling corner of every room that I entered for at least the next decade. No word of a f_cking lie. I would get goose bumps and freeze if there was even one small spider in a corner.

Eventually, I grew to be able to squash the smaller ones with a shoe or kleenex box. Go ahead and snicker at the overkill, but I am NOT taking any risks with bites or rogue spiders skittering across my shaking hands!

Then we moved to BC. To a house with a lot of cracks and nooks and crannies.

And this:

"Good morning!

How are we doing today?

Gonna have some cereal are you? Yes?

Let me scare the shit out of you and reduce your appetite!"

Holy hell, Batman.


My mind's immediate interpretation of the scenario:

"Grrrrrrr RARRRR! THTHSSSS! Rawr, Rassum, Frassum, RALARRAGHSHFGHG!  Heeey... nice toaster."

Screaming ensued.

My dogs are TERRIFIED of me right now.



I don't know how I am gonna do this... and once the rain comes...

*shudder*

______

Pin It Now!

Day 3 Cross Canada: Thunder Bay, Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba

The next morning after the stair incident (and subsequent damn luckiness that no dog or person sustained any broken bones), we had to get Schultz back down the stairs.

We both showered that morning in overwhelming anxiety, and loaded our continental breakfast plates up with dread and a serving of intense fear. (Okay, okay, that might have been me. I think the Hubs might have actually had muffins and yogurt).

By the grace of Northern Ontario's angry Moose Gods, we somehow managed to get him down and out of the stairwell, safely to the boulevard to pee, and into the SUV.  A group of bikers made many comments/references about making sure we had control of him. Another man wanted to approach our Dane (fully decked out in a cage muzzle, remember), but mentioned something about the smaller dogs around us being Schultz' breakfast.

We headed out for the long, loooong, loooooong boring drive to Winnipeg.

I think this was to indicate we crossed a time zone in Winnipeg. Either that, or I am passed out at the wheel. The latter is the more likely scenario.

We hit so much construction - a Provincial highway improvement initiative translated into more areas than I can count that were reduced to one lane. One lane in total. So one side of the road would be given a green light, and we got to sit, idle and enjoy all the fumes surrounding us in the beauty of nature.

The sign holder wouldn't make eye contact, but would carelessly swing the sign back and forth, sometimes flipping it to slow, simply because she wasn't paying attention. Pretty dangerous/confusing, dumbass.

No, we're not in England, we're in the only open lane on Hwy #1 in Northern Ontario during the season between spring and fall: construction.

Just when I thought we had reached the end of the long day, it turned out that we got to sit through EVEN MORE construction along the city streets in the 'Peg. I was ready to snap. People cutting in, cutting me off, sitting. Waiting. Seething.

I've had enough of these motherf_cking cars, on this motherf_cking road: my summation of my emotions of having to drive an additional, unplanned hour after a full and tiring day.

We headed to the home of some of Hubs' relatives who were kind enough to offer their yard and home for a pit stop/run/stretch/dinner/hotel break for a few hours for the evening. They ordered vegetarian gluten-free pizza!! They even played with the dogs outside and let us do laundry there, which was so appreciated. (Trust me - when I am stressed, I "stress sweat", and it's an ENTIRELY different universe of stink. Potent enough to kill vampires.)

Sharing a drink, or using this bowl as a chin rest. Hard to tell.

The dogs were once again fairly well behaved, until the mosquitoes started to swarm us. From there we moved inside, where Ella tried to steal all the toys of the resident dog, and Schultz bumped into furniture and seemed generally out of sorts and stressed.

Background: We knew that Schultz' vision was getting poor. We knew he had trouble seeing some things, usually in low light. But as stuff was moved out of the house (before the drive), he started walking into light coloured walls (occasionally, not constantly) where large, dark pieces of furniture used to sit. Again, I thought it was worse because of the low light in the room at the time, but I knew it wasn't a good thing.

Then add in to the equation his stair terror. Add in falling off a low deck because he didn't know where the stairs were. Him stressed out in a strange house... not because of the noise or the people... but because we realized that he couldn't see most of it, if not all of it.

As he hunkered down once again, terrified to go over two small wooden stairs to the exterior door in an unfamiliar building, the gravity hit us that he must actually be blind. Really and truly blind.

I know there are bigger issues out in the world. I know there is unbelievable human and animal suffering around the globe. I most certainly get caught up and overwhelmed in my own life, but I do realize that major, awful things are happening right now in the world.

That being said, in that moment, we realized just how scared and how fragile our little fur baby was. His memorization of our old house hid how bad his vision was. Our vet explained a few months earlier that he had cataracts and that his pupils were fairly dilated, trying to allow as much light in as possible.

The blue-green sheen in his eyes was showing us the truth all along.

But when he trembled and pulled back when four of us tried to coax him down the stairs, it really became real. I know I have a flair for the dramatic, but it felt like my heart was breaking right then and there in Winnipeg. A part of me knew it was inevitable, but I really didn't think it had progressed as badly as it had.

With the help of the Hubs' family, area rugs were moved to provide traction for him (Schultz, not the Hubs), peanut butter was brought out, and kindness was showered on him as we tried to lift his 140 pounds over those two stairs.

S & S - If you are reading this, thank you for your patience and kindness.

We made it back to our Winnipeg hotel in good time, as traffic had cleared and we avoided construction en route. I was able to keep the tears at bay until we were in our SUV.

I cried for him, for his fear, for not being able to fix it or console him enough. I cried for my Hubs, who has such a bond with Schultz, because I could tell his heart was breaking, too. I cried remembering how hard it was in Scooby's senior years. I cried remembering the difficulties our blind cat (Mr. Grey) had when he was with us. I cried with fatigue, with hope, with sadness, with helplessness.

We got to the hotel, and I unloaded while the Hubs watched the dogs. I snapped at Ella. I snapped at the Hubs. I was mad at myself. And then the angry turned into what it really was - sadness and fear/anxiety, masquerading as outward anger. I cried on the hotel room floor beside Schultz, with Hubs sandwiched between us.

Everything is darkest before the dawn.


______

Pin It Now!