Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2022-09-26 09:56 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2022-09-26 09:56 pm
Entry tags:
A Catpiss Wild Day, or, Today's ongoing shitshow
Steph rented a carpet cleaner this afternoon and spent 4 (four) hours steaming the shit (literally) out of the Goddammit Ladies WTF you HAVE a LITTERBOX, dude!! rug in the basement. This did not produce either a) relaxation, b) good smells in the air.
Meanwhile, this weekend, Steph presented us with the chewed-ends evidence that Gabrielle now has a taste for leather, in addition to the taste for used tissues that she picked up from the GSDs, I assume this means Goddammit German Shepherd Dogs. Belovedest thought that it had mostly just been the hardware anyway that had been tossed out. For the sake of my reading page I will say that it was recognizable as a former belt*. The conclusion is: Gabrielle is not to be trusted around trash, especially not trash with kleenex, and to this end all basement trash should be collected at the end of the day and put somewhere that Gabrielle cannot raid.
* we all know what it was.
Last night, I placed an order for the Safeway portion of our grocery order. I was going to pick afternoon delivery, because that was the soonest timeframe. Alex reminded me that they had an appointment in that window. Though, they remarked, it might get switched to a phone appointment. I figure that there's no super urgent need for any of this stuff, it's stuff we can put away at any time, just we'll want to have someone fridge-competent to do the loading. Which means it's me on Tetris duty, because that's deffo not a Belovedest gig, Alex usually asks me and doesn't have the constitution stat, and Steph will probably be enjoying a Day Off.
I wake up at OMG AM, decide that I'm not getting back to sleep anytime soon, start again my re-read ofthe_comfortable_courtesan. Belovedest's alarm goes off, they get ready for work and run off, I'm still awake, and that's when the door dings. I figure it Ought to be too early for the groceries? and in fact it is too early, it's a package for Belovedest and one that I have no idea what it is, but it's for me. I open it and it's one of the volumes of Madame C- C-, and as I flip through it I realize that it's in fact the one that I'm reading right now! So I find my place and finish it. That puts paid to any notions of going back to sleep, even though ...
It was, in fact, switched to a phone apppointment. "You could have taken the afternoon slot after all," says Alex.
I hear the Noises of Productivity downstairs, and because ADHD Body Doubling is a thing (for me), I gather my water bottle, my phone, my headphones, and my iPod (which last night I detected a hairline crack in, and the goddamn things are discontinued now and switching is a ROYAL FUCKING PAIN) and head down. (I have to turn around to get headphone and iPod.) But I head into Sewzb0t Parlor, eye the banker's box of 70s suit fabric at the top of one of the shelves, and attempt to fish it down with a clothes hanger. This fails, but doesn't break the hanger. I contemplate that tromping through the other side of the shelf is probably not a good idea, BUT some of the, let's call them Accessories* that had been migrated out of that room in prep for the Cleanening, were hanging right nearby. I liberated a bamboo back scratcher that I had started viewing as a multipurpose accessibility tool upon seeing Ysa's, and reached the box down with that.
* yep
So me and my headphones, and the racket of the sewing machine, and the further racket of the carpet cleany boi. I told Alex that appx NFW am I going to hear the dingdong when the dingdongs dingdong it, ask them to listen. They thumbs-up me. I go down and I feel p secure that the shit is going to be A-OK with the delivery.
Partway through my halcyon early evening of stitching nasty-textured but very Deer Blind colored (shades of brown and Safety Orange) pieces of 70s suit material into a shape that might someday become a floor-to-ceiling privacy curtain, I get the notification that the truck is on the way with my delivery. Cool.
