Things Are Getting Disgusting in This Joint!

Ugh. I suddenly feel like I'm living in a pigpen. It's a combination of various factors: having a baby who's now walking (and requiring so much more vigilance on my part!), the two kittens frolicking about the house, my own summertime heat-induced laziness, the fact that I was away for so long on vacation, and the complete inadequacy of the landscapers hired by the management company.

1. This morning, I spent a good fifteen minutes digging through every inch of my kitchen, trying to find the source of a wretched odor. It was a rotting meat sort of smell, but I could find no trace of it in the likely places I sniffed. Finally, I discovered where it was coming from. The little microwave cart which has become our cat-feeding station (because of Sly, we can't feed them on the floor anymore). Months of dropped canned cat food had built up in the crack where the end can fold down the make the table smaller. Ugh. I scrubbed it out, and hopefully, that will take care of the problem.

2. Our backyard is a literal jungle right now. The management company is responsible for cutting the "grass" (I use this term loosely, since our yard seems to be mostly super-quick growing weeds with a tiny bit of thick crabgrass thrown in). But the landscaping company has not visited for WEEKS.

I snapped this picture this morning. Notice that the weeds are LITERALLY TALLER THAN ME!!

[edit: since writing this, they have finally come and cut our yard! yayyy]

3. We thought we had the house pretty well baby-proofed. But it seems that every few weeks, as Sly gets more and more capable and crafty, he finds more things to get into. His newest discovery is trash cans. What can I even do to prevent that? Even when they have lids, he still knocks them over and opens them. He's like a raccoon or something! And we don't have a single inch of closet or cabinet space to stash them in. I'm getting tired of pulling nasty trash out of his hands and mouth.

The bathroom has to be basically off-limits to him now. Here's just a short list of the trouble he gets into there: digs through the trash, flushes the toilet repeatedly, tries to stick his hands in the toilet (but we have a lock for the lid, which is great!), unrolls the ENTIRE roll of toilet paper in about 2 seconds flat, picks up and tries to eat (bleeeech!) the toilet brush, and peeps in through the shower curtain when someone is in there, getting water all over the floor.

The bedrooms are no longer safe to him because his new favorite game is pulling every single book off the shelf. If you are familiar with the insane number of books we possess, you will realize how frustrating this is to us.

4. The kittens. Oh man, yes they are very cute. But a big part of me will be happy to see them go. We ended up pulling everything off the floor of my closet (two huge rolling drawer units, all my sweaters, some shoes, etc.) so that we could gate it off and give them a safe baby-free zone. It's nice, because now I don't have to keep pulling kitten chow out of Sly's mouth, or running to grab him before his hands plunge into their litter box. But it means all my closet crap is taking over the rest of the bedroom.

Plus, they're still in the learning phase of litterbox use. Sometimes there are accidents. Especially on soft cushy things. For this reason, we had to dig out every last sheet and blanket which was stored under the bed (and wash a number of them) and buy those under-the-bed storage containers. Those things are great, actually, and I'm happy we finally had an excuse to get them. But our dust ruffle/bed skirt was a prime target for them as well, so that's currently out of commission. Now the bed looks bare :-(

5. There's gross black mold growing in the caulk in the shower. I've been dying all day to go at it with some bleach, but my baby would not take a nap, and I know I could never do that kind of job with him awake. And now it's minutes until my husband comes home to take me to Mass and then out to eat for my birthday (just the two of us!!). So that's gonna have to wait as well...