Oh, there’s more.
I try to group all of our in-person Minneapolis meetings and appointments together, so we can spend reasonable chunks of time in each place, city and country.
I had my post-chemo dentist appointment last week. You can’t get your teeth cleaned while having chemo and the resulting compromised immune system, to avoid any possible mouth infections caused from poking and scraping with sharp objects. I was telling my hygienist Jen about our stink fridge problem (I saw her the day after the horror was discovered), and she helpfully suggested many ways to remove the smell: stuff the refrigerator with crumpled newspaper, and replace every couple hours. Boil vinegar to remove lingering smells in the house. I asked if she had a second job as a crime scene cleaner, and she said, “No, my dad is a mortician.”
Later in the week, Bob tried to lock the back door of the house and the deadbolt latch just spun. Gave out. Instead of waiting days for the locksmith to come fix it, we could take the lock off the door and bring it to the shop to be fixed right away. Bob removed the lock, spent $5 plus tip on the fix, and managed to get it back on the door. This wasn’t without over an hour of frustration, including anger with me for not immediately leaping up from my nap on the couch the moment he needed assistance with installation. I proceeded to be not speaking to him because of his unrealistic expectations, so we both enjoyed a bit of solitude. Plus, the lock got fixed. The time from “fucked” to “fixed” was amazingly short. A high point of the week, for sure.
Our kitchen is next to the stairs to our basement, where the laundry is. I chuck dirty dish towels and dish cloths down the stairs after I use them, and eventually, when there’s critical mass, I gather them up and throw them in the washing machine. That’s exactly what I was doing when I heard the sound of dripping water coming from the corner of the basement. Bob was running water in the kitchen sink, and some of it was trickling through the basement ceiling and pooling on the floor. It’s not supposed to do that. I yelled up at Bob, “Come down here, we have a problem!”
Bob rushed down the stairs, stopped and said, “The mouse?”
Mouse?
“Isn’t this a mouse?” Bob asked, referring to a grey mass at the foot of the stairs, where I’d just picked up the dirty dish towels. Someone had given the mouse a craniotomy, making it easier at first glance to assume it was a dust bunny, not a dead mouse with most of its head chewed off.
Fucking gross. I started screaming. Not only had I almost touched it, I almost washed it. Almost just scooped it up into the washing machine with the pile of dirty rags. Ick. Someone killed it, ate its head, and hid the body under dirty laundry. Just the idea of pulling a freshly dried headless mouse out of the dryer after it tumbled around with my kitchen towels…No.
I put a pan under the leak and we escaped back to the cabin.