The Poop Cam

First, let me apologize for my late post on Thursday, and for no post on Friday. I just started working several days a week in my school’s after school program, and on those days I do not get to leave work until 5:30 or 6 PM. Having been at work since 6:45 AM, that makes for a long day. Last week was my first week in the after school program, and by the end of the week I could barely move, let alone write, so I defaulted on my posting duties. I am acclimated now, though, and I enter this week, a week of five posts and no defaults. Anyway, on with the post…

Charlie and Janice in a rare moment of love. (That's Charlie
in the front, and Janice in the back.)

As I have probably mentioned before, I have two cats. Their names are Charlie and Janice, and they are nine years old. They are also brother and sister, which means that, like my own brother and me when we were kids, they are prone to fighting. I will be lying in my bed, getting ready to go to sleep, when I will hear a noise that sounds like a large bull is loose in my living room. Things sound like they are being knocked over, and I hear ticked off animal noises. I go investigate, assuming there is not an actual bull in my house, and find my two cats, swatting each other in the face on top of my computer desk, where they have also knocked my stack of 100 index cards all over the floor in 75 different directions. As usual, I am shocked at their lack of regard for my personal property!

So, my cats fight sometimes, but there are also moments when I will find them sleeping next to each other on top of my bed. They are definitely siblings. One other characteristic they share is that each of them has, at different times, had trouble remembering the location of the cat box in my house. Now, ever since Janice was very young, she has had a tendency to express her feelings through peeing. Kind of like a feline Jackson Pollock  using my bed as a canvas, she paints me a picture of her emotions. Whenever I have not given Janice as much attention as I should have, which happens from time to time, she will express her displeasure by peeling on my bed, usually on my sheets, or my pillows, or my comforter—or, if she's feeling particularly ambitious, on all three at once.

When this first started happening years ago I was totally unprepared. I would have to clean all of the bed coverings by pouring this pet odor remover stuff on them and then washing them in the washing machine. While I would love to just buy new bed linens when she pees on them, this event has occurred often enough that it is not financially feasible to do so. Back when I was living with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, we had a waterbed. I had not yet gotten smart and put a waterproof mattress cover on the bed, so every time Janice used the bed as her personal restroom I would also have to wash the cover that kept the water part of the bed safe from cat claws. Every time I washed it, it shrank, so by the end of that bed’s life I needed the assistance of Macho Man Randy Savage to stretch it to fit the entire bed. Also, I had to keep the bedroom door closed for the entire washing period so that none of the animals punctured the bed resulting in me also needing to get a water-damaged floor repaired. And, did I mention that the cover didn’t fit in my dryer, either?

The first time I tried to dry it in my dryer, well, let me just tell you—it was exciting! The dryer was not large enough to accommodate the thing, and I actually burned the mattress cover. As I approached the dryer I could smell something burning, and the cover had char marks all over it. I began wishing that I had put the cover through the panini sandwich press rather than the dryer, because then the singe marks might have been uniform and I could have passed them off as decorative. Unfortunately, parts of the mattress cover were heat fused together, rendering it useless for covering a waterbed mattress. We had to sleep on the futon for three days while we waited for our order of a California king waterbed mattress cover to arrive. Those were a tough three days, not only due to the small size of the futon, but also because of the person I was sharing it with!

These days I have the Janice Peeing Protocol down to a science. First, I have a wonderful new mattress, and I have purchased two waterproof mattress covers that I use in a rotation on my bed. If Janice pees on the bed, I wash the cover she peed on, but while it is being washed I go ahead and put the other one on so I can make my bed and get it set back up. I also have several sets of sheets, for the same purpose. If she gets the comforter I just have to wait until it is washed and dried to put it back on the bed, because right now I don't have two of those. Did I mention that my washing machine is not working properly right now, and that the comforter doesn’t fit in it anyway? So, when I wash everything I go to my parents’ house to use their really nice, big washer. And, you better believe, transporting pee-soaked bed linens in my car is a lot of fun! My mom has this pet odor remover liquid that we pour on my sheets and mattress cover and comforter so that we have a chance of removing the awful smell.

