Various: Cold, Kitty Litter, etc.

Today I feel a lot better, and I thank God very much for that! But saying that I’m still sick, my throat actually is scratchy again too. I’m not sneezing, or at least not as much as I did yesterday. No sneeze *yet* today, in other words. Yesterday I noticed the tickly trickle make you choke streams beginning. For me, that signals the end, and can go on for days or weeks or months, depending on everything at the time. These are the trickly things that make you cough, and if you try and suppress that coughy-stuff, if you are where you don’t want to cough, you start to choke and turn into a million burning tiny pieces of hot burning embarrassed cheeks. I don’t like this part, but it’s better than the stuff forever-it-seems cold.

I’m still all stuffy and all that, but not as miserable, Sudafed is doing a better job, so the war is winding down 🙂

We’ve had our kitty litter pans out in the backyard for a long time. In our house right now we have no good place to put them. So with problems in upkeep, etc., they got tossed out back to be cleaned and never got worked on, just piled up with other things when Frank mowed the grass, and time marched on.

Instead of them I used water boxes (the same kind as I use for the hennies nest box in the Superyard) and that worked fine, depending on how well they were cleaned out. Cardboard box with litter and 6 cats, I have to say we’ve had to throw away the whole box instead of cleaning it out, more than once.

I got so sick of that today when Russell decided to listen and clean out the box, didn’t do it yesterday at all … so I had him go out in the backyard with me and find a real litter box. We found one, and I got him started on cleaning it, soaking it first. After breakfast I gave him a sponge scrubby and a bowl of hot soapy water. He did a good job of cleaning off, but really nature had done the job as well, with sun and rain on it for how many weeks? It was litterless that whole time, mind you.

While he was out there, I was inside at the computer. He came running in yelling at one point. The news was: “The dog is eating a baby bird under the deck.”

Oh, poor things. The baby mocks must have been older than I knew and come out of the nest this morning. The dog was running around the fenced yard and saw a nice snack. Oh poor baby(ies) who knows how many of them their were or how many he got or got away. The nest is the one I talked about a few days ago, it’s high up in the tree. I looked around and didn’t see any other birds in the tree or other trees where they have gone before, earlier clutches. I didn’t walk the fence line, I figure there wouldn’t be any there, if you know what I mean. :rolleyes:

I saw one Mockingbird on the fence after all that, but wonder where the parent were when the dog got the baby(ies). There was no ruckus.

So anyhow, back to the litter, we have the box in the house now and it’s a better thing to have litter in, comparing it to the cardboard temporary system I had going badly.

We have stairs that go down to the basement area (walk out level though) and it usually gets full of junk fast. I clean it out, and then stuff falls down the steps, clothing, toys, paper-stuff-that-should-be-thrown-away, etc. It’s part of the “we are messies” household stuff. It’s not that we like it, but it’s like, for me, I wouldn’t let that stuff be there, I wouldn’t get it like that all by myself, but I don’t live by myself, THEY live with me. Now who will change this: Do we all care about it? No. The young ones don’t care at all. :rolleyes: They should. I’m trying to get them to see where they walk, if there is something on the floor, pick it up and throw it away if it’s garbage. Don’t walk through it and kick it. Don’t drag it. Put dirty clothes in basket, in laudry room at least. Not on the floor. Put toys in your room. It’s hard to understand how beloved toys are just lounging around on the steps and down in the hallway, far from where they are supposed to be played with, and then more stuff falls down there and the dust bunnies all go there to live … it’s a mess.

In this case then there were also three big chunks (half-wall size) of drywall leaning against the wall.

I figured, “Well here’s as good a place as any for the kitty litter.”

Frank will need to get the drywall out of the laundry room when he gets home. I dragged it into there to get it out of the hallway. Then I just broadly swept everything else into the other room downstairs, and shut the door. That’s the stuff the children have to pick through to find their stuff and then throw away and put away everything else as is appropriate. The hallway was then clear. So the box and the accessories are down in the hallway, in the way, sure, but much less in the way than all that other stuff was. I mean, there is a clear path to walk next to the litter box, a clear path down the steps and through the hallway to each door there.

