Rattle

Monday night

1. I worked fifty hours last week, which made me feel sort of tired and grumpy. I tried to remind myself of the semester I took 18 credit hours and worked three jobs, and how I used to work 12 hour shifts at another job, no problem, but.

I was obviously insane.

2. After I got off work Saturday, due to my need to get out of town for a bit and enjoy some sunshine, J and I drove to a nearby town for no other reason than we like to go to Pamida, because Pamida is sort of awesome, in a weird way.

There! I said it!

We like Pamida!

It was nice to be out in the open, with sunshine and cows and melting snow. We drove home in the dark, with the stars bright over the empty fields. J and I had a very excellent talk when we got home, which made me feel pretty good.

3. Sunday, because I am crazy (see above, for insane: obviously), I got up early to go to the store, and to wash J's car, and to vacuum out his car, and to clean out the inside of his car. I crapped it up pretty badly over the last several months, ever since I drove it when we moved here, in JULY. With the pets. (P-r-o-c-r-a-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n.) I mean, I am dangerous to a car's cleanliness on a normal daily basis, let alone on 16 hour drives whole seasons ago. I like to eat candy, and I like to drink soda, and I like to pack dogs in with me whenever I go anywhere, and all of these activities can be disastrous in a car when spill/drop 30% of food and beverage items never make it to your mouth, and you have dogs roughly the size of two small elephants.

The car is sparkling now (also, no longer contains enough Cab hair to make a parka), because it was warm enough to wash it (24!), and it makes me happy.

4. I did a lot of messing with curtains on Sunday, and cleaned the house (mostly), and coerced J into helping me replace our creepily glued on, too large, ancient toilet seat and disgusting bathroom faucet handles. This is after I got him to help me install a new tub faucet (with a diverter, fancy) and hand shower with a long hose Friday night.

This means that he will no longer have to squat to wash his hair, and it means we will no longer be using a $2.57 hand shower that was so terrible I had to use multiple neon zip ties and rubber bands to keep it from popping off the tub faucet in the middle of a shower. (So many houses here do not have showers, and it is strange. Also, neon zip ties in the bathtub=classy.) This is also after I replaced the hardware on the bathroom vanity, a week ago, and after I got him to help me put down adhesive vinyl tiles on the floor. (Cheap, I know, but still: so much better than it was before. So. Much. Better. Old rotted orange vinyl floor, RIP.) I don't know when or if we'll ever get around to pulling off the pink and white plastic tiles that cover the walls (one fell off during the tub faucet replacement, and there were Unspeakable Horrors underneath), and I don't know when I'll get around to painting the vanity.

But! The bathroom feels much better. Again: my husband will be able to wash his hair without squatting, and this is very good. It feels strangely luxurious to shower and have water hit me from above, instead of right in the face.

Oh, crappy $2.57 hand shower. I'll miss you so much.

5. So! Sunday was busy. And today was super crazy busy, so busy that I didn't get to take my lunch break until 3:45 (and then it was more of a wolf-a-sandwich-down-in-fifteen-minutes sort of thing). And then, because it was freakishly warm today and all the snow melted, revealing hidden dog poop, when I got home for roughly an hour I picked up dog poop while my husband raked up branches and sticks from the ice storm (we have had snow on the ground for a long time, I swear). Tonight/tomorrow it is supposed to dip back down to zero (I love temperatures that drop 55 degrees in five hours, because I love how much it makes our sinuses scream in pain, or excitement) and snow again, and it will be nice to know there is not a lurking graveyard of poop below.

6. Do you like how this post is all about caring for a home/poop? And is not at all interesting?

7. Do you want to know what else we did this weekend? I put in a new door stop, since the other one broke. And we bought bicycle hooks for the garage. At PAMIDA.

8. Speaking of, um, our bathroom, at Christmas I was given a shower-loofah-sponge type thing, with the head of a dog and feet of a dog. Because I am a label reader, I read the label one morning in the shower (so far I have not used it, just stared at it while cursing my long, long hair that takes six years to rinse), and do want to know what the tag says? It says, "MAY CONTAIN RABBIT HAIR." I guess the manufacturers could not commit, one way or another, and had to use that little "may" disclaimer.

9. Speaking of rabbits (my transitions are smoooooth tonight), I've been feeding squirrel corn to some young rabbits that made a burrow under our shed. One morning last week, when I went out to scrape the car, I saw a dead rabbit in the road, smashed and frozen, and I started crying, and went in and told my husband my baby bunny was dead. However, in addition to probably being too emotional, I was wrong, and my bunny is still alive. He is still eating the squirrel corn I put inside his burrow when it gets so cold I don't think even bunnies should have to come out, and he still pushes the empty cob out when he's done with it. It was a some lost stranger bunny that was dead, and it's too bad he didn't make it over to eat some of the corn.

I think it is interesting there was always so much bunny poop on the snow, right by the dog poop. I don't think they are very scared of the dogs. Or maybe just not of dog poop.

But I am.

10. Did you guys know that Cab's paw tracks look just like a wolf's? Monk's look like dog prints. But Mr. Cab's tracks surprised us, the other morning, in the snow that was finally melting enough to leave tracks. His toes splay sort of to the side, how wolf toes splay, and his tracks aren't round at all, and the toes are so pointy and the claws dig in deep.

He also sneaks into cottages, puts on nightgowns and nightcaps, and waits hungrily for little girls in capes to come by with baskets of goodies.

Thank goodness for lumberjacks,
black sheeped