I have also become quite perceptive at figuring out when Janice is getting ready to pee on the bed. If she starts sniffing around the pillows, and, particularly if she starts pawing at anything on the bed, I grab her and immediately stick her in the cat box. (Although I also have waterproof pillow covers, you know, in case she gets the pillows.) She only pees on my bed when I am home, so it's not that much of a concern when I am out somewhere. I really think she wants me to see her mess up my bed so that I know something is bothering her. Whenever she does it, I know I have screwed up in my Janice petting frequency.

Covering up the smell of cat
poop with Febreze will only
end in tears!

Then there is Charlie, who sometimes poops on my bed. You might think having poop on your bed would be worse than having pee on your bed, but actually it is the other way around. Poop is much easier to clean up, although you still have to wash everything because it all smells bad— even when the poop is just on the comforter and not on the sheets, the smell soaks through. One time, when Charlie had pooped on the comforter, I tried to take the easy way out by spot cleaning it with the pet odor remover and then covering up the scent with lots of Febreze. But later I went outside on the back porch for awhile, and I came back in to find that Janice, apparently still finding the smell distasteful, had peed right on top of the spot where Charlie had pooped. You better believe I learned my lesson!

It's not Charlie's fault, though, that he sometimes poops in odd places. Charlie has some stomach and intestinal issues that mean he is not always able to poop when he needs to, and he can sometimes go a very long time without doing it. This summer he had to go to the emergency vet with this problem, and he spent two nights there. As part of his treatment, and to make sure he will always be able to go, and that he won't have to go back to the emergency vet, I give him a teaspoon of Miralax each day. He really hates taking it! I give it to him with a syringe after mixing it with liquid, and I often end up with clawed up wrists and a Miralax spritzer in my face, but it is what he has to have to stay healthy, so I gladly do it. As a result of Charlie’s problem, when he is not feeling good or when he has trouble going, he sometimes goes outside the box, and his place of choice is typically my bed.

One problem with Charlie's condition is that I have to monitor him to make sure he's going to the bathroom regularly. I have gotten quite good at stalking him, and I run to have a look whenever I hear a cat in the cat box. Since I can't stalk him when I'm at work or out somewhere else, I have followed a suggestion by my vet and purchased a motion-activated poop cam. I'm going to install the little camera right by his favorite cat box and then, whenever he goes in that box, the footage will be transmitted to my phone, and I will receive a little alert. Then I can go online and see if it was Charlie or Janice in the box. When you have more than one cat it's hard to tell who did what. It's not like the stuff comes out with a monogram on it or something like that! My cats have three cat boxes to choose from, and one is on the screened in porch, so they only use that one when we are spending time out there. They confine their indoor restroom activities to the two inside boxes, and to my bed, of course. They prefer to go to one box when they have to pee, and the other to take care of business, so I know I will be putting the camera in the right place.

I guess spying on my cat in the bathroom makes me some sort of peeping tom, or should I say a peeping tomcat? I'm hoping that, after I set up the poop cam. I will have peace of mind and will be able to verify that Charlie is, indeed, staying healthy. Plus, I could also create the world's most boring YouTube channel if I so chose. Also, having to constantly stalk Charlie makes me—well, pooped, so the camera should alleviate my stalking fatigue too. Here's to regularity!

Cats image courtesy of Audrey Broome

Febreze image courtesy of http://www.febreze.com/en-US/en-US/Product.aspx?id=2714

Coming Out of the Closet

My closet contains as much junk as the jalopy from The
Grapes of Wrath.

My bedroom closet is extremely, extremely messy, and there is tons of stuff coming out of it. More specifically, it resembles the car they packed up in the Grapes of Wrath, with all kinds of junk everywhere in huge piles, and no place to put anything. Just last spring break my closet was neat. I remember cleaning the closet out then because it had previously looked like the clothing section of WalMart at 6 PM on Christmas Eve, with sweaters and pants thrown everywhere, and large mounds of shoes underneath skirts and jackets. I am a very neat and organized person, but my orderliness does not extend to closets for some reason. All of the closets in my house have experienced the vortex of disorder that my being near a closet somehow seems to generate. It is like if I get within three feet of a closet, some sort of invisible electromagnetic force begins to act on the contents of said closet, gyrating them around in tiny concentric circles before trying to launch them into space. Fortunately, the roof of my house prevents items from ending up on Jupiter or in the Asteroid Belt, though that result would probably help me pare down the junk in my house!