Steph and I discuss the rug, and plans for Enlarging Peecat Confinement. The rug will maybe now smell Less Bad (Gabrielle, bless her canine heart, has been ROLLING IN IT) and if Pips destroys it, oh fuckin' well, we can maybe think about a free rug off Craigslist, because that's the quality we're looking for in Craigslist rugs. Maybe leave it in the car a couple days to kill off anything that might be on it, since temperatures here are still Fucked. And here I was thinking we could swap the AC over to winter (heat) mode sometime soon. Ha. Twitter said there was at least one regional record broken. Steph goes back elsewhere. I roll my chair, yank the cable that the iPod's attached to, and it goes flying onto the unmitigated concrete. I see that the hint of a crack that I saw last night is a Definite Crack, still hairline but extremely visible in the light. I curse.
Steph can basically no longer move, and is camped out in a folding chair near the entrance to my sewing "room". Gabrielle has barged in, and she's caught between us. She noses the box of 70s fabrics aside, trots past it to under the hexagonal table, and discreetly horks. Steph discovers that lo and behold, it's some previously missing chunks of belt. I attempt to give Gabrielle the full 3 name Not Mad, Just Very Disappointed. This fails because she doesn't have a middle name.
where the fuck did she find that trash can.
Steph is going to return the carpet steamer tonight.
Alex would like their floor done, and the hall.
I make the phone call, and determine that Steph is the one who must return it, which means tonight, as soon as Steph has eaten enough to be safe to drive, because Steph's tomorrow is scheduled up.
Steph is not actually up for lifting that Goddamn thing once more today, and makes a deal: if someone else can lift it upstairs, they will return it at lunch tomorrow, because of reasons and also their body would appreciate the break. I volunteer to do this.
We realize that while we are in fact ready to go upstairs (Steph needs a hot bath soak, I should go up and be ready to put away the groceries when they arrive, which should be any minute now, who knows how many stops on this route) that neither one of us trusts Gabrielle with anything leather anywhere near dog mouth height. We both look significantly at the bundle of Stuff. We snag a transparent plastic box, and spend far too much time wrestling with a coat hanger to let the things go free. When Steph gets them free, I go sit down to re-pack. I get a terrible idea as I'm holding the screaming fucsia thing with more than nine tails and a lot of soft fur. I explain the backstory of why these things are great to Steph as I repack the box and write the label.
DEAD
BUNNY
DO NOT
EAT
(this means U gabrielle!)
I don't know what we expected.
Getting the carpet thing upstairs seems easy enough. I can heft it no problem! I get it one step, two steps.
The front of the thing topples over, heading back down the stairs. My shoes attempt to trip me. Gabrielle attempts to trip me by barging past on the left (there is no room on the left). Eventually we decide that Steph (having run my water bottle upstairs, and caught my slippers) will keep the tank upright from behind. We correct this for my actual speed of ascending stairs (not fast) and this is accomplished.
I collapse on the couch and catch up on my internets. There's a box for me that has arrived in the interim. I don't remember what it could be. I open it. It's some chocolate cherries, which have been packed in accordance with the summer heat, with about 3/4 inch cardboard-wool fabric lining the box, and a couple expended ice packs inside. Ah yes! I ordered them what ... day and a half ago? Two days? Hooray for ADHD short term memory. I open them. They're a little soft, but there's still a shine on the chocolate and the bottoms haven't caved in, so they should be fine once they get back down to indoor temperature.
Alex has put on orange chicken for dinner. This will save me from having to make the 2nd round of pad thai, cool.
I realize that I should check and see whether the groceries have been delivered. Belovedest should be home soon, too. Maybe they can haul it in. I open the app.
MOTHERFUCK AND ALL THE LITTLE FUCKLINGS. The groceries arrived, it says, approximately 50 minutes ago.
No one heard the doorbell. Which Alex had been specifically listening for. Which the noises downstairs would have been gone during, because Steph had knocked it off for the day already.
I stomp into the kitchen. The number and weight of grocery bags is already a warning. The previous delivery showed us that the website would cheerfully lie to us that Location X could fulfil the order, did I want to switch to that source. This seems as though much of the things that claimed to be in stock on the website were not, in fact, in fucking stock. Including half the frozen meals, which is a distinctly mixed blessing. I start unloading.
