It’s all about the stuffing

I managed to get through the past weekend without a sea of cat barf. However, about half way through my lazy Saturday morning sporting pajamas, raccoon-eyes of mascara, and a “Bride of Frankenstein” hairdo I would have traded the incoming moment for something squishy between my toes.

My cellphone went off and I answered it to find the “FaceTime” video app open up and reveal my disheveled appearance to the person on the other end, whose first words were “Oh, Good Heavens, is that you?”

I could see myself in the little video clip in upper right hand corner of the screen staring wide-eyed and dumbfounded at the friend I hadn’t seen or heard from in years. I flipped the phone over so she could stare instead at the worn off toe nail polish of my big toe, and replied, with a much simulated inflection of joy, “What a nice surprise!” while making improper hand gestures with my free hand in the air above my head where she couldn’t see.

And then she said the most dreaded sentence on the planet. “I’m in town and I’d love to come for a visit.”

There’s nothing like an unexpected guest to kick-start a cleaning frenzy. It matters not that I run a tidy ship on most days, but when that yellow flag started waving as I stood there mired in clumps of old mascara all I could think of was cleaning the toilet seat and bowl before she showed up at the door and had to use the bathroom.

I looked around the kitchen and realized I was a hoarder. I had three days of dishes piled in the sink and there was so much dirty laundry in the basket that clothes at the bottom were now trying to escape through the webbing for fear of being crushed to death.

I had less than 30 minutes to revive my good looks and hide everything.

Remember the “Bugs Bunny Show” episode where “Wile E. Coyote” orders a humungous magnet from “Acme” but instead of drawing in the “Road Runner,” it attracts every conceivable metal object in the Universe?

The space under my kitchen sink attracts like that the stuff I don’t have time to put away properly and instead cram in that endless cavern alongside pickle jars full of nails, and hideous bolts of “Mac Tac” from the ’70s.

Even plastic bags get stuffed under there—pushed in one at a time and it’s all good—until I open the door to find something and the change in air pressure sucks the fluid sea of bags out onto the kitchen floor.

This time, after everything was jammed under the sink, there I was digging further and further to the back of the chaotic mess for the toilet bowl cleaner and a rag, and instead found a mouse trap set with peanut butter. While it managed to go off without taking my fingers with it, the sudden jolted surprise made a clean sweep of the endless contents onto the floor.

Change of plans my friend. Meet me at the coffee shop.

Could I start this day over?

The usual sounds and smells that are welcome to wake me up in the morning are the subtle waft of caffeine perking out of the coffeemaker and the beeps that spell “Ready,” the drift to the nostrils of fresh bread baked by timer in the bread maker, and the smell of bacon. Bacon rocks. 

Of course none of these wonderful stimuli avail themselves in my neck of the woods. Nope.

Instead I was yanked before sunrise from my fantasy dream of Matthew McConaughey rescuing me from a sinking boat and into an immediate wide-eyed state—thrust immediately conscious to the grunting sound of “Millie” the cat about to throw up beside me on my bedspread. 

I channelled Kung Fu from the ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ movie, leapt from the sheets into mid-air, grabbed my housecoat with one hand while doing a half twist across to the other side of the bed and lifting the cat from her heaving position with the other hand, landed on the floor with two feet stuck in an Olympic gold medal gymnastics pose. 

I threw open the bedroom door, and in the dark, bolted into the kitchen, leapt over the garbage can, arms outstretched for the door handle in a frantic effort to release said feline into the porch to throw up.

And I hope for anything that didn’t just come from inside a animal—and more importantly that none of it gets on me. 

Needless to say that kind of good luck doesn’t avail itself to me in my neck of the woods. Nope.  

The cat didn’t make it to the porch before expelling the contents of her stomach.

And the situation was much worse when I didn’t see the wet blob of a thing on the floor before I flicked on the lights at 5 a.m. and I stepped in it.

As the warm, oozing chunky globule squeezed up through the toes of my foot I was wishing that it had at least been below body temperature. 

Blind as a bat because I didn’t have my contact lenses in, I squinted to identify the thing, bending over to get a better look, only to find what was left of a mouse’s head and front teeth soaked in a mustard-yellow slime looking up at me from between my toes. I wanted to unplug and jump into a cartoon black hole and disappear to a Florida beach. 

The two other cats skulking the mystery from under the kitchen table dared not venture forth, as I expect they understood perfectly the fragmented angry English slang erupting from my mouth. I began hopping on one foot towards the bath tub trying not to spread the goo everywhere, but Murphy’s Law dictated otherwise because I couldn’t hold the one-legged pose like I did when I was 20 years old and ended walking the slime across the floor. 

If this morning affair was the only bad luck tohappen on the first day of the workweek I would have made amends with a vat of “Caldwell” coffee, a loaf of fresh bread, and a pound of bacon. Of course that is never the case in my neck of the woods. Nope.

But that’s another story. 

 

Unplug - a lesson for more than meditation

Sometimes everything in my life comes together—and sometimes I have to coax it into place like a scared dog. 

I was in the shower enjoying my hot water therapy session Thursday night when I stopped scrubbing and opened my eyes as a sudden and impending doom washed my peace and tranquility down the drain with the soapsuds.

I hadn’t heard the sump pump (which at my house collects all the grey water in a reservoir in the basement and pumps it out to my septic tank) go off at all in the 15 minutes I’d been under the showerhead. As a rule during one of my muscle soaking zens, the sump goes off twice.

In fact I hadn’t remembered hearing it go off for about three days—through my evening showers and those of Daughter #3 who takes marathoners that last longer than anyone I have ever known. There’d also been at least two “super loads” of laundry and another one for my bedroom comforter after the cat puked on it, and the daily dishwashing sessions—all that water going nowhere.

I also recalled coming home from work earlier that day to find my cats sitting in a row on the top step of the staircase to the basement—eyes big as saucers. It was an usual for “they who do not get along” to be sharing space like that. Then a vision of why—a flooded basement of cat food dishes and litter boxes floating alongside all the other unused household junk I had stashed down there.

I leapt out of the shower like a bat out of a “Meatloaf” album and ran buck naked to the basement tripping over the cats, who caught sight of my greek goddess figure and fled fearing for their lives.

I threw open the reservoir lid to discover a brimming tank of gruesome grey water threatening the boundary line between a dry basement and my worse nightmare.

Without thinking I jammed my entire arm down into the liquid gruel to locate the sump float, and while looking up to avoid looking down into the abyss, did I see that at the ceiling I hadn’t unplugged electricity to the pump.

I yanked my arm out of the water quicker than a lightening fast draw by “Billy the Kid,” (as if it would have made a difference had there been a short.)

Suddenly in rushed a memory from my childhood and my Grandpa Joe Drennan telling us about his dairy cattle, back in the day, being electrocuted in the barn when, secured in the stanchions, one of them took a drink of water and all of them succumbed to a electrical short in the system.

Thankfully I’m still here to ponder how lucky I am to be writing this and that my “G-man” can not only turn a mean pipe wrench, but more importantly—and gratefully so—brings rescue, calm and wise solutions to a somewhat “Little Miss Stressed Out.”  

Thinking of you. :)