The reason for my messy closets is threefold. First, when I have junk that I am not ready to part with, but that I don’t know what to do with, I just shove it in a closet. Second, cleaning my closets often actually makes them messier. And, third, I rarely get rid of anything, yet I always seem to accumulate new stuff. Since I know that a treatise on my closets will be particularly fascinating reading material, I will elaborate on them below. But, first, I must describe to you an element of my OCD that contributes to my high levels of closet dysfunction: the tendency toward hoarding behavior. Now, first, let me just reassure you that I am most certainly NOT a hoarder. I do not have so much junk in my house that you have to clear a path just to walk from the front door to the living room, nor do I stack old takeout containers in the corner of my bedroom. I am a little bit of what you might call a pack rat, although I do often attempt to fight this tendency so that my house does not look like 35 people live in it and have tried to cram all of their stuff into it.

Rather, I have a lot of trouble getting rid of things, even things that I have no use for that are really getting in my way, Many full-blown  hoarders often have some form of OCD, and having trouble  getting rid of things, even inconsequential things is definitely an OCD behavior. When I have trouble throwing something away, I often know it is useless and I want to get rid of it, but I have this feeling that something bad will happen if I get rid of it. Sounds weird, right? Well, this type of magical thinking is actually quite common for people with OCD. You can read more about it here.

So, there I sit with the decorative box my BareEscentuals spring makeup collection came in. It is a nice box, and it is meant to be reused. However, since I have about six other reusable, decorative makeup boxes, I do not need it and it is taking up space that I do not have. I could give it to someone else, or just take it to my school and put it in the teachers’ lounge for some other teacher to use (Teachers are always looking for containers to store things in.) However, instead of doing either of these things, I hold onto it. This scenario leads me back to my three reasons for my messy closets by bringing us to reason number one: When I have something like the decorative makeup box that I can’t seem to get rid of, I just shove it in a closet so that I don’t have to think about how I should get rid of it, and also so that the rest of my house looks neat.

All of my closets hold junk like this. My bedroom closet holds shoe and apparel related junk. My bathroom closet holds medical and hygiene related junk. And my dining room closet holds household staple-related junk. And then there is the blue room. The blue room is the second bedroom in my house, which began as a place to put one of my cat boxes, a place to hold my shoe wall, and a craft storage area, but has turned into the Bermuda Triangle in my home. The blue room is like a giant closet, in that it is the catchall junk repository in my house. When people come over I just shut the door, and if they ask what’s inside I play an audio file of fake scratching and banging noises on my iPhone and tell them that Cousin Jimbo, who’s “not right in the head” lives in there.

When I clean my closets, I spend long amounts of time
staring off into space wishing the Closet Fairy would come
fix everything.

The second reason for my messy closets is that cleaning them often actually just adds to the mess. Here is what I mean: I will get the ambitious idea that I am going to clean out my bedroom closet and organize my clothes. I will remove all of the junk from the floor of my closet, placing clothing on the bed, and shoes on the floor or on the low dresser at the foot of my bed. I will notice that many of the clothes need to be put on hangers, and that there is not nearly enough room in the closet to put all of the clothes back in in anything approaching an organized manner. Having spent two hours just taking things out of my closet, I am sick of cleaning and have not one iota of motivation to hang anything up. Defeated, I just shove everything back in the closet, but this time there is more stuff, because as I removed clothing from the closet I also took items that were hanging halfway off hangers completely off, and now they are added to the pile on the floor, and I am reminded that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The third, and perhaps largest reason for the mess in my closets is that, while I do not get rid of much, I constantly seem to acquire new stuff. Now, please don’t think that I am buying stuff at an inordinately fast rate. Instead, imagine if you still owned all of the shoes you had purchased in the past 15 years, even the old tennis shoes that you have worn out, but that you keep because you might use them to work in the yard. Even for someone who buys shoes at a normal rate, storage would be at a premium. (Although, I must admit, I might have just a wee bit of a shoe fixation.) The same thing happens with all manner of items in my home, and old, useless things are taking up storage space so there is no room for new things. I know that the solution is to get rid of some stuff, but I am not quite ready to do that yet.

