Poop! (There It Is)

So I have certain people to whom I turn for specific advice. Need to find out if my regular-people-length skinny jeans are embarrassingly short to wear without knee boots? I text my fashionista sister Jane. Need to find out if leaving my kids playing in a bedroom while I lay in front of the door and take a nap is considered neglect? I call my CPS sister Kendra. Need some advice whether to stand firm and continue a "Rob's in the dog house but refuses to apologize although he's CLEARLY in the wrong" silent treatment or to back off because I'm toeing the line of being an emotional psychopath? I email my tell-it-like-it-is friend Erin.

And then there's me. I received a phone call from my friend Shelley asking my expert opinion on how long I thought the dog diarrhea in her hallway would take to dry.

Yep, turns out I'm the go-to person for pet emissions drying time. 'Cause here's the thing: we have a cat (the same Spawn of Satan mentioned previously in this blog) who vomits regularly...as in once every three days regularly. Obviously we have a super stellar cat. After years and years of vomit piles, I eventually found the most effective way of cleaning this food-hairball-chunky mess: 1) pick up the largest 3-D chunks, 2) let the rest of it dry, 3) walk around the drying small-chunk spots for two days, 4) vacuum resulting crunchy bits, 5) OxiClean any vague spots left behind.

Seriously. With this "let it dry" method I have cut my OxiClean bill by 39% and the number of yellowish-orange carpet stains by 73%. I won't go into specifics why cleaning fresh vomit is horrendous. Believe me - vacuuming dry crunchy bits is totally the way to go.

The problem lies in the fact that...well...there are almost always vomit piles drying around our house. Now this isn't a problem for the kids as they've had their whole lives to practice - they'll take a wide berth around any vomit pile without flinching. To them it's the same as the sticky spot on the kitchen floor that's been there for two weeks or the pile of sweaty jogging clothes on the floor of our bathroom that take three days to go from "drenched" to "damp" because they're too bunched to dry properly *cough Rob*. Whatever - just walk around it. We have two in-transition vomit piles currently drying as I type this.

Where this becomes a real problem is when we try to be normal, social people and have friends over. Apparently I failed at some point...thus the phone call from Shelley. But I was fairly certain that it would probably take at least overnight to dry, so, yes, you may want to try lots of OxiClean and a Bissell because, yes, your parents may be a little grossed out when they come to visit this afternoon if they have to step over gooey dog poo (as they're not such veterans as my children are) each time they enter the guest bedroom.

Now off to write a follow-up response to my friend Ann, who asked for advice on kid poop. I'm not such an expert on potty training, although if there were some drying time angle to the whole operation, that would be another matter altogether.