Long day is long

Considering that it is a quarter to midnight, this is going to be short.

Living with Mom and her husband Jerry has it's own unique quirks. Possibly the quirkiest of these is Jerry's beloved dog Pete. Pete is a German wire-haired pointer, and he is old. He also shows some signs of dementia. One of those signs is that he has decided that it is OK to pee on things in the basement of the house. Why the basement and not the rest of the house, nobody knows, but there you have it. The obvious solution then is to keep Pete (and therefore all of the dogs) out of the basement. But things happen and he manages to get down there from time to time. Millie, Katie's Italian greyhound, then thinks that if it's OK for Pete, then it must be OK for her too. Granted she only thinks this during the coldest parts of the winter, when her lithe little 8 pound body just won't stay warm, even for the few minutes it would take her to go out the dog door. Of course, they don't choose to pee on the concrete floor of the laundry room. I mean, why would they, when there's perfectly good carpet to pee on in the den? Now, spot cleaning will only take you so far in dealing with such things, and with Katie's mom arriving tomorrow, and the den serving as our guest room, it was definitely time to break out the carpet cleaner. So, after work today, I came home and vacuumed, and then I cleaned carpets. Once that was done, I disassembled the dehumidifier (the basement can get a little damp in the spring) which had also been peed on, and cleaned it thoroughly. Once all of that was done, the den was rather stuffy from the different cleaning solutions and the damp carpet, which lead me to open up one of the long disused windows and then remove the storm window from the outer sill. Though I'm sure at the time the house was built, there were screens for the basement windows, they exist no more. This led to my building a screen to keep bugs, mice, cats or squirrels from investigating the freshly cleaned den. I did take a break in the middle of my screen building to eat dinner (pork spareribs), which was a much needed meal, but that meant that it was 10:30 by the time my screen was completed and in place.

On the upside, the carpet is clean, the basement smells clean and nice, we can open the window in the den at will, and keeping the air dry in the basement won't cause it to reek.

I may not sleep long tonight, but I will sleep well!

Blessings.