Days… Part II

So we have all been medicated.   And though scabies will disappear in two days on treated humans, it takes 10 to 14 days for them to completely leave the dog alone.   For that reason, we will need to vacuum and mop everyday until that time (including vacuuming the furniture), and wash all of our clothing at the end of each day in hot water.   Tell me this isn’t fun.

The kids are already sick of the vacuum.   Come to think of it, this is like psycho-therapy on someone like me, who is admittedly obsessive/compulsive about vacuuming the house.     I had even already done today’s vacuuming when Cooper found a full bag of ground Starbucks coffee in the pantry and decided to dump it onto the kitchen floor.   He then “skated” in it, cackling all the while.   I turned around the the baked spaghetti casserole I was preparing to see the source of the mirth and told Kenny to run get the dust-buster.  

He came back with it, triumphant, until he dropped it at my feet, where it promptly broke into two useless pieces.   I went to get the vacuum, instructing him to keep Cooper and his ground-coffee-studded clothes in the kitchen.   I came back to find both Dudley, both front paws on the counter, eating the cold spaghetti right out of the casserole dish.   I swatted him, not very nicely, and handed Kenny the vacuum and said, “Go for it.”   Then I examined the spaghetti to see where Dudley had eaten, and with surgeon-like precision, extracted the dog-slobbered parts.   It was going to be cooked anyway, right?

Thirty minutes later the boys and I sat down to dinner.   Thirty minutes after that, they were both bathed and sound asleep, a full 40 minutes before their real bedtime.

I am now on laundry load at-least 20… considering that we had to wash all the sheets, blankets and comforters two nights in a row as a result of the pesticide we had to put on ourselves.   Dudley has been released from his 36 some-odd hours of quarantine in the office, and is now merely captive to the downstairs of the house.   I am not washing the down comforters again!   He is mad as a hornet.   Cry me a river, you mangy mutt, I told him.

Nobody slept well in our house the last two nights, first with Dudley barking his head off in the office, then with him whining at the foot of the stairs all night last night.   Kenny was up at 2 and climbed into our bed, where he snored 2 inches from my head for the next hour.   Cooper was up at 3:30, then at 5, screaming, I can only imagine, because he was cold, having kicked his blankets off.   Finally at 5:30 I climbed into Kenny’s vacant bed with Cooper where we both slept fitfully for the next hour and a half.   I am determined that we will sleep tonight.   I know that Dudley’s going to whine, but I have to be optimistic that we will sleep through it tonight.

I am determined that Tomorrow will be an easy day.