Pinching and Pulling

Dear Amira and Brandon,
I hope you are enjoying your vacation in the Caribbean. PS. Lucy pooped all over my bedroom.
You may think this is from ‘texts from last night’ but this is real life my friends.
It all started two Mondays ago (Amira and Brandon went to St. Thomas for their one year anniversary and I of course begged them to watch my step daughter, Lucy) when I had been watching Lucy for 3 days already. Monday night when I went to take her out to the bathroom I noticed it was pretty messy to pick up if you know what I mean. I didn’t think much of it and figured it would pass. Boy was I wrong. That morning when I woke up I found Lucy shaking like a leaf on the couch in the living room. Well anytime Lucy shakes she is either freezing cold or has diarrhea. I didn’t notice any kind of mess and so finished getting ready. My roommate got up and as soon as she went into her bathroom I heard “Kandi, I think one of the dogs is sick”. Right away my heart sunk and I knew it must have been Lucy. I went in her bathroom and her rug was covered in liquid diarrhea. I wrapped up the rug and told her I would have it dry- cleaned. I put the rug in my trunk and headed off to work. Imagine how hot it can get in a car on an 80 degree day in San Diego. When I got in my car that evening to go home my whole entire car smelled of warm, old poop. I decided I didn’t want the hassle so I threw away the rug and bought my roommate a new one. The next day I came home to a shit storm-literally. I was keeping my dogs in their crate and Lucy was free to roam my room. When I opened my bedroom door on that dreary Tuesday night I was slapped in the face with the worst smell in the world. I looked around my room and to my horror there was liquid diarrhea all over. There were big piles and little piles! It was even splattered all over my slippers. I saw Lucy shaking like a leaf hiding under my chair. What I really wanted to do was close my door and walk away and move. I didn’t even know where to start…the thing is…if an animal goes to the bathroom in the house I totally prefer it to be poop over pee because pee soaks into the carpet and poop you can just pick up so easily. Well if the poop is actually pee-poop then it’s like your worst possible nightmare. There is no right way to pick up pee-poop. If you blot it-it just presses in further and it will take a year to get it completely blotted up. If you wipe it, it smears all over the place and makes a bigger spot. I tried the quick two sided swoop pick up. I basically positioned two paper towels on both sides and using both hands I swooped in towards the middle-- lightening fast. My tactic was okay but by the end all that’s left to do is wipe and smear. The little spots that were like the size of a dime I had to use the pinching method. I basically pinched the carpet that was covers in feces and pinched and pulled up. This tactic was okay but then I just started doing the push and rub tactic-- pushing the piece of carpet so far down hoping it would disappear or at best be hidden. It took me 45 minutes to smear all the pee-poop into my carpet. The entire time Lucy was shaking in the corner watching me. Just as I had pinched and pulled the last of the splatter I look up to see Lucy racing across my room in the hunched over position spraying liquid pee-poop all over. At this point I wanted to just lay in all of the pee-poop and die. They would walk in and find me face down in shit and the cause of death would be ‘pure and utter misery’.
I grabbed Lucy as fast as I could and this of course spooked her and so she started peeing; with pee dripping down my arm I carried her to my bathtub. This is the point I decided to ruin Amira’s vacation. I think I texted her something along the lines of ‘I got home and forty percent of my room is covered in liquid diarrhea from Lucy. Help!”. Ha-ha looking back I wish I would have waited and I do feel bad about making them worry. Although Amira would later tell me that every time I texted about Lucy’s poop status and said she was still pooping Amira and Brandon would buy me another gift from St.Thomas. Let’s just say I made out good
So anyways, of course Amira wrote back freaking out and saying she was so sorry. We just couldn’t figure out why she was sick. I was feeding her the food Amira brought and she hadn’t eaten anything else. We thought she might be sad they left but I am like her second mom and have watched her so many other times. She really just had an upset stomach. She had an upset stomach for the next 3 days. Luckily I made the decision to keep her in my bathroom while I was away. The night after the pee-poop massacre I was awoken at 2 am to find Lucy pooping again right next to my bed. When I woke up again at 7 to get ready for work Diego peed on my bed because I guess he couldn’t hold it. Well nobody should hold it anymore!!!!!…we should all just pee and poop wherever we please; on carpets, couches, beds, rugs!!!!!!!! In all of this the ironic part of it all is that Oscar was a pure angel. While I was scrubbing away each time Oscar would sit right next to me wagging his tail as if to say ‘mom, for once it isn’t me’. I mean you could really see the pride in his eyes.
At this point I just wanted to surrender. I took my comforter to the dry-cleaners, bought pedialyte for Lucy’s stomach and gave all of the dogs a bath. I was spent.
Luckily after this there were no other major incidents. She started feeling better and Amira and Brandon got back and showered me with gifts and apologized a hundred times. Looking back now I can laugh about it and hey…it gave me good writing material and so who could really ask for more. Ahhh, life