In The Remains of the Dead my heroine, Sadie Novak, spends a lot of time cleaning messes. She cleans up after the CSI team is done and the coroner removes the body. We're talking some grotesque mopping here.
As a mom I can tell you there are times I wish I wore a hazmat suit. There's all those diapers and let's not get started on the projectile stomach viruses. However, even before I had children there were messes. Natural disasters involving plumbing problems. The messes that accompany having friends who over indulge. Oh and pet messes.
I'll never forget the time a couple decades ago when I came home from work to find streaks of blood all over my walls. I freaked! My dog wasn't looking well so I rushed him into an after hour emergency vet because all that blood meant something was terribly wrong. Except it wasn't. My dumb dog had sniffed a bug up his nose and had given himself a nose bleed trying to get it out. He'd rubbed his darn nose all over my house. The blood still had to be cleaned up and I didn't get a your-dog-is-stupid discount from the vet either.
I'm having a Life's Messy contest. You can enter by posting your comment to my blog or adding yourself to my mailing list here. Winner will get a signed copy of Remains.
So tell me about your big messes :)
Thanks to Rachel for pointing out I'd forgotten to mention a deadline for the contest. Get your comments and/or emails to me by December 1st.
24 comments:
Cool. What's the deadline?
Thanks for asking, Rachel! I forgot to mention deadline is December 1st.
Oh and nice to 'see' you :)
Windy--Wendy Messes? I don'y know how anyone can tolerate messes. I know I couldn't live in total chaotic messy state. *catches stack of files as it teeters and then crashes down.* Argh. What was I saying? Oh yes. I couldn't tolerate living with a mess. DONT LOOK UNDER THAT BED!!!!!
Happy Turkey day from one bat to another.
Donica Covey
I'm with you on the messes caused by children and pets..... throw into the mix two adults who are, by nature, very untidy, and you can imagine the state of our house most of the time!!!!
Two toddlers having the stomach flu at the same time and only one bathroom. Thank God for bathtubs. It was ugly, I still haven't fully recovered.
The newest mess in my house: puppy messes. She's still not quite housebroken, so we have pee, poop, and the occasional puppy barf to clean up. Eeew. Now, about all the dead leaves, dirt and other detrieous that comes into the house attached to people's shoes (because nobody here knows how to wipe their feet...) Also, the bird cage is pretty mess if you forget to change it on a weekly basis. Not that I'd know that from first hand experience. Heh.
Donica, I'm scared to look under my own bed too LOL!
Sara, I don't have to imagine your mess, I'm pretty sure I'm living it too :)
Steph, *eewww* When my kids come home from school and say someone else went home with a stomach virus I have to resist plunging all the kids in bleach!
Laura, I swear small animals make an impossibly amount of poop/pee/puke for their tiny sizes. How on earth can such little darlings make such huge messes?!
Around my house, it's a non-stop 4-cat kitty mess. Vacuum litter. Pick up scattered toys. Vacuum bits of kibble. Pick up toys. Vacuum fur off carpet, curtains, furniture. Pick up toys. Vacuum furballs... No, not the furkids, but the ones they spit up!
Dullcie Anne
*clutching her beloved Dyson to her bosom*
It's usually dogs (or kids), isn't it? My dogs have always had access to the house through a doggie door. Once, my collie locked himself in our master bath ... all day long. Unfortunately, he had an accident -- doggie doo -- and he knocked over the peach potpourri.
After hours of germinating in the hot summer day, I came home, opened the door and the smell was overwhelming.
The clean-up -- I've blocked it from my memory. After that, all the doors in the house were kept locked.
I woke up to the worst smell. I looked around and there was a brown trail leading to one of my cats, and a baby lizard, that apparently got in the house during the night, and other than missing its head, looked normal.
Yep, my beautiful cat had eaten the head off the lizard, and in return, had the worst diarrhea imaginable.
