Author Archives: Cindy

I no longer enjoy being a pet owner

Posted on by

Funny that I mentioned cat pee at the end of that last entry. And I mean funny-ironic, because believe me, this ain’t funny-haha.

So, I’m trying to get the last few things taken care of before the housekeepers come tomorrow. Yesterday I thought it’d be a good idea to wash the sheets on the guest bed, since I hadn’t bothered since my in-laws visited in December. (Why would I? No one ever sleeps in there.)

While I was stripping the sheets, I caught a whiff of cat pee. I wondered if maybe they had peed on the floor under the bed? Maybe that’s where it was coming from? Then I realized, no, they had, in fact, peed ALL OVER the bed. The comforter, sheets, pillows, mattress pad, and the mattress itself were all soaked. How I never smelled it before, I have no idea. For those of you familiar with cats, you know that cat pee has that awful ammonia smell that is almost impossible to remove.

All of the bed linens were promptly washed (with bleach), and pillows are cheap, so whatever, I can throw those away and get new ones, no big deal. But the mattress? I didn’t know what to do about that.

I did some Google-ing and found a couple of home remedies, and also got advice from Kris, who has more experience with pet-related disasters than anyone I know. So I’m using a combination of this stuff, and some water mixed with white vinegar to neutralize the ammonia smell. I’m hoping that’ll be enough.

So after my cleaning efforts have dried, we’re going to flip the mattress over (pee-side down), make the bed, and leave it alone until the house sells. But Dave and I unanimously agreed that when it’s time to move, we are not taking the cat pee-soaked bed with us. Even if we can’t smell the pee, chances are good that the cats can, so they’ll just keep going there. So forget it, we’ll just buy a new bed for the guest room after we move. It’s one less thing to have to load onto the truck, right?

I also realize that I really need to take Teenie to the vet. My suspicion is that it was her, since she’s the one who has more litter box issues than any of the other cats, and it seems to be getting worse now that she’s older (she’s almost 12). I don’t know what the vet can do about it if it turns out that she’s incontinent, but I figure it’s worth getting an expert opinion.

Mother's Day weekend recap

Posted on by

Mother’s Day at our house was kind of a non-event. Dave forgot that it was Mother’s Day, I guess because he doesn’t notice any sort of advertising on TV, radio, or the Internet. He felt bad about it, but it really isn’t that big a deal to me. I got to spend a good portion of the day playing with Cate, and that made me happy.

Mother's Day happy girl

(I also shot a bunch of videos, which you can see here if you feel so inclined. I don’t want to be the annoying blogger who embeds a YouTube video of her kid in every single entry.)

We also spent a good portion of the weekend cleaning, which was not so fun. The carpet cleaners came today, so we had to make sure that the floors were cleared off so they could do their thing. You might think that I would gripe and grumble about cleaning the house on Mother’s Day, but the truth of the matter is that since it got me feeling a tiny bit closer to having our house ready to sell, I didn’t mind it one bit. It felt really good, and since Dave was feeling guilty about forgetting Mother’s Day, he helped a lot, which was really nice.

Um, that’s not to imply that Dave is ordinarily unwilling to help with housework. He does the dishes for me almost every night, he’s really great with a lot of the day-to-day stuff. But things like cleaning out our closet and sorting through which of our books we should keep and which ones to trade in at the second-hand bookstore? Yeah, that’s not really his scene. But he did it, and I’m very grateful.

Besides, cleaning out the closet led us to dig up this gem from one of Dave’s old Halloween costumes.

Cate wearing a Bill Clinton wig

It’s a baby in a Bill Clinton wig! You don’t see that every day, now do you?

So yeah, we had fun. And I suppose I should write something really profound about motherhood and how great it is, but… meh. I’ve written about that a few times already, so there’s probably no need for it. And right now, I have to go try to put our furniture back into its proper place and make sure the cats don’t pee on the carpet again until this house has a “sold” sign out front.

up up and away

Posted on by

Last night, Dave and I were eating dinner in the living room and watching The Colbert Report, while Cate played around us happily. All of a sudden Dave said, “Um… where’s the baby?” She had been right next to me just a few seconds before, so I panicked when I realized that I had no idea where she was.

We looked around, and guess what she was doing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsGb8aMBQfI

Yeah. So, she learned a new trick, apparently. And almost gave her mama a heart attack to boot.

