Thank you, SoapfisMom, for nominating me for the Liebster Award two weeks ago. You and your bot provide endless entertainment, and it is gratifying to know that my stories of chaos are also entertaining an audience, too, even if its an audience of under 200 followers. Such are the rules of accepting the award, and I fall squarely into that category. The rules indicate that I link back to my nominator, Soapfi’s Mom at Soapfiandotherstuff.wordpress.com, and must invite five other bloggers to join me in Liebsterland (not to be confused with Lobsterland, of which David Foster Wallace surely would not have approved, unless it was a no-kill shelter for crustaceans). I will name them below although I am unsure of their follower numbers. (The Liebsters, not the lobsters.)
I would have announced the award earlier, but springtime has brought an increased sense of racing on a treadmill set to go just faster than I can run. I’ve managed to keep the bots, myself, the dog, and the cat alive, but I usually feel like I’ve been tossed off the back of the treadmill and landed with a belly flop on the gym floor.
The proof is that the carpet is dead.
The late carpet inhabited in the bot’s room. June, the puppy who I rescued from a no-kill shelter ten years ago, who wasn’t quite potty trained, is now the eleven year-old dog who isn’t quite potty trained. And she decided a while back that the finest spot on the earth to pee was in Mbot’s room. And then, in a rare moment of inter-species cooperation, the antique cat decided she was right.
The carpet passed away in spite of liberal use of Nature’s Miracle and the friendly neighborhood Chem-Dry men.
Pergo looked like the most practical option. The price per square foot’s not bad, but labor more than doubles the cost. Husbot said, “Not this month. Preferably, not this year.”
I mentioned the alternative: ripping up the carpet and emptying fifty boxes of kitty litter onto the floor. The bots would love having their whole bedroom turned into a sandbox.
This kitty bears a spooky resemblance to the Antique Cat. Has he been peeing in the bots' room, too? (tango-beat.blogspot.com)
Twenty-four hours later, in a surprise move from left field, Husbot had ripped up the carpet, pulled out the tacks, scraped the concrete, and actually disposed of everything. I went to Lowe’s to pick out the exact product that I’d envisioned (the cheap stuff that still looked good). It wasn’t in stock, so I got my second choice. I enjoyed envisioning the new look, with the pale Beech finish brightening the small room and the long faux-planks of the laminate flooring stretching from the door to the opposite wall to visually enlarge the room.
The next day was Tuesday. Our fabulous neighbor, Mr. Jeff, who has come to my rescue at least once before when I was Locked Out, Braless, On a Monday Morning, agreed to install it with Husbot as his man Friday. The weebots and I were evicted from the premises at 8 a.m.
We’d have retreated to Grandma’s, but Grandma’d had a tooth pulled that morning. We were on our own.
We ventured to a park that we don’t normally go to, due to the presence of a duck pond Mbot fell into last summer and my desire to avoid a drippy sequel. We rode bikes. We played on unfamiliar and therefore thrilling playground equipment. We swang for a long, long, long time. We sang while we swang:
Who comes back,
Gbot comes back,
Gbot comes back to me.
He swings in the sky so high, oh my!
But he always comes back, you’ll see….
Gbot: “Sing the Gbot comes back song again!”
We did this thirty times.
We fed the ducks. Our feet stayed on the ground. Gbot decided to ride his bike to the other end of the pond, fast, all by himself. In spite of my bellowing with my Mommy Voice. Gbot did not, in fact, come back.
Fastforwarding past the traumatic retrieval and reprimand, we went to the Y, where the bots played for thirty-six minutes while I plodded for twenty-four minutes onto a low endorphin plateau via the treadmill (set to “crawl”.) The endorphins may be the only reason I made it to my martini eight hours later, after dropping Mbot at school, driving Gbot around waiting for a nap that wouldn’t come, working on my computer via the wifi in the Starbucks parking lot when the nap finally did come, picking up Mbot, and going to the aquarium and zoo for the final two hours of our lockout.
Exhausted and hot, we finally arrived home. The house was empty and the floor was in and beautiful and….crosswise.
I hadn’t mentioned the orientation of the planks because it had never occurred to me that someone might lay it crosswise.
The destruction of an assumption is always so shocking because it shows you (yet again) that the place where your imagination and your reality intersect is about the size of a breadcrumb floating on a pond.
But it looks clean. It smells clean. It is clean.
And I am still exhausted from the day.
Here is my one (sorry, pathetic, I know) nomination for inductees into Liebsterland. The remaining four must wait until I scrape myself up off the floor.
Rebecca Lerner’s firstways.com, a blog about urban foraging which probably has well over 200 followers. But still, this is an awesome blog about learning about the earth and sustainable living, which I appreciate as a mom with bots whom I’d like to be able to teach the difference between a good plant and a bad plant. (And also as a mom who just had Pergo installed. Even laid crossways, it’s 100% recycled.)