It’s not the nicest place for a litter box, but then, it’s not exactly the worst place, considering where else we have to put it. It was something that we talked to Russell about this year, keeping the litter box clean is his responsibility and Mama and Daddy’s, but it’s HIS job to make sure he does it every day, at least once. He agreed. But doesn’t follow through. He loves to “play” and plays all day and if you remind him of his job he droops and complains that he hasn’t played today enough yet. Blah, blah, blah, that don’t fly! 🙂

The other task he has, which he agreed to, was to sweep the steps and hallways. Upstairs and downstairs, that’s two small flights of steps and two short hallways. Sweep every day. Put clothing that strays into hall into baskets. Throw papers and things that fall away. Put toys away. Put whatever is there, away. Don’t let it stay. He just ignores it all and walks over it. Doesn’t sweep, therefore, no way to do that with all the stuff there.

It’s like this for me: I may be the mother and housekeeper and all that, but I can’t pick up and sweep every little thing in every single room all by myself every day and just constantly upkeep everything else as well. All my children contribute to the mess, they have arms and legs and energy enough to help. It’s not like I ask them to do much. No, just don’t make a mess, and if you do, clean it up. See paper on the floor, it’s not yours, so what, pick up that paper and throw it away.

It’s a Visual-Spatial Visibility problem, really. Messies are always Visual-Spatial, but Visual-Spatials come in degrees of messies, not all are messies and all the ones that are messies are differing degrees and levels of messies.

The overall problem is though, they can live in chaos and find things they need in a messy stack. It’s organized sort of, not in a sequential way, but it’s something that that messy understands. So it goes into it further that when things get messy, they are too hard to think of cleaning up right then, there’s no place to put this or that, so our minds put an invisible skin over the stuff and we just don’t see it anymore.

It’s this problem with the hallways and steps and floors of most rooms. Sigh. I’m less a messy than that. I am a piler. I don’t like stuff on the floor. I live with it since I hate bending over. It hurts my lower back and I end up in pain from picking stuff up. I learned long ago not to, or else. I know that if I’m doing something and I drop it, I need to pick it up. Sooner or later, sooner. Right then or when I do something make sure I pick it up at the end of the job. I try and do so in most cases.

So it’s only out-of-control messies that make it worse. We live with messier than should be because of the invisible “it’s not mine” sort of thing in the children.

So I’m out to make sure in the case of the downstairs hallway, it’s there that the kitty litter is, it is there and NOTHING will disguise it, fall into it, kick it. It will be cleaned out regularly and be kept in order. The hall and stairs will be kept clean. End of story.

I’ve been TRYING to get things more in order for years now. Trying to get a place for most things. That’s the kicker to organization, and it’s why our house is not organized, we don’t have all the spaces we need to organize in.

Some people are natually cleanies. Yes, they are full of will and can do it.

Some though are naturally not like that. They want to have nice places to live, but don’t have the wherewithall to pull it off.

I don’t think either is the best spot for anyone. The cleanie should relax a bit. The messy needs to have a team that will help, and gadgets and shelves and drawers enough to help them do it.

So it’s the hardest part when messy marries messier, and have three messiest children. What’s a plain messy to do with messier and messiests in the house with her! So it’s been my desire to pare down. Get rid of stuff. But even doing that, things pile up more.

Add on to it that we have the house torn up. It’s just more messy than we naturally are. We have need of building things in the kitchen and dining room … and then consider all that and being sick. Who does much when they are sick? Things pile up more.

So it’s nice to be feeling a bit better, but then again, not really 😉

I am trying to get the whole kitchen area swept up and re-oriented. Half of everything is still in boxes, with the counter and cabinets of more than half the area disconnected and in half-use. The old cardboard kitty litter area was in the corner of the kitchen, so now that THAT is out of there (YES!) I think I can rev myself up to move more around and tidy that up a bit and get it more ready to do that cabinet painting eventually. I still need to sand down those cabinets I already painted, the paint got groovy and spotchy in areas and so I need to get that smoothed out to roll on a top coat, then finish the other cabintets too.

As soon as this cloggy cold goes away, I’ll be able to start that. I hope we can start on building the central L of the kitchen then too.