Pee

Sometimes I feel like my life revolves around one thing. The one thing occasionally changes, but every once in a while I find myself in a phase where one particular thought, emotion, or bodily function takes up all my energy. Currently it is pee. Yes, pee is draining away my life force (pardon any pun).

First off, the potty training debacle, as I like to think about it, is not going well. Just like it hasn't been going well for the last year since I first brought home a potty chair. I really started to be hard core about the potty training back in April or May, when I decided that I wanted to have Jacob in preschool in the fall. Of course, to do that he has to be fully potty trained. I thought to myself, of course I can get this done in the next four months... he's already almost three. The three year mark has come and gone, and he is not even remotely potty trained. He does pee on the toilet, but not out of his own initiative. I have to tell him to do it. And I have to give him candy. He absolutely will not poo on the pot, and I am absolutely done with diapers (aside from the night-time pull-up) so every day I have a strongly worded discussion about where poops are supposed to go as I'm cleaning out his underpants. But the pee is really what gets me, because the pee is not contained within the underpants. The pee goes everywhere.

Then there's the dog. Not Daisy, but Mr. Boots. Boots came to live with us about two months ago and I've been sorry ever since. He's some sort of terrier mutt of an uncertain age. Not a puppy. Not housetrained. And, after two months, he is not any closer to that goal than when he arrived. Well, I guess he hasn't pooped in the house in awhile... but again, poo is a simple pickup, scrub, lysol maneuver that takes minutes. Cleaning dog pee out of the rug takes considerably more time and energy. For the first time since I arrived in my craphole house, I am infinitely glad we do not have carpet. Out of the five rugs my house contained, two are shot and one is well on it's way. But they are replaceable. However, the corners of the bed he keeps peeing on are a little more difficult to manage.

Finally, the cat. Madeleine, my beloved kitty, was sent to kitty heaven just before the arrival of Boots because she had taken to peeing everywhere. It was very sad, I was heartbroken, but cat pee is the absolute worst and I was discovereing it everywhere. So for the first time in six years, I was catfree. It was sort of nice, really. No litterbox, no catfur in my bed... I was ok with it. But then one day a cute little stray cat found its way into our yard, and from there into our house. He was a darling little thing, very friendly. Even Tom liked him, and he's a confirmed cat-hater. He was here about a month, and we hadn't given him a name. We were just about to get him fixed when we discovered that he did have owners that were looking for him, and we had to give him back. It was very sad. Turns out his name was Tigger. Cause he had orange stripes. (Owner = four year old girl, which was probably the only reason I gave him back.) He was, as I mentioned, not fixed, which meant that his pee was really, really smelly. Like he would pee and the whole house would smell for hours. Since my entire house reeked and I never found cat pee anywhere but the litterbox, I just assumed once we removed the litterbox the smell would go with it. Not so. As it would happen, dear adorable Tigger was spraying his luscious feline man-scent all over my house. So with my bloodhound nose, I am currently catching whiffs of cat pee in various places-- and it's impossible to get out. I used enough chemicals on my carpet to take the paint off the baseboards, and I can still smell catstench plain as day.

So, in summary: Jake pees his pants frequently, leaving puddles on the floor. Brynn of course pees a lot, but at least she does it in a diaper. Thanks, Bean. The dog pees on my rug, on my bed, and on my floors. He's pushing his luck. A cat stole my heart and left me with more than memories. And, because I'm pregnant, I have to pee every 90 minutes or so. And every time I do, I smell cat pee because that damn Tigger sprayed somewhere in my bathroom... and I can't get it out.