Feel Like Complaining

Yesterday marked my 5th year of pet sitting with Rover. It's been about 90% enjoyable; enough anyway to keep going. After our bathroom is done I think I'll open up boarding to new clients again. I'm going to need a little more income to help pay for the bathroom and all these trips I want to take! We have Chico with us (his 21st stay) until Valentine's Day and he's already weary of Abe jumping on him and sharing my lap. He's always been a picky eater but I've usually had a little something I could put in his food, like a touch of bacon grease. His dad sends lots of wet food to top his dry, but he seems to think I have something better and is on strike. I've only gotten him to eat by putting handfuls on the ground, making him think it's treats. I'll toss a few to Abe so Chico will eat his quickly thinking Abe will steal them. Jealousy between animals is real! He was kind of freaked out by the workers and the noise on Friday so we went downstairs t...

The last few weeks have been terrible on the bathroom front. We finally let our contractor go. A few days later his wife served him with divorce papers; kicked to the curb twice in a week. The hunt was back on. One arrogant guy told us what a horrible job it was and the whole room would have to be stripped down to the studs to start all over. Funny though, Mr. Arrogant never sent a bid and won't get a chance to prove his awesomeness. Another long time contractor said pretty much the same; that it was a bad job and it would be16K to get it right. Holy Crap! Never gonna happen. Then our mechanic sent over a guy who we really liked but he didn't really know any plumbers or electricians to get that part taken care of.  Most days I didn't know rather to laugh or cry but I usually opted for crying. Hiring a contractor is like buying a used car; I don't trust any of them. I filled out a form to Mr. Handyman next. My request was passed on to the local franchise and I was sent a...

We had a returnee with us Thursday night. It was supposed to be two nights so his mom could drive family back home to Canada but the weather was too bad and she didn't get the results from a mandatory Covid test in time. One night was plenty with Sven, he just wants to play fetch. If it was nice outside we could have tired him out but we had so much snow and Tony and I were exhausted from shoveling. He destroyed half of our toys in that short time. The ones that were somewhat salvageable he would pile up on my chair for me to toss; this was at 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning we had old boy Benny join us again and he'll be here for a week. We haven't seen him for awhile and he's as adorable as ever. Being 12, he doesn't do much except bark at things out the window and sleep. Abe doesn't quite know what to do about him. He'll chase Benny, but he just runs away and doesn't chase back. The tables may turn by the time he leaves though; that would be fun to see. Af...

...now we're loggin'. It's his favorite saying when things are moving along smoothly. When our guy showed up last Monday morning, he grabbed his tools from the bathroom and headed out the door. He was so pissed and started yelling at us and we may have done our share too. I guess you could say that we all had a Come-To-Jesus moment. He explained why he's gone so much is that his wife doesn't have a car and she relies on him to take her to the store or appointments and gets mad when he can't. I guess it's something he didn't want us to know but we said we would appreciate the honesty instead of lies. We all apologized and decided to move forward. Long story short; he has been here everyday this week and although he had to leave now and then, he's been great about communicating. We are more understanding of his circumstances and don't bug him anymore. He's gotten so much done and I can really see a change everyday. I love seeing the bare bones ...