My other cat, who sometimes grooms him, just looked like that was too gross for her to deal with, and so I picked him up, briefly tried washing him, which didn't clean him, but left me with red scratches, and then just cut off the soiled fur. It grew back and didn't hurt him. But for the rest of the day, whenever he saw me, he turned around and walked the other way. And I cleaned the floor and the smell dissipated. Mercifully, he spared me a cat v. lizard incident again.
Mary M
Dullcie, furballs might make my top 10 of disgusting cleanups *ugh*
Marie Kee, doggie doo and peach potpourri?! Aack! Since then have you been able to smell peaches without getting sick?
Mary M, I guess the lizard got the last word on that one LOL. Poor kitty and poor you!
Okay, I'm entering. ;-)
About three years ago, I was babysitting a two year old and an infant, not yet crawling. I was changing a very messy, stinky poopy diaper on the two year old when the baby rolled into the diaper head first.
I then had two kids covered in poop, one rolling around on my white carpet, the other not yet cleaned, so I couldn't let him up. I wasn't sure which one to clean first.
Looking back, it's pretty funny. But at the time I believe I was crying. ;-)
Rachel, omg poop and a white carpet *eeeewwww*!
Sounds great. One of my biggest messes was when a table full of Thanksgiving food for my inlaws, who were all gathered around, broke in the middle. All the food and dishes and glass went into the middle and ruined everything. Awful and disappointing, the food had looked so good.
I hate messes but seem to hate housework more. Two of my favorite messes: 1) when my son gagged on a piece of apple and threw up down the inside of my v-neck sweater (I did manage to salvage the sweater and my bra though), 2) when my daughter had a stomach virus and threw up every half hour for 8 hours...
Stay clean,
Krystn
Well since I work in an Italian restaurant the most disgusting mess I had to clean up was when someone spilled a ten gallon bucket of garlic butter on the floor. We make and butter our own breadsticks. This is not an easy clean and can be very slippery on your feet if you don't get it cleaned up thoroughly.
Oh, dear...messes!!! Can't have messes...not when you are 'me' and so fussy about neatness. I've done all the cleaning up after kids, pets and even, the husband. I almost feel like I walk around with a mop and dustpan at all times just in case.
Okay, this is disgusting. My cat developed crystals in his bladder. He swelled up like a balloon and then squatted anytime and anywhere he could, letting out the most horrifying smelly, bloody urine. We couldn't get him to stop and had to lock him in my daughter's bathroom overnight.
The next morning was worse than when my toddler had the stomach flu, never sat down and had no aim. The cat had somehow got it onto the counters, the mirror... in the cabinets.
I'm gagging at a two year old memory. Yuck.
Oh Carol, poor you! Was that just this Thanksgiving?
Krystn, you are a brave woman to salvage that sweater and bra! I prolly would've just thrown them out.
Tetewa, how on earth did you manage to clean up all that butter?! I can't imagine it ever going away.
Shari, if you happen to be around my way with your mop and dustpan I promise to lift my feet while you clean ;-)
Rinda, we must've posted at the same time. In my book Dating Can Be Deadly I featured a cat with a bladder infection and I remember researching all the yuckiness! Hopefully your kitty hasn't had any recurrence!
I bought him a kitty water fountain. Seems they like flowing, fresh water best and will uh... plug up if the water isn't to their picky tastes. (g)
yuck projectile vomiting. Thank god those days are over with. I remember showering me and screaming boy with clothes on and trying to get them off before i was sick too. I hate cream spinach and always will. lol
Cream spinach *shudder* That'll do it.
Around here we still tell the story of my kids getting sick on homemade vegetable soup. My husband and I ate the same thing and were fine (cast-iron stomachs) but the kids all experienced extended projectile spewage. Way too much fun cleaning up messes like that when at least two of the three sleep on the top bunk and only managed to lean over the side... Talk about needing a CSI team to study a splatter pattern... I still haven't gotten the stain out of the carpet.
Oh, and then there was the time my youngest thought we all needed directions to find his bedroom at the end of our very long hallway so he drew a large quantities of arrow directing us (using permanent markers!) on the walls from EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE. Three coats of paint and you can still see them. << sigh >>
Much love and can't wait to get my hands on this book!
Wendy Thullen
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