Almost 3:30 AM...

and the end of another Tuesday vacation day. It's been quite a week in "Lake Woe-begone" (perhaps it should be bedraggled, lol)!

Last week I had made peace with the kitten and taken him to the vet for his first shots. That went well, and when we came home he still wasn't too upset with me. I changed his litter on Monday to something my other daughter-in-law uses that has a better odor to it, hoping he wouldn't mind.

He did!

I noticed a dust cloud as I poured it, but didn't think about how terrible that would be inside that little closed box; apparently Frankie didn't like it a bit. Tuesday night at 5AM I slipped into bed and thought damn that feels awfully cold, but my feet spend a lot of time that way. I laid there a minute and thought "no that feels wet".

It was...

I woke my wife up trying to use a flashlight to tell. We chased Frankie off the bed he had been sleeping in since he got here (ours) and got towels and flipped the mattress. When I got up that day I went to PetSmart and bought Nature's Miracle which I had heard about from "Click and Clack" (the Car Talk brothers on NPR). They recommended it for a guy trying to get fish odor out of the interior of his new Mini after someone talked him into bringing their catch home from Rhode Island. It's an enzyme that somehow actually devours the problem instead of masking it with a deodorant. We started with a quart spray bottle and gallon refill.

Sprayed the mattress, soaked the pillow top on it, left it upside down and slept on it again that night, then decided that probably wasn't the right way to do it. Flipped it the next day, right side up and poured most of a gallon onto it. Couldn't find the spots on the bedding anymore, went and bought a blacklight to "CSI" it with, and another gallon of enzyme. Then we slowly started trying to save blankets and sheets. This having been the first new mattress we had ever had, and a Simmons Beautyrest King at that, we didn't really want to give it up...

Friday she was off as she was working this weekend, so before I went to work I tried to catch Frankie again to take him back to the vet. When I took him the first time I forgot the honey-do list which included getting him wormed; the vet had just put someone's dog to sleep and was a bit rattled so he didn't think of it either. Frankie knew something was up, and hasn't let me near him since. That day he wouldn't let her catch him either.

The pillow top on the mattress was so wet that she slept on the couch that night and I slept in one of the old twin beds that had been our sons. It bothered her hip and knee, so I lied to her and told her that the bedroom (mine from when I was a little boy) bothered me to get her to sleep in the bed the next two nights.

We thought we were going to sleep on it the next day, but it was still wet, plua when we moved the mattress the box spring was wet as well, so we stood the mattress up against the wall. Yesterday the top felt dry, we went to flip it back onto the bed and found the whole end was wet where it had "drained" to the one side. The carpet was even wet. We flipped it back onto the now dry box spring and let the wet end hang over.

Today she was off again, I had taken another vacation day and so first she caught the cat and we took him for his worming. They're still friends, he wants nothing to do with me. (We also made the appointment to get him fixed, I can't imagine how much he'll like me after that!) Then the car went to get it's oil changed and so the body shop could decide how long they'd need it to repair the hail damage (2 days if we're lucky). Then to the laundromat to try to save the beautiful comforter we both love because it's too heavy for our washing machine.

It seems to have worked and about 3 hours ago we finished watching "Elizabethtown" and she went to bed in our bed for the first time since last Wednesday. I am joining her shortly!

Of course, since I was the one who said "I'd think about it" when my daughter-in-law called about the kitten she couldn't keep, I'm lucky I'm not sleeping on the workbench in the garage right now...lol!

The only good thing about all of this is that since I've lost so much weight my feet have gone from 11.5 down to a 10.5 so the two of them fit much better in my big mouth!

Sunday night we watched "The Ice Harvest", a pretty good "black comedy" with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton. I am a hopeless romantic so I really liked "Elizabethtown" tonight, I wish I'd bought it instead of renting it. Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst play well together, and I'm a sucker for a romance anyway.

After she went to bed tonight I watched "Riding Giants". It's a documentary directed by Stacy Peralta, who did the documentary "Z-Boys of Dogtown" and was the writer and consultant for "Lords of Dogtown". He was one of the "Z-Boys" back in the day and I had enjoyed that movie, which led me to the documentary that I liked even better, which led me to this, about the history of big wave surfing over the last 60 years. Amazing stuff, beautiful footage, well put together. It's going on my Amazon list...

Back to work for 4 more days...then another one day weekend!

alan