Silver Threads Among the Dog Hair

Have to say that this getting old phase of life is tedious on a good day and downright troublesome on the rest of the days. Here's the latest installment in "what? why can't I do that?" that has become my life.

It is time to shampoo the carpet -- again -- as Mia, for being a short-haired dog, is also a shedding, dirty dog. She brings in landscape rock between her toes, wipes the sand out of her fur on the carpet, and spreads dog food and drinking water throughout the kitchen/hallway area. Vacuuming doesn't do the job: I can vacuum every which way and still have dirty carpet, so I bought a rug shampooer a while back and have learned to be quite proficient with it.

Yesterday, I bounced out of bed bright and early planning to finish the dirty work before it got too hot to move. I vacuumed straight up and down, then across, then diagonally before firing up the shampooer. After filling the well with soap and water, the darned machine would not work, so I took it apart and found one of the landscape rocks caught in the mechanism. After retrieving the rock, time for shampooing.

Again, straight up and down, then across, then diagonally, picking up so much dog hair that it's really astounding: a full plastic grocery bag by the end of the process. Of course, the wet black hair comes out on the newly-clean carpet and can only be removed with a wire brush and then going back over what's already been done to pick up what's deposited on the carpet by the shampooer. By the time I was finished with the living room carpeting, I was totally exhausted ... but ...

had decided to clean the matching couches as they were rank. Really rank. Of course, to clean them, they needed to be in the garage, and whereas I used to move them in and out with nary a twinge, yesterday darned near did me in. Either the couches got bigger or the door got smaller because it was a son of a gun moving the couches out -- and we can forget about what it took to bring them back in this morning!

Because the stench was over-powering, I decided to remove the couch cushions and replace the foam inserts. What a great idea and what another impossible task. I did buy $100 worth of 4" foam this morning and cut the new cushions, while the cushion covers went through 4 separate washes: yes, four. What part of "rank" do you not understand? After the covers dried to touch, I bent, prodded, and pushed the new foam pieces into the cushion covers, zipped the zipper, and brought them back inside. End result is good, but OMG.

As my dotter told me, "Mom, there are people you can call to do this." My mind tells me yes, yes, but my stubborn nature abhors paying anyone to do that which I can do for myself. Maybe next time, I'll remember this time and not be so committed to doing it myself.

Then there is the matter of the filthy rugs that I put down in what appears to be a feeble attempt to keep Mia from shedding hair all over the carpet. I threw it all out and bought new: WalMart at 8:00 am was a vast wasteland, thanks to the beginning of the schoolyear, so I actually stood at the carpet bin and picked out an area rug, rather than picking up something, anything, just so I can get out of the wholesale shopping experience. I added a small piece for the door to the garage and another rug for the kitchen sink, so the house has spots of color.

The best part, after the 3 aspirin alleviated some of the physical pain, was receiving a delivery from 1-800 FLOWERS: a beautiful plant in thanks for the skills edit of the book. As they say, timing is everything.