Wednesday, July 6, 2016

This Post is NOT about Cancer... But it's totally true!!!

"The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed. "

-Eminem


Just when you think life can't get any crazier, it does. I know we all know this, but every once in awhile it jumps up and smacks you right between the eyes. Sometimes I think it even flips us the bird, or maybe that's just me.

This story is totally true, and actually kind of embarrassing, but I guess it also gives you an idea of how things are going in our house. I may appear to be keeping it all together, but sometimes things slip through the cracks!

Meet Ginny....

Ginny is our cat. She doesn't really like us all that much, but she lets us live with her. She doesn't ask for much either, aside from a warm place to sleep and cool water to drink from a running faucet, so never mind I take that back... she's actually a rather demanding cat. Her favorite hang out is our basement. I have told many people that she rules the house from our laundry room where she enjoys lounging on freshly laundered clothes still warm from the dryer. She spends about 90% of her time in the basement.

Meet Hazel

Hazel is one of our dogs. She also enjoys hanging out in our basement. There are three bedrooms down there, and a laundry room complete with a "catbox crunchy" buffet. Her favorite activities are being wherever people are, and chasing the cat.  She is  FREQUENTLY in the basement with Ginny. (Remember this part of the story, we have a CAT and a DOG in the basement daily!)  We also have another dog Delilah, but she is too scared to go down the stairs to the basement so she is usually hanging out in the kitchen hoping we drop stuff for her to eat.

So right before Brian went into the hospital we kept finding cat poo NOT in the litter box. Ginny has always been pretty good about using her litter box and we keep it scooped, but she is also very finicky so I told the kids to scoop more and put more litter in the box.  We kept finding "presents" around the laundry room and in the laundry sink. We wondered WHAT was wrong with Ginny. It didn't appear that she was sick based on her "gifts" so I didn't worry TOO much but instead wondered what my diva cat was irritated with us for. I know you are wondering where I am going with this, but trust me, I 'll get back to it....


Yesterday I brought Brian home from the hospital. Life is way better when he is home with us. I woke up early to give him his medicine and went upstairs to fill out more paperwork and take care of last minute details for Noah's trip to Europe.

Brian came upstairs about an hour later and said, "There is an opossum in our basement."  Chemo does weird things to a person and his eyesight is not the best lately so I calmly asked him to repeat what he said. He looked at me and said, "THERE IS A OPOSSUM SITTING ON OUR WASHER!" I honestly thought he was kidding, but I went downstairs and sure enough there was a FLIPPING opossum sitting on our washer as if he (she?) were wondering what WE were doing in the laundry room. It didn't appear scared or angry... it was just SITTING THERE!  

Needless to say I lost my mind and ran upstairs. I may or may not have ran in circles like a ninny for a brief moment. I'm taking the fifth on that one. 

All I knew was that Brian my immune suppressed husband should probably NOT be messing with the opossum. I tried to call my father in law for some live traps (that was my great plan) but he wasn't answering his phone so I called his wife, and she didn't answer her phone either so I called like 84 more times and they still didn't answer. So I just called my friend Michelle. She can usually fix everything. Everybody should have a Michelle in their lives. 

While I was making phone calls my husband went outside and got fishing nets and welding gloves and was arranging rubbermaid tubs in the basement. In a momentary flash of clarity I woke up Ricky and told him to go help his dad catch the opossum in the basement... I'm not real sure what I thought he would do, but he woke up and went downstairs to help out.  Ruby, Clara, and Noah had all armed themselves with baseball bats and were ready for battle if needed.

Within minutes Noah ran upstairs and opened the back door and my husband came upstairs (moving pretty quickly for a guy with cancer I might add) with a net inside a tub and a opossum in the net! He set his "trap" in the backyard and sat down to catch his breath. I stopped hyperventilating and went to find my camera to take a picture of our intruder but by the time I found my phone our friend had disappeared.

So after we all calmed down we started thinking about things and realized that IT WAS NOT CAT POOP we were finding in our laundry room! It was opossum poop! 

Ginny's food bowl is in the laundry room and we had both wondered WHY after ten years she had started moving it all over the laundry room, but we just attributed it to the fact that she is a diva cat and was probably mad at us for not filling it enough, or filling it too much...she's just like that. We are constantly disappointing the poor cat.  

Which brings me to my question of the day...

HOW DO I HAVE A CAT WHO LIVES MOST OF HER LIFE IN THE BASEMENT YET SHE LETS A OPOSSUM MOVE INTO MY LAUNDRY ROOM?!??!!

I have been living in my house
and doing laundry
while my husband is in the hospital
and there was a opossum living in my laundry room.

Think on that for a minute.
This could ONLY happen to me.


Hazel isn't off the hook either. Don't dogs have a super keen sense of smell? Shouldn't she be trying to protect me from the opossum that was living in our laundry room? Why didn't she GET the opossum? She should be ASHAMED of herself for failing to protect me from the laundry room opossum.  Feel the bad shame Hazel Grace. Feel the BAD SHAME!

I had a opossum living in my laundry room for quite possibly over a week.

I will not be getting over this any time soon. What if the opossum moved his (her?) whole family in there? I'm terrified to go downstairs now which is problematic because that is where my bedroom is. I may never sleep again.

Thank God Brian was home to handle it. He's always been my knight in dirty Carharts.

God is good. All the time. 
(Even if he lets opossums live in my laundry room) 





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