I'll see your sucky weekend and raise you one animal secretion

I have tried to start this post about four times already. Rejected first lines:

Well, the crap hit the fan this weekend. And by "fan" I mean "our front rug." And "my foot." And "10 feet down the hallway."

Let's talk about dog diarrhea, yes?

[me unable to see my keyboard through my tears]

This weekend I got blisters from my Bissell? How was your weekend? Wait - I don't care BECAUSE MINE SUCKED THAT MUCH.

So Jethro had some poop issues on the front rug in the middle of the night. But that isn't even the worst part of this upcoming story. Oh goody, right?

The kids discovered the poop Saturday morning, screamed and whooped a while, then got ready for soccer.

You know how when you lose power during a blackout and you forget every 2 seconds that there's no electricity? You mindlessly try using the microwave, the electric stove, three light switches, your home phone, and your coffee maker - all within the first six minutes? Well, I stepped on that brown front rug (and the camouflaged poop) to get the kids' soccer shoes. Then 40 seconds later, after shedding my flip-flops, I moronically stepped on it again while getting sweatshirts. Then I washed my feet, fetched some socks, fetched some coffee, then walked across the poop again...

...and didn't realize it, so kept walking down the hall. The hall with the whitish carpet.

Then Silas ran to the front door in his excitement to leave for soccer, looked at me in shock while I screamed-snarled-growled at him and his feces-smeared shoes, then ran away from me in terror down the hall. The hall with the whitish carpet.

My plan? Let it dry, pick up the chunks, then Bissell the crap out of the crap. I mean, is there a real Martha Stewart strategy for such a thing? Does someone have a tried-and-tested method? I was stumped. And we were late for soccer. So we left.

Then we came back from soccer to find that Jethro had escaped from his crate and had turned into a feral raccoon in his two hours of freedom. The kitchen garbage had been ransacked, the entire 13-gallons of its contents strewn about the kitchen and the living room. Soggy coffee grinds, used q-tips, crushed egg shells, temporary tattoos...

...oh, and the trimmings, packaging, and BLOOD of the pork roast from the night before.

Yes, pig blood all over the whitish living room carpet.
To join the dog diarrhea on the front rug.
And the dog poop footprints down the carpeted hallway.
And the random gross wet trash all across the kitchen tiles.

I looked at Rob with teary eyes and whispered, "Do you even realize how long this will take me to clean up??" To which he replied without a trace of sympathy, "See? THIS is why I keep saying we need to get the wood floors installed." Which was totally the right thing to say to make me feel better. And by "feel better" I mean "want to punch him in the face."

I was numb - the entire first floor looked like it was a set for a horror film. So my brilliant plan? Walk away.

Seriously. We just up and left the poop and blood and trash where it was and drove away. For the night. To let it all dry and to celebrate Rob's birthday at the lake house with some sunshine and drinks...lots of drinks...
(I was so worried we'd die in the car on the way there and someone would discover the state of my house that I texted my sisters and told them to make it clear at my funeral that we did not actually live in dog crap and pig blood and garbage-strewn floors. One sister was confused because I had used Rob's phone and she thought the message was Rob's and couldn't believe he actually cared. The other sister never responded, which totally (probably) meant "of course!" was a given.)

When faced with a challenge, I'm actually a good person to have on your team as I can approach a task with an "alright, let's get this crap done" attitude. Your basement floods while I'm babysitting? I'm wading through the chunks of vegetables and murky water to check it out. Your dog dies from heatstroke while camping? I'm grabbing the plastic tablecloth and moving him to the bushes so you don't stumble upon him without warning.

Coming home from the lake house the next day, I yelled, "Don't touch it yet!" and started taking pictures as a kind of weird documentation. (Hey, to this day I am forever grateful to have the pictures of my gonorrhea foot in our digital photo albums.) (That probably deserves some explanation as I just realized it's a story I've never told here in this blog for some reason, which is weird since it involves all the elements of a story that contains too much information - my specialty. Check back next week!) ANYWAY, with the documentation out of the way, I was all set to bust out some gloves and tackle the nightmare.

But the story wasn't over.

Our cat had decided to play a sick joke on us, for right in the middle of the feces-foot-printed hallway was this:

Yes, I documented the puke. What you can't see in the shot is Rob rolling his eyes at me.

 And then I went into our closet and found this:

FOR REAL.

Six hours. Six hours, two days, and a tub of oxiclean to move furniture and sweep and vacuum and carpet clean away all traces of dog diarrhea, wet garbage, pig blood, cat vomit, and cat poop.

Happy birthday Rob!