I don’t know if any of you have a closet vortex similar to mine in your homes, but if you do, then maybe you understand my struggle. Maybe, like me, you know what you need to do to fix your problem, but you find it difficult to do so. Right now, I will continue to battle the clutter, and I will take comfort in the knowledge that, if I ever do take on my closets, I will be able to have one heck of a yard sale!

Grapes of Wrath jalopy photo courtesy of http://jameskarasreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/stratford-shakespeare-festival-grapes.html

Messy closet photo courtesy of http://www.closeteditors.com/going-in-for-the-plunge/

Walking After Midnight

Alice, my parents' dog in all her beautious
glory!

As you already know, I have a dog named Betty. What I didn’t tell you is that I haven’t exactly been walking her as much as I should. My goal is to make sure Betty gets to go on a walk every day, because she really enjoys walking, and it will also help keep her weight down. My parents also have a dog, and her name is Alice. Alice and Betty spend a lot of time together, because while I am at work Betty goes up to my parents’ house and spends the day there. I am very fortunate that I get to take Betty to my parents’ for doggy daycare. Although my mom is usually very busy during the day, she is sometimes home, and is able to let the dogs outside and keep them company.

Betty and Alice obviously love each other, and they get quite excited when they see each other each morning. Plus, you know how when you have a dog, and sometimes you are trying to get your dog to do something and your dog doesn’t want to do it? Like, sometimes I want Betty to get up in the morning to go down to my parents’ house, but, because Betty loves sleeping, she has no desire to get up from either my bed or her doggie bed. I talk to her, and tell her, “Let’s go,” which sometimes gets her up, but often she just ignores this command and goes back to sleep. Well, if I say, “Come on, Betty, let’s go see Alice,” she will jump right up and run to the front door. And, while I am not proud of it, I have also occasionally used this line to get Betty to come in from outside when she has not wanted to, but at times when we were not about to see Alice. Seeing her excited face looking for her buddy as she runs into the house has been enough to make me tell her we are going to see Alice to get her to come in only in dire situations, like when she wants to go outside at three in the morning, and I am dying to go back to sleep, but she just wants to stand out in the yard and eat grass.

Anyway, I have decided that I really want to try and walk Betty every day, and I have known that my parents also want to walk Alice every day. The problem for all of us is our lack of free time to do so. Now, I know that just about everybody suffers from a lack of free time, because we are all so busy, and we don’t have many opportunities to just do what we want to do, or, when we do have time to do something like walk our dogs, we are so tired from meeting all of our other obligations that we just end up face planting on the sofa and sleeping while we watch reruns of Chopped on the Food Network.

But, alas!—my parents and I have decided to finally do something about this problem. We have started getting up really early to walk the dogs each day. And, by really early, I mean just before 5 AM. We have to get up this early because I like to be at work before 7 AM, plus, my dad leaves for work each day at 6 AM. When I get up and the clock still starts with the number 4, I am often confused as to what day it is, and 4:50 AM also feels a little bit like the middle of the night. But, so far I have managed to get myself up for two days in a row to go on our walks. I have not been using the Wake n’ Shake alarm clock because it leaves me feeling beaten up and abused for about 15 minutes after it goes off, and instead I am just using my plain old iPhone alarm. For some reason this has worked so far, and I hope that I don’t slowly become immune to it and unable to get my butt out of bed in the morning.

When my parents and I go out walking, we make a loop through our neighborhood that takes about 20-25 minutes to complete. During our walks we are able to talk and catch up on things, plus, because my mom is very observant, I have been learning things about my neighborhood that I never realized before. Yesterday, for example, I learned that this condo building we walk by is a smoke-free building, and that you can only smoke in designated smoking areas out back. Since I am not a smoker, and I am not looking to buy a condo, this knowledge is not really that relevant to me, but, in case I ever get the hankering to smoke the occasional cigar in the lobby of a strange condo, I will know not to choose that one!

When we walk we also get the satisfaction of seeing how happy the dogs are each morning, and we get to know that they have had a good start to their days, and that they have actually used the bathroom while they are outside. Sometimes in the morning I have let Betty out into the yard to go to the bathroom, but because all she wants to do is get back inside to go back to bed, she won’t do it. When we go on our walks, though, Betty loves wetting as many yards as possible, and will go, like, 16 times on one walk.

