Skindecent saved my life last night

Reallytruly.

I'll tell the story in a moment, but I have to preface it by telling Scott that if he makes one freaking comment about inside dogs, I will burst into tears and kick him sharply on the ankles. Stuff happens, I need to vent about it, and I don't want any extra grief. So there!

This has been a difficult and draining week at work. I've got one book that is the first revised edition in seven years, and another where the authors wanted an extra month to get us really lame content revisions and the head office wants us to still have it out by August 30th. Add to that my night-of-not-sleeping thanks to Ophelia's canine soulmate, and it's been hard.

Last night, I came home, had coffee, let the dogs in & out and fed them, ate dinner myself and went to water the plants. To do that, I have to bypass my fancypants new water softener, which involves a trip to the basement.

Down in the front half of the basement, aka the dogs' half, there are two room-sized pieces of carpet from when Mom & I re-did the bedrooms. They are down there because I felt guilty locking my dogs up on concrete floors all day. In the last 3 or so years, there have been some accidents, but I've cleaned up right away and it hasn't been too awful.

That is, until yesterday. When I went downstairs, I could both smell and see that someone had been very sick on both pieces of carpet. I switched the water over, zipped out and watered the tomatoes, then went back downstairs to deal with the mess.

On closer examination, it was very clear that the carpet was unsalvageable this time. Back upstairs I went, and then I returned to the basement with my good snips. I grabbed a couple of rags, cleaned up what I could, and then cut both pieces of carpet in half. Then came the bad part.

I had to get the carpet upstairs and out last night, because my trash pickup was early this morning, my city will only take one room's worth of carpet per pickup, and I didn't want all of it sitting around until next week. Not only was the carpet disgusting, it hadn't aged well--years in the basement had cause the backing to dry up into thoroughly rough and scratchy burlap.

By the time I had wrestled three of the four pieces upstairs, I was filthy, sodden with sweat, itching from head to toes and still had to get the blue pieces out to the curb. After I'd done so, all I wanted to do was remove all of my skin and hair from my body and grow in new stuff.

There was no way I was taking a bath in that condition, so I rummaged around in my bathroom cupboard, found a sugar scrub and bath cream in Pillow Fight scent from Skindecent, used it in a cool shower, and finally felt clean and human.

Then my dad called. When I told him what I'd been up to, he said in a very sweet and slightly chiding voice that he would have come over to help. I told him I knew that, but it needed to be done right away, and I wasn't going to haul him out of the house just to help me deal with something that was the fault of my dogs. He said he'd try to recover from the hurt feelings. ;)

We had a lot of thunder, lightning and wind last night, plus a teensy amount of rain. My plants didn't get any extra water, but my trash can got knocked over, the cardboard I had out for the recycling truck got wet, and the carpet got unrolled and wet. Bless them, the trash guys picked everything up anyway, and next week I will be securing the carpet with duct tape.

I'll get the last piece out of the basement after I duct tape it first so it doesn't unroll on the stairs, and then all I have to worry about is Kentucky tort law!