"WHO THE FUCK LEAVES RAW CHICKEN ON THE DOORSTEP WITHOUT RINGING THE DOORBELL?!" I bark. Steph now has, in fact, seen me barking mad. "Hey, is that the garage door?" Steph asks. It's Belovedest, home from thewars work Trader Joe's. Alex grabs a pan to put the chicken in, since we're cooking it immediately and cooking the formerly frozen pizzas next. I start composing the message to the grocery store.
"Little help with the door here?" Belovedest asks, hands full of two different jars of olives, neither actually the type I was thinking of. I gently, in my most calm and patient voice, thank them for thinking of me and the olives, and tell them that I appreciate them very much. But no, these were not the correct olives. I then have to clarify that my voice of extremely finite patience is not about the olives or them, but about the situation with the frozen foods and the FIVE FUCKING POUNDS OF RAW CHICKEN. And not about the olives. I am so glad to see the olives. The olives represent their love and consideration for me. Sure, they're not the correct olives, but even the incorrect olives are almost right, and that's a blessing right now.
I fling open the refrigerator to at least get the greens inside, because we don't have to immediately prepare THOSE.
The glass jar of salt, the one we had to shove the iodized shaker salt into when the cardboard cylinder threatened to disintegrate, the one on top of the fridge? That has in fact migrated from securely on the top of the fridge, to halfway on the top of the French doors and half on the actual fridge. It umbles down, smashes lid-first into the bottom of the fridge, and sprays salt all over the two sodden cardboard boxes of pizzas and the floor and my feet. I pick up the pizzas and back my chair up. Once Belovedest has vacuumed up enough of the salt that my feet are no longer telling me that I'm going to get a horrifying foot injury from stepping on the loose gravel on a hard surface while being Fat, I grab a Bosc pear out of the ruins of the grocery bags and hightail it out of the kitchen. I proceed to ignore the sound of the chicken timer for a good half-hour before suddenly registering the fact that I'm cooking. "I do not deserve 400F," I declare in chat.
Belovedest has now shampooed all the trivially* accessible surfaces, Steph has re-emerged from their cave to seek more food, the pizzas are in, and ... stuff. I'll be going to bed and won't come out until Wednesday. Probably.
* Not actually trivially, but compared to the rest of the day, hauling miscellaneous living room items up onto the couch, chairs, and into my desk footwell is trivial.
Meanwhile, this weekend, Steph presented us with the chewed-ends evidence that Gabrielle now has a taste for leather, in addition to the taste for used tissues that she picked up from the GSDs, I assume this means Goddammit German Shepherd Dogs. Belovedest thought that it had mostly just been the hardware anyway that had been tossed out. For the sake of my reading page I will say that it was recognizable as a former belt*. The conclusion is: Gabrielle is not to be trusted around trash, especially not trash with kleenex, and to this end all basement trash should be collected at the end of the day and put somewhere that Gabrielle cannot raid.
* we all know what it was.
Last night, I placed an order for the Safeway portion of our grocery order. I was going to pick afternoon delivery, because that was the soonest timeframe. Alex reminded me that they had an appointment in that window. Though, they remarked, it might get switched to a phone appointment. I figure that there's no super urgent need for any of this stuff, it's stuff we can put away at any time, just we'll want to have someone fridge-competent to do the loading. Which means it's me on Tetris duty, because that's deffo not a Belovedest gig, Alex usually asks me and doesn't have the constitution stat, and Steph will probably be enjoying a Day Off.
I wake up at OMG AM, decide that I'm not getting back to sleep anytime soon, start again my re-read of
the_comfortable_courtesan. Belovedest's alarm goes off, they get ready for work and run off, I'm still awake, and that's when the door dings. I figure it Ought to be too early for the groceries? and in fact it is too early, it's a package for Belovedest and one that I have no idea what it is, but it's for me. I open it and it's one of the volumes of Madame C- C-, and as I flip through it I realize that it's in fact the one that I'm reading right now! So I find my place and finish it. That puts paid to any notions of going back to sleep, even though ... It was, in fact, switched to a phone apppointment. "You could have taken the afternoon slot after all," says Alex.