(Btw, that video? That was her fourth or fifth trip up the stairs. When we first noticed she was missing, I found her at the top of the stairs already. I brought her back down to the living room, and she immediately set off to practice her new favorite thing. I’d carry her back down, try to distract her with a toy, and “no thanks Mom, I’m off again.” Lather-rinse-repeat.)

We used to have a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, but the spring on it broke because I’d accidentally banged into it while carrying the laundry basket too many times. So when we took it down to paint the baseboards a couple of weeks ago, we threw it out. I figured we had nothing to worry about since Cate had expressed mild interest in the stairs when she was about 9 months old, but hadn’t paid any attention to them since then.

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that her interest in climbing the stairs might eventually resurface. But I guess I have to go buy another baby gate now. Fabulous.

mid-week update

Posted on by

Sorry to leave the barf story at the top for so long, I hope nobody was too grossed out. I’ve been trying to think of something to blog about, so here’s the latest on What We’re Doing:

House Stuff:
1. I think I mentioned that my realtor’s husband might be a teensy bit unreliable when it comes to helping us with our home improvements? Well, he gave me at least five different dates for when he expected he would be done with everything, and not only did he miss every single deadline (self-imposed deadlines, I might add! It wasn’t me asking him to have it done by X date, he was the one making empty promises!), but 90% of the time, he never even showed up. So whatever, we’re done with him. I still like Renee (our realtor) and I know that she’s been mortified by all of this because she’s been in the hospital having her spleen removed (stupid horse with its giant powerful stupid hooves) and she hasn’t been able to keep up with what’s going on with us. So I called our contractor guy to come give us an estimate to finish up the job that Scott didn’t do, and we’ll consider this a lesson learned about mixing friends and business. This is also why you shouldn’t pay people for work in advance. (Don’t ask. Just don’t.)

[Oh, have I ever told y’all that our contractor guy’s name is Paul Newman? He spells his last name slightly differently, but it cracks me up. The first time he called me and said “hi, this is Paul Newman,” I thought it was a prank call. (I knew his name was Paul, I didn’t know his last name.) I always have the urge to ask him what it was like to work with Robert Redford, or how the salad dressing is coming along, or something completely stupid like that. But my guess is that he’s been hearing those jokes for the last 30+ years, so I try to leave it alone.]

2. I also talked with a guy who owns a power-washing company about getting the deck and siding power-washed, so the house will look all shiny and spiffy. He’s working on an estimate for us too. We actually rented a power-washer from Home Depot, got it here, then figured out that it was waaaay too big a job for Dave and me to tackle on our own. So we’re calling in the pro’s.

Work Stuff:
My current project is turning into a huge pain in the butt, but it’s fine. I’m going to end up with a whole lot of billable hours, and I really can’t complain about that.

Baby Stuff:
Nothing really to report, just that she’s awesome and hilarious and we’re having so much fun right now. Oh, and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKeGWpUOqw

(The camera adds ten pounds, shut up.)

Other Stuff:
Dave and I will be celebrating our three-year anniversary a week from tomorrow (the 15th). I’ve made that our target date for listing the house on the market, so we’ll see how that works out.

And a week after our anniversary, the new Indiana Jones movie comes out. I’ve already talked to Patsy about baby-sitting (she sometimes does after-hours stuff for extra money) so Dave and I can have our anniversary date night then. I can’t wait.

how to ruin a Saturday night

Posted on by

Best-friend Kris’s birthday was earlier this week, and she wanted to get everyone together for dinner last night to celebrate. She started planning it weeks ago. A bunch of us were supposed to meet up at a Japanese restaurant in Lynnwood, which is close to where she & her boyfriend Tony live, but it’s about 25 miles from us. Normally a drive like that would be enough to make me flake out, but you know, special occasion, best friend, and all that.

Dave and I did a lot of work on the house yesterday, and Dave hurt his back lifting too many heavy boxes, so he had decided to stay home. He offered to keep Cate at home with him, but Kris had specifically requested that I bring Cate along, since it’s been ages since she’s seen her. I told Dave that it was fine, I’d bring her with me, I’d just take Dave’s car, since it has the flip-down DVD player for the backseat, and I thought that might help keep Cate happy for such a long drive. (Cate’s normally fine in the car, but we rarely go for drives longer than ten or fifteen minutes.)