Lovely Betty likes to eat food off the ground
while we walk.

Although walking in the mornings is great, there are still a couple of problems. First, as I am walking down the street to meet up with my parents, I often get creeped out by the dark, and, particularly since I watched the movie Insidious over the weekend, I will imagine I feel the eyes of a dark, scary creature on my back. I combat this feeling by either waiting for them on the bench under the big, bright streetlight, or by walking all the way down to their house and standing by the mailbox light, if I get there before they come out.

The other problem with walking so early in the morning is that it is sometimes hard to see what the dogs are doing in the dark. It can be difficult, for example, to make sure they are not in someone’s flowerbed, or going to the bathroom in a yard that has a sign that indicates that no dogs should use the bathroom there. Also, yesterday, as we were walking down the street, Betty ate something off the ground, and I have no idea what it was, or if it was even edible. I am hoping it was food someone had dropped, and not something really disgusting or something that will make her sick. I used to have another dog, a beagle named Lula who passed away in 2012, and Lula was renowned for eating things off the ground. When a house was being built in the neighborhood several years ago, Lula found a Quick Trip chimichanga on the ground that one of the construction workers had obviously left, and she gobbled that sucker up in about two seconds flat! Hopefully Betty will not become as accomplished at illicit eating as Lula was!

Walking the dogs with my parents early in the morning brings many rewards, although getting up super-early can be difficult. By the end of the day I am pretty tired, which means I sleep well, but also that I fall asleep by, like, 9 PM. Still, the time it gives me with my parents, and the fact that my dog is getting exercise are both worth it, and I am lucky to be able to do it every day. In fact, if you have a dog and parents who live nearby, I recommend that you try it. Just watch out for errant food in the road as you pass!

A Love-Hate Relationship

Christopher and I always fought like Real Housewives,
though we didn't look nearly as fierce!

If you have any brothers or sisters, then you know that relationships between siblings can be both wonderful and terrible. I have two brothers, and I know that, while we have always truly loved each other, there have been times when we have fought like we were Real Housewives or something. As the middle child and the only girl, I have had a unique experience that I think gives me many advantages. Although I have always somewhat wished I could also have had a sister, I wouldn’t trade my brothers for anything in the world. Being the only girl means that I learned how to easily relate to boys, plus I was really good at things like throwing a football, throwing a baseball, and a myriad of other sports-related activities.

In my family, my younger brother, Devin, has always been the most even-tempered and the calmest of the three of us. Growing up I would rarely fight or argue with Devin, and I also didn’t pick on him that much, as older sisters are often want to do. Devin was always just so sweet, and he had a little bowl haircut and big, blue-green eyes, so picking on him would have been like doing something mean to an innocent little puppy or kitten. Devin’s calm nature and even temper have also probably added back many years to my mom’s life that my older brother and I probably took off during our teenage years.

My older brother, Christopher, and I were always like oil and water. As far as fighting goes, we were absolute champs. I am pretty sure no two people have ever been better at needling each other and arguing with each other than Christopher and I were growing up. My mom has always described us as the actor and the reactor, with Christopher being the former and I being the latter. As my older brother, I understand that Christopher was almost required to make my life difficult, as that seems to be what older brothers throughout the ages have done to their younger sisters.

Is there a resemblance? You be the judge!

My first memory of the shenanigans in which Christopher and I engaged comes from when I was about four or five years old. As kids, we were always spending time with my cousins, and, one day when we were at their house, Christopher decided to have some fun at my expense. My cousins had these rubber toys that looked like sea creatures, including a realistic rubber lobster that was about seven or eight inches long. Well, I was so terrified of that lobster that you would think it was Freddy Krueger or something. On the day I remember, Christopher led the charge of chasing me around the house with the lobster, followed by two of my cousins who were likely brandishing other terrifying sea creatures. I remember the abject terror I felt as I tried to hide behind a recliner to escape the lobster’s dreadful gaze. Also, I am pretty sure that, in spite of admonishments by my mom and my aunt, “chase Audrey with the rubber lobster” was a beloved game during those years.

