We do have a new tenant in the basement. It’s Christine, who is a nurse who worked on my unit at the hospital and her doggie Apollo. We spent part of the weekend installing curtains over a couple of sliding glass doors down there that I had not had the chance to do before she moved in. She had put garbage bags on the glass to shield the light from her and the deer from Apollo. It’s nice to have young person energy in the house again. Of course, the house is enormous and it’s nice that the space is being used again. I like to say that we use every square inch of the house and we never leave it (which is true). So now there are three humans, three dogs and a cat (and probably a lot of mice) in the house.
So inspired by my success in reinstalling the countertop in the basement kitchen and some random youtube videos, I’m going to try (with Jeremy) to rip out the carpeting in the upstairs bedrooms and replace with wood flooring. Now, carpentry isn’t really my jam, my jam is plumbing and appliance repair. But I think I can do it. I kind of groan at the amount of $ that can be spent on home repair. So we picked a small room and see what we can do. It’ll be a bit trying on the marriage – home renovations are famously taxing, but I think we can do it. This is the threshold between the existing floor and the ripped up wall to wall carpeting.
We are also doing this now because the animals (animals meaning Elka) has decided that this room is the bathroom. Elka has been notoriously hard to housebreak, she wants to pee a lot (well a lot meaning, small amounts all the time), her poops, despite investing in very expensive food that promises perfect poops and so few deviations from her regular diet (my mother is kind of crushed because she loves nothing better than to replace the regular Friday night serving of kibble with a specially-made Chinese meat-alicious meal for all our dogs), are runny and numerous each day and her instinct to keep her home clean of either urine or feces is not quite there. At some point in the fall, I was so frustrated with Elka, but she is literally the sweetest dog I’ve ever met, I said out loud to the gods, I love this dog so much, it will be OK if she pees/poops in my house for the next 15 years. And so the gods heard me and shrugged and said – ok, i’ll leave it be. So I think she smells Ivy’s litter box which is in this particular room and has decided – oh, I get it, this is the bathroom and it’s OK here. So I just want the carpet replaced with a wood floor so it’s easier to clean.