So I loaded up the diaper bag with snacks and toys for the restaurant, grabbed her “My Friends Tigger & Pooh” DVD, and we set off. About halfway there, she started to get fussy, but I thought it was just because she was tired of being in the car. She wasn’t overly distraught or anything, she was just mildly crying off and on.

At this point I should back up and explain that I always had terrible motion sickness when I was little, and Dave still can’t so much as read a map in the car without getting nauseous. So the kiddo definitely has a genetic predisposition toward carsickness, I just didn’t think about it before this. And it really didn’t occur to me that maybe watching the damn DVD player (a stationary object while you’re in a moving object) might make her sick.

When we were about three miles from the restaurant, I heard an “urp” followed by the sound of liquid splashing. I turned around just in time to see Cate barf the contents of her lunch all over herself. She heaved a few more times just for good measure.

I, predictably, freaked. I pulled over in the first parking lot I could find, and I stripped her barf-soaked clothes off of her, getting quite a bit all over myself in the process. (And oh god, the smell. It was awful.) I cleaned her and the car seat up the best that I could with the baby wipes in the diaper bag. (Of course I didn’t have any extra clothes or towels or anything with me.) Cate was absolutely hysterical by this point, so she and I sat in the backseat of the car with the engine running (and the heat cranked up to “high,” since she was almost naked) for about 10 minutes until she calmed down.

I finally got her to drink a little bit of water from her sippy cup, which I think helped a little bit, and I was able to put her back in the carseat and head home. She conked out and slept most of the way home.

carsickness: 1. Mama's planning ahead with extra clothes & supplies: 0.

Thankfully, Kris was very understanding when I called her to tell her what had happened. And Cate and I were both showered and in our PJ’s – and the car seat cover was in the washing machine – before 7:30 p.m. Yeah, I tell you, this motherhood gig sure does leave room for some wild and crazy times.

quirky or normal?

Posted on by

Question: do all toddlers have an obsession with sorting and organizing things, or is it just mine?

Lately, Cate seems to want to go through all kinds of things and “file” them away, usually not where I’d like them to be. We recently got her an extra-large toy chest in our family room, and Dave and I are constantly digging things out of it that Cate has carefully placed in there: remote controls, car keys, an empty Pringles can (WTF?), basically whatever she finds that she thinks is interesting and might want to revisit later.

It’s not just the toy chest, either. Take her crayons: she shakes them out of the box, organizes them in some sort of “it makes sense in her little toddler brain” pattern, then picks them up and puts them back in the box. Then she shakes them out again, and lather-rinse-repeat. I thought that by getting her some crayons, we’d be encouraging her to draw, but all she wants to do is sort them. It’s sort of the same thing she does with the gravel in the driveway.

She also loves to go through all the stuff in our bathroom cabinets. She’ll pull out whatever she can find: a tube of Neosporin, my mascara, whatever, and then she’ll take off running down the hall with it. I might find it later in her clothes hamper, under the guest room bed, in her upstairs toy box, or who-knows-where.

Don’t get me wrong, I generally find this behavior to be pretty funny, aside from a few “now where the heck did she put x??” moments now & then. I’m just wondering if this is something that all kids do, or if mine is a little bit of a weirdo. (My guess is that it’s probably the latter.)

everyone in my house is medicated today

Posted on by

This allergy-sinus-cold-whatever thing that’s been driving me bonkers for the past week and a half is getting worse, so I’m off to the doctor this afternoon to get some drugs. I usually try to avoid antibiotics when they aren’t absolutely necessary, but it’s been going on since last Sunday. That’s ten freaking snot-filled days. I can’t take it anymore, and I gots stuff to do, man.

Baby stuff: last night and this morning, Cate has been in a totally foul mood. Lots of tantrums, and (this is perhaps a bigger clue) she was gnawing on her hands a lot. Oh boy. Could this be the start of the molars that I’ve been dreading for so long? Last night she started screaming for no reason; she wasn’t hungry, she wasn’t tired, she was just angry. It wasn’t even crying-screaming, she was just pissed. I gave her some baby Motrin, and she cheered up after about a half hour or so. Same thing this morning: mean as a snake until she got some pain meds.

I’m scared, y’all. I’ve heard nightmare stories about molars, I’m sooo not looking forward to this.