Tuesday, December 15, 2015

scrub a dub dub

It was past the witching hour when we got home Saturday night from our neighbor's Christmas Party. We don't often see the neighbors on the other side of the river so it was nice to catch up with the bunch of them. We were at Laurie & Kevin's place last year so I'm sure I told you then about the picture frames hung from the ceiling around lights, and all the other amazing decorations. It’s almost Tim Burton. I like quirky but sadly my house is plain vanilla. Except for Grace's cage area in the livingroom. Some might call it downright weird.

It’s all tiled with a drain in the floor. A cold water tap is installed in one of the cabinets so I can spray the whole area clean. Strange enough for you? It never ceases to feel weird using a hose in the livingroom!

I leafed through the fliers on Sunday morning, paying special attention to the Pet Valu one. On the back page the Bully liver treats were $10 off! The dogs haven't had these for over a year and they love them. I got on the phone to find a store with some in stock. None of the country stores had any but the closest one in the city had 4 bags. The kind sales woman put a bag aside and we rushed to get in the car.

Sniff sniff. Oh, that smells good. Nothing like the smell of cooking meat to fire up the hunger. We were in a crowded parking lot walking towards the pet store and looking around to see where the smell was coming from. There, way up in the far corner was 'The Works', a burger joint that is known far and wide. We'd never been and gosh we were hungry…

Two bags of liver treats and some beef treats for under the tree were rung up, just treats - no new toys for Spike and no new sweater for Kabira.

We walked over to the restaurant to look at the menu. They gave us a take-out menu and a specials menu to take away with us. I poured over the specials menu and was surprised to see a lunch special. I'm sure you can see where this is going. We dashed over to my brothers for a quick visit then slid into the restaurant just in time to catch the special. No cooking Sunday night!

I scrubbed and scrubbed on Monday, visions of Cinderella danced through my head. No glass slippers and ball gowns for me though, just thick wool socks and old clothes - I never made it to the ball. It is amazing how much dirt becomes invisible until you look at it through a visitors eyes. I guess it isn't that bad but it doesn't hurt to scrub.

Speaking of scrubbing… Carm got Spike into the shower this morning… he still stinks of skunk when he gets wet. Really stinks. I've poured the miracle stuff on him a few times, but either I'm missing the really bad spot, or it has lost effectiveness. Carm bathed him again today - he's a mobile air 'freshener', obscuring the smells in our house…

Are you listening to Christmas music yet? I've got carols blasting on the stereo right now. I love choir music, but my favorite song is Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing Peace on Earth and Little Drummer Boy. Amazing. Grace loves the  music too and is inspired to whistle an accompaniment. Oh, and offer me a beer. The way she carries on you'd think we were heavy drinkers. We are not.

The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it - the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.”  ~John Steinbeck

No comments: