Berlin - Take My Breath Away

About a month or 2 ago, we took down the Berlin Wall, AKA the swinging gate, that separated the cat sector of the house from the dog sector of the house. One of the cats assimilated pretty well, and the dog settled down (mostly) after a few weeks although she still likes to wolf down the cat's food if left unattended. The second cat, my first and favorite pet in the house, has emphatically **NOT** assimilated.

This morning I awoke at 5:30 am, leisurely stretching and basking in the feeling that I had gotten an entire night's unbroken sleep. And then I smelled it.

Cat pee.

From an undisclosed location.

I woke up Mark and then tore the room apart trying to discover the location to no avail. I needed to run some errands so I hung out for a few hours until the other locations opened; I was not going to be one of those people who go to major unnamed retailer at 6am when they first open even though I considered it. A blacklight was needed immediately! While I was running around putting stuff from our room in other places I went downstairs to my office and realized that the smell I had thought was the drain backing up from the laundry room was really crime scene #2 for cat pee. I hate cat pee. It stinks so damn bad.

In the meantime, I decided that while the bedroom was fairly free from clutter, I would hang the blinds that have lived in boxes in the Manling's room for months since his replacement blinds came in. To hang them, I needed to paint the window sill and trim. To do that I had to remove 75 years of old blind hardware and scrape paint off the panes, yes the actual glass. As I was scraping I mentioned to Mark, who'd been trying to sleep as I tore apart the room and took down the hardware and was finally up getting ready for work, that one of the window panes seemed to be separating from the casement/trim/whatever and that I should pick up some glazing while I was out. He leaves; I continue scraping. I get to the last pane, the last side, the last 4" of glass when ping! the pane of glass snaps in half.

All of this before 7:30 am.

I go out and do my errands and come home with the blacklight bulb and 3 types of enzymatic odor/pee remover. I'm shining the blacklight all over the carpet just like CSI, but unlike them, I didn't have the crazy sunglasses and the sun was beating down on the carpet rendering the blacklight useless. Why didn't I shut the blinds, one might ask. Because I took them and their hardware down just hours before!

Later, I get the news that my friends J&C will not be moving out here in August. J. said that the idea has not been abandoned. I am sad it will not be happening soon, but I'm glad to hear that Operation Go West Young Man has not been aborted.

The good news is that J. said one of the 3 products I got to deal with the cat pee is fantastic.

Someday soon I will re-start my shuffle playlists again. Just not today.