I didn't get much sleep last night.
We have a steady flowing leak in the roof of our bedroom, luckily there is no ceiling in there to ruin, but the support beam for the roof up inside where the ceiling would be if it were there is spongy and sucking in water from the outside. The insulation is also adding to the problem. The steady flow of dripping water made me stressful and anxious. Especially after listening to it for a half hour, then talking about it with Doug, to hear him say "this is a job for the spring time."
He's right, the insulation and everything needs to come down out of the ceiling and we need to do a close investigation as to what to put inside the house behind the fascia boards, which really are only about 7 years old...
but waiting until Spring...
What happens to all the water and ice and snow on the roof NOW as it thaws, melts and otherwise... enters my bedroom.
So I had an anxiety attack. I have to clean this room, get rid of everything that is garbage, purge anything not being used or needed, find somewhere safe for stuff we want to keep, like photo albums. I started to hyperventilate. I ended up out on the couch watching X-files reruns on TNT until after 2am, thinking about how in the hell I was going to get this room in order. I couldn't lie there in the bed, listening to Doug and the dog snoring, listening to the dripping, thinking of the room content.
Our bedroom is the dumping ground of the family. We just sleep there. That's all the room is for. It isn't a showcase room. Both of our bureaus are full of clothing which has not been worn since 1998 at least. The clothes we wear on a regular basis are piled up on top of the book case and bureaus. On my bureau, there are tons of papers, work the kids bring home from school. I pile it up there and then sort through it after a few months deciding what's to keep and what's to pitch. It used to be just Jessica's stuff, now Geoff has a pile.
There are photo albums and boxes of pictures on the top of my bureau as well. And any number of little bits of paper, some important papers, stock certificates which aren't worth the money they are printed upon (from my last job. I laugh when I see them). It's truly a disaster.
We don't hang anything in the closets. It all ends up on the NordicTrack Clothes Horse. Especially Doug's stuff. He has to dress somewhat decently for work, as opposed to me, the woman with no fashionable clothing outside of a BNL tour T-shirt.
There are bags of clothes earmarked for the Hyde girls and for goodwill.
There is a lamp, sitting there. It doesn't really go anywhere in the house so we just kinda put it in the room over by the corner.
We have bookcases covered in books..
We have stacks of books.
Doug has stacks and stacks of magazines... he reads avidly, and they are all over the place, all over the floor.
The neatest place in our bedroom is the top of our bed. The mattress is covered in a fleece blanket, and I make the bed daily because Kinger lounges there when we're not home, looking longingly out the window out into the world.
So the room, in short, is evil. And I couldn't deal with it last night.
On top of that, Kinger seems to have some sort of bug or something. He has the trots, and had to go out twice last night. Seeing as it was stinking cold, I went out with him, and after about 10 minutes I came back in the house and waited for him.
He gets this way once in a while and goes deep into the woods to expunge his demon bowels. He eventually comes back. It usually takes him a half hour.
So that happened twice... I sat on the couch with the porch light on waiting for him to come back so I could let him in.
I woke Geoff up so he could go to the bathroom, twice. Just to be safe.
I watched more TV.
I'm very tired right now. And still thinking about what I am going to have to do in that room.
Kinger and Jack are both going to be sick in a few hours, I just know it. Doug put a chicken carcass in the trash last night, and when I drove Geoff to school Kinger ate it out of the trash. When I got home, he'd hidden it under my bed. Jack found it after I let him out of the kennel. I took it away from him, put it in a plastic bag up on top of the stove so I could go clean up where the initial munching had taken place. Jack quietly stole it again, and went into Geoff's room to eat it some more. When I tried to take it away from him, he tried to bite my arm off.
So, the chicken carcass was reduced to a few cartilage like bone masses. And both dogs are going to explode in a few hours. I hate when this happens. The phrase "sick as a dog" makes a lot of sense when you see a dog sick.
Speaking of sick dogs... this story out of Oregon is pretty disturbing. From the Idaho Statesman, it's reported that a 76 year old woman was arrested, charged with animal cruelty. She had somewhere in the vicinity of 500 dogs on her property, about 200 inside the house, and 300 outside the house. She was in Ontario (not Canada, but another nearby town) with about 30 dogs in her van with her. This is her second offense as well.
Her husband was also arrested.
Now, it's pretty sad. Animal hoarding is usually done with cats and by single crazy women. So to my single gal friends, I beg of you -- three cats in your personal household is enough, m'kay? Ten is where I begin to weigh whether or not you are sane any longer.
But 500 dogs?
I have a hard enough time getting my husband to take our two dogs out on a negative 2 degree night such as this one. I couldn't imagine the brow beating that Mr. Dog Hoarder was undergoing. I have a hard enough time cleaning up after two dogs pooping in my yard. Five Fucking Hundred of them is sheer insanity.
How do you sit idly by and allow this to happen in your house? What is up with this husband. This is the woman's second offense for hoarding animals.
I'm sure several of them had to be put down due to illness, and there were already several dead dogs out in the yard. I think this woman needs some serious jail time. I'm sick just thinking of it.
The story is heart breaking -- and if you're a big animal lover (like you, Annie) you'll be sick to death at what you read. Some of the volunteers and the vets were just crying and hurting over what they saw.
The shelter that responded to the scene, according to the story, is the Second Chance Shelter, in Payette, Idaho. This is the listing I found on Petfinder about them. They don't seem to have an up-to-date website with news of the event... but I thought I'd pass this along. Support and volunteers seem to be pouring out of the woodwork, so it looks like they've got the situation under control. The newspaper offers this page for ways to help, and a phone number.
Thinking of all these 500 dogs, who I'm sure are in quite a sickly state, makes me want to hug my stupid chicken-eating dogs even more, just the two of them, and love them.
Forgiving them for eating out of the trash because after all, chicken's damn good stuff when you're a clueless quadriped with stray dog tendencies. I hope they don't get too sick.
I'm waiting for Michelle to email me some pictures of some devastation recently wreaked upon her apartment by Gonzodog. I won't tell the story here, because I'm sure it will be best illustrated with the pictures once she gets them to me. It's a hell of a story and makes my chicken-strewn bedroom look like a walk in the park.
On that note. I'm going to take a nap. Then, start cleaning that bedroom... shudder. shudder..
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