I hear the Noises of Productivity downstairs, and because ADHD Body Doubling is a thing (for me), I gather my water bottle, my phone, my headphones, and my iPod (which last night I detected a hairline crack in, and the goddamn things are discontinued now and switching is a ROYAL FUCKING PAIN) and head down. (I have to turn around to get headphone and iPod.) But I head into Sewzb0t Parlor, eye the banker's box of 70s suit fabric at the top of one of the shelves, and attempt to fish it down with a clothes hanger. This fails, but doesn't break the hanger. I contemplate that tromping through the other side of the shelf is probably not a good idea, BUT some of the, let's call them Accessories* that had been migrated out of that room in prep for the Cleanening, were hanging right nearby. I liberated a bamboo back scratcher that I had started viewing as a multipurpose accessibility tool upon seeing Ysa's, and reached the box down with that.
* yep
So me and my headphones, and the racket of the sewing machine, and the further racket of the carpet cleany boi. I told Alex that appx NFW am I going to hear the dingdong when the dingdongs dingdong it, ask them to listen. They thumbs-up me. I go down and I feel p secure that the shit is going to be A-OK with the delivery.
Partway through my halcyon early evening of stitching nasty-textured but very Deer Blind colored (shades of brown and Safety Orange) pieces of 70s suit material into a shape that might someday become a floor-to-ceiling privacy curtain, I get the notification that the truck is on the way with my delivery. Cool.
Steph and I discuss the rug, and plans for Enlarging Peecat Confinement. The rug will maybe now smell Less Bad (Gabrielle, bless her canine heart, has been ROLLING IN IT) and if Pips destroys it, oh fuckin' well, we can maybe think about a free rug off Craigslist, because that's the quality we're looking for in Craigslist rugs. Maybe leave it in the car a couple days to kill off anything that might be on it, since temperatures here are still Fucked. And here I was thinking we could swap the AC over to winter (heat) mode sometime soon. Ha. Twitter said there was at least one regional record broken. Steph goes back elsewhere. I roll my chair, yank the cable that the iPod's attached to, and it goes flying onto the unmitigated concrete. I see that the hint of a crack that I saw last night is a Definite Crack, still hairline but extremely visible in the light. I curse.
Steph can basically no longer move, and is camped out in a folding chair near the entrance to my sewing "room". Gabrielle has barged in, and she's caught between us. She noses the box of 70s fabrics aside, trots past it to under the hexagonal table, and discreetly horks. Steph discovers that lo and behold, it's some previously missing chunks of belt. I attempt to give Gabrielle the full 3 name Not Mad, Just Very Disappointed. This fails because she doesn't have a middle name.
where the fuck did she find that trash can.
Steph is going to return the carpet steamer tonight.
Alex would like their floor done, and the hall.
I make the phone call, and determine that Steph is the one who must return it, which means tonight, as soon as Steph has eaten enough to be safe to drive, because Steph's tomorrow is scheduled up.
Steph is not actually up for lifting that Goddamn thing once more today, and makes a deal: if someone else can lift it upstairs, they will return it at lunch tomorrow, because of reasons and also their body would appreciate the break. I volunteer to do this.
We realize that while we are in fact ready to go upstairs (Steph needs a hot bath soak, I should go up and be ready to put away the groceries when they arrive, which should be any minute now, who knows how many stops on this route) that neither one of us trusts Gabrielle with anything leather anywhere near dog mouth height. We both look significantly at the bundle of Stuff. We snag a transparent plastic box, and spend far too much time wrestling with a coat hanger to let the things go free. When Steph gets them free, I go sit down to re-pack. I get a terrible idea as I'm holding the screaming fucsia thing with more than nine tails and a lot of soft fur. I explain the backstory of why these things are great to Steph as I repack the box and write the label.
DEAD
BUNNY
DO NOT
EAT
(this means U gabrielle!)
I don't know what we expected.
