From Carpet-Muncher to Carpet-Killer, The Downward Spiral of Chuck

Let me begin by saying that I have anger issues. I get to feeling overwhelmed by something and then some sort of adrenaline-fueled defense mechanism kicks in and basically says Don't get mad, get even. And then I almost inevitably do something stupid. About two weeks ago, this stupid mental italics voice told me to murder my carpet. Never, and I mean NEVER listen to a disembodied voice in italics.

I killed my carpet. It smelled like years of dog pee and potty-training toddler pee and spilt instant cappuccino and I was shampooing it weekly but I could still smell it all in a nauseating bouquet of uck. Not ick; it was clearly uck. So, I killed it. I ripped it up in pieces and drug it's stinking corpse to the curb. I pulled up the tack-strip along the walls and the rusted staples some idiot had randomly shot into the floor (Coulda been me - I got mad at the staple gun a few months ago) and after all was said and done I had bare wood floors and one impending medical bill for a tetanus shot. But, adrenaline's a funny thing. It can make it possible for a woman to lift a Volkswagen off her baby, but it cannot seem to make me strong enough to move a corner curio cabinet. So I actually had bare floor except for where the furniture I couldn't move was. Those parts had to wait for Tom, sitting alone on tiny islands of frayed reeking carpet.

So Tom came home to take Ryan to the fair and demonstrate his penis size by wasting money on "easy", though obviously rigged, carnival games. Think, "I'll win you that there stuffed dog" followed by two hours of skee-ball. Anyway, he came home and I made him move the furniture so I could get rid of what was left of my gruesomely dismembered living room carpet. Yes, it does make me feel better to constantly refer to it as a horrific murder victim, thank you very much.

But . . . as long as Tom's moving the furniture away from the walls, and we've both quit smoking, we should really wash down the smoke-stained walls. So we go to Home Depot and buy gallons of TSP heavy-duty wall cleaner. But not sponges. We buy those at a Dollar Store after it finally occurs to us that we will need some way to actually get the cleaner onto the walls. No, we're not bright.

But . . . as long as we're washing down the walls, and since apparently no amount of scrubbing can get all of the yucky color off and the streaky running rivers of brown tar and nicotine are making the place look like a crack-house in a Law & Order rerun, we might as well paint.

But . . . Tom's only got a couple of days home so we have to get two coats on the walls AND the ceiling in, oh say, one day. And we can't let the dogs in the living room because they might brush the walls (if I knew how to keep them out of the living room none of this would have started). And, all the furniture has to be shoved into the middle of the room because the house is only 800 square feet and there's no place else to put it, which makes it oh so much fun to paint the ceiling.

So, finally, after the chain reaction from Hell, I have no pissy stinky carpet, clean freshly painted walls, and seven years of immunity to tetanus, and what do I find this morning when I wake up?

The dogs have pissed, and shit, on the one small area rug I allowed myself. I can only imagine they did it because they hate me and find my tears to be an endless source of amusement. Either that or they didn't want to get their feet wet outside since it had rained. Yeah, because feet stay so much drier when you live with a floor COVERED IN DOG URINE! I don't think even PETA would get mad if I killed these dogs. Fur is bad. Meat is bad. But heinously and joyously strangling incontinent beagles, not so much.