Another incident I remember occurred when I was probably seven or eight years old, and when Christopher was ten or eleven years old. We were playing in the backyard, and I was chasing him. Whenever I would get close to catching him, he would say, “I better get the heck out of here!” But, one time, when he was almost within reach of my fingers, he yelled, “I better get the hell out of here!” I knew that hell was some type of bad word, but I hadn’t yet developed the type of bad word severity gauge that children acquire as they get older. Plus, I had heard my dad say dammit sometimes, so I figured that hell was probably not that bad either.

Also, my Achilles' heel when it comes to my older brother has been that I have always looked up to him and admired him, which has given him a distinct advantage in matters of sibling harassment, as was the case in this situation. A few minutes later, when Christopher was chasing me, I responded by proudly copying him and announcing, “I better get the hell out of here!” Upon hearing this pronouncement, rather than continuing to chase me, Christopher proceeded immediately to the side door of the house, marched inside, and informed my mom that I had said a bad word. I do not remember if I got in trouble or not, but I am pretty sure I must have told my mom that Christopher said the bad word first.

I don’t want to give you the impression that it was always Christopher doing things to me, and that I was always the innocent victim. Sometimes Christopher and I played the roles of actor and reactor to a T, which could prove to be very, very bad. One day, when I was about twelve, Christopher, Devin, and I were playing in the aboveground swimming pool in our backyard. We were play fighting like we were doing karate, and I remember pretending to do leg kicks underwater. It was all fun and games until, likely inspired by images of The Karate Kid, and with an anger fueled by years of being terrorized with a rubber lobster, I really did kick him—right smack in the crotch. It wasn’t a gentle kick, either, and I remember Christopher doubling over in pain. I have no idea why I did that, but I can say that I don’t think I had a full understanding of the fact that you just do not kick a man in the family jewels, unless he is trying to attack you or something. No doubt mom was immediately called, and I probably got in trouble, as I should have. Also, hopefully someone explained to me how sacred a man’s cojones are to him.

While I do have memories of fighting with Christopher and of each of us annoying the other, I also have memories of us having long, personal conversations, and even of us being—gasp!—like friends to each other. When I was in high school and college Christopher was often the person I would go to for advice, and the person I would confide in. As I had when I was younger, I still looked up to him, and, as we had when we were younger, we would still argue sometimes. After I got married, my relationship with my older brother suffered, as did many of my other relationships. Trying to be someone you are not can wear down even the strongest bonds, and Christopher’s and my arguing returned to childhood levels during that time. As I said earlier, the way I looked up to and admired my brother was always my Achilles heel, both because it allowed him an advantage in childhood fights, but also because I put him up on such a pedestal that he had a much longer way to fall than anyone else in my life. If he did something that let me down, it bothered me that much more than it did when anyone else in my life let me down, and I let this fact come between us.

Today, Christopher and I have a much
more loving relationship than we
have ever had before.

Today Christopher and I have a better relationship than we have ever had before. Now that we are both well into our thirties and have had time to shed our twenty-something angst and turmoil, we are able to have a calmer, relatively argument-free relationship. Each of us has been able to work through many of our issues, and now we are able to relate to each other as adults and friends, rather than as little kids who are constantly struggling for power. This is not to say that we do not enjoy making jokes at each other’s expense, but these jokes are usually really funny, and they are never mean-spirited, and I think this is the best way we could have transformed our constant arguing.

Today I no longer consider my admiration of my brother to be my Achilles' heel, but rather an asset, as it contributes to the wonderful sense of family and belonging I am lucky to be able to experience. Today, if Christopher were to chase me around the house with a rubber lobster, I would still scream and try to hide behind the recliner, although I would not kick him in the cojones because, first, today I understand that you just don’t do that to a man, plus Christopher wants to have kids, and I do not want to destroy that dream for him by causing him a mortal injury. In fact, today I would never consider kicking my brother in the crotch for any reason, but that’s just because I love him so much.

Real Housewives image courtesy of http://bossip.com/570007/making-it-rain-on-them-house-hoes-the-salaries-of-the-rhoa-have-been-leaked-43081/

Freddy Krueger image courtesy of http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/horror-legends/images/3696179/title/freddy-krueger-photo

Rubber lobster image courtesy of http://tapirgal.blogspot.com/2008/11/red-plastic-rubber-lobster-back-in.html

Heart image courtesy of http://clipartist.net/svg/heart-highlight-1-super-duper-svg/