A doofus, shoe polish and R2-D2

Oh the joys of having small animals.

First, our fish births 18 babies....then they all die. We had them for several months, then one by one they began to die. It was actually pretty sad. We were enjoying hearing the pitter-patter of little fins around the house. And having grand-fish was a lot of fun.

We have three cats, who decided their scratch posts of choice were two beautiful Queen Ann chairs that I love. Yes, it's only furniture. Yes, they can be replaced, but when I gave the cats the choice of keeping their claws and moving outside or continuing to live in the lap of luxury and lose their beloved tips-of-their-fingers.....they chose the latter.

We added a puppy last year....much to my husband's joy.....and my dismay. We have enough critters in the house, I always say, but I lost that argument. His name is Max....and he is intelligence-challenged. Not much between the ears, as they say.

Which brings me to the present. We had the cats de-clawed this week....and we had to transport them to the vet using Max's cage. I obviously didn't think this through, because when it came time for bed, we had no place for Max to sleep. Two nights ago, Max stayed outside, but last night we decided we'd bring his favorite daytime sleeping pillow upstairs to Josh's room, so Max would have a comfortable place to lay. When I saw Josh this morning and asked him how Max did, he said he was fine. No issues. That he woke Josh up with two licks around the face, then went back to his pillow for more sleep.

Or so he thought.

This morning, as Josh went upstairs to get his trashcan to empty, he noticed the present Max left. Because I am mom of the year, (tongue in cheek, of course), I got the paper towels to clean up said present. As I moved something laying on the floor, I found the second present. A huge black stain. And next to it......the empty bottle of shoe polish. Oh boy. This was going to be fun.

I asked Josh to get the carpet cleaner and a rag and had him begin the process. Not knowing how much was actually in the bottle before the 'spill' was unnerving, but before long we realized the bottle must have been full. The clean up was tough....as the polish kept spreading. Poor Josh was trying so hard....I commend him for making such an effort. Finally, I was able to make it upstairs to help out. And boy, was I in for a shock. What started off as a stain the size of....maybe three silver dollars, grew into an area twelve inches by eight inches, at least.

So, I did the only thing I knew to do.....get water and get R2-D2, our beloved wet-dry vac.

We sprayed the cleaner. We dumped the water. We sucked it up. Then we sprayed some more. We dumped some more. We sucked some more. And wow, was there a lot of ink in that stain. And when I thought I'd gotten most of it, there was more to get.

After 45 minutes of spraying, dumping and sucking....this was the end result. No, it's not perfect, but it's probably as good as we can do......for now.

And because I don't like to wear gloves when I clean......now I need a manicure. ;-)

A doofus, shoe polish and R2-D2.

Just another day in our wild and crazy household.