Getting the carpet thing upstairs seems easy enough. I can heft it no problem! I get it one step, two steps.
The front of the thing topples over, heading back down the stairs. My shoes attempt to trip me. Gabrielle attempts to trip me by barging past on the left (there is no room on the left). Eventually we decide that Steph (having run my water bottle upstairs, and caught my slippers) will keep the tank upright from behind. We correct this for my actual speed of ascending stairs (not fast) and this is accomplished.
I collapse on the couch and catch up on my internets. There's a box for me that has arrived in the interim. I don't remember what it could be. I open it. It's some chocolate cherries, which have been packed in accordance with the summer heat, with about 3/4 inch cardboard-wool fabric lining the box, and a couple expended ice packs inside. Ah yes! I ordered them what ... day and a half ago? Two days? Hooray for ADHD short term memory. I open them. They're a little soft, but there's still a shine on the chocolate and the bottoms haven't caved in, so they should be fine once they get back down to indoor temperature.
Alex has put on orange chicken for dinner. This will save me from having to make the 2nd round of pad thai, cool.
I realize that I should check and see whether the groceries have been delivered. Belovedest should be home soon, too. Maybe they can haul it in. I open the app.
MOTHERFUCK AND ALL THE LITTLE FUCKLINGS. The groceries arrived, it says, approximately 50 minutes ago.
No one heard the doorbell. Which Alex had been specifically listening for. Which the noises downstairs would have been gone during, because Steph had knocked it off for the day already.
I stomp into the kitchen. The number and weight of grocery bags is already a warning. The previous delivery showed us that the website would cheerfully lie to us that Location X could fulfil the order, did I want to switch to that source. This seems as though much of the things that claimed to be in stock on the website were not, in fact, in fucking stock. Including half the frozen meals, which is a distinctly mixed blessing. I start unloading.
"WHO THE FUCK LEAVES RAW CHICKEN ON THE DOORSTEP WITHOUT RINGING THE DOORBELL?!" I bark. Steph now has, in fact, seen me barking mad. "Hey, is that the garage door?" Steph asks. It's Belovedest, home from the
"Little help with the door here?" Belovedest asks, hands full of two different jars of olives, neither actually the type I was thinking of. I gently, in my most calm and patient voice, thank them for thinking of me and the olives, and tell them that I appreciate them very much. But no, these were not the correct olives. I then have to clarify that my voice of extremely finite patience is not about the olives or them, but about the situation with the frozen foods and the FIVE FUCKING POUNDS OF RAW CHICKEN. And not about the olives. I am so glad to see the olives. The olives represent their love and consideration for me. Sure, they're not the correct olives, but even the incorrect olives are almost right, and that's a blessing right now.
I fling open the refrigerator to at least get the greens inside, because we don't have to immediately prepare THOSE.
The glass jar of salt, the one we had to shove the iodized shaker salt into when the cardboard cylinder threatened to disintegrate, the one on top of the fridge? That has in fact migrated from securely on the top of the fridge, to halfway on the top of the French doors and half on the actual fridge. It umbles down, smashes lid-first into the bottom of the fridge, and sprays salt all over the two sodden cardboard boxes of pizzas and the floor and my feet. I pick up the pizzas and back my chair up. Once Belovedest has vacuumed up enough of the salt that my feet are no longer telling me that I'm going to get a horrifying foot injury from stepping on the loose gravel on a hard surface while being Fat, I grab a Bosc pear out of the ruins of the grocery bags and hightail it out of the kitchen. I proceed to ignore the sound of the chicken timer for a good half-hour before suddenly registering the fact that I'm cooking. "I do not deserve 400F," I declare in chat.
Belovedest has now shampooed all the trivially* accessible surfaces, Steph has re-emerged from their cave to seek more food, the pizzas are in, and ... stuff. I'll be going to bed and won't come out until Wednesday. Probably.
* Not actually trivially, but compared to the rest of the day, hauling miscellaneous living room items up onto the couch, chairs, and into my desk footwell is trivial.
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