blog lag

I'm on a serious delay here. But I really do have some good reasons, the first being that when we came home from two months in DC our home was...if not trashed, not exactly livable, either.

We had asked out house sitter not to leave the dogs in the house when we weren't home and it's obvious (and she admits) that she did exactly that. And both of the dogs need to lose weight because she doubled their food intake as well as giving them biscuits (when I give treats, I use freeze dried liver). And the toilet was running the whole time we were gone; our water bill was over 200$ each month. When I got the bills I assumed she had been zealously watering my plants, which was definitely not the case. When I went to do my first load of laundry it was apparent to me that the lint filter hadn't been cleaned often (if at all). Which is a major cause of house fires, in case you didn't know (obviously she didn't). And my lovely expensive faux-down pillow is missing; I had splurged on it because it was so comfy. I suspect that an unsupervised Sugar ate it while lounging inside. And the furniture was re-arranged (fine, but put it back before you leave, ok?).

And the ick. The house was FILTHY. Here is what my glider is supposed to look like:

Here is what it looks like after 3 dogs have been rubbing against it for two months(she has a rottweiler):

It came clean, but...seriously. My purple velvet couch was in the same shape. And didn't come quite as clean as the glider.

When she moved the futon frame out of my office she gouged the (brand new) cork floor all up, this is not the best pic of it.


And because all the cabinets looked like the inside of this coffee cup, I had to clean them and every single dish I own before any of it could be used.


This is the floor in the bathroom (she must have washed the dogs inside, I do it outside):


And see that one lighter colored tile in the upper middle of the pic? That's the one I washed for contrast. It took me 3 hours to clean and it still didn't really come very clean.


To add insult to injury, my mom offered to help her clean before we got back. She declined. And she left me two huge dog beds (placed conveniently in front of the couch) and a passive aggressive note telling me how good the dogs were inside and how much they loved being groomed. The dogs have beds that I spent a lot of money on, one in the kennel and one in the dog house, and I do know how to and do wash them regularly (sorry, brushing isn't in the cards very often). In fact, I can't imagine that I have an amazingly healthy looking (everyone comments on it) 11 year old german shepherd because I don't know how to take care of him. It will probably take months to get both dogs down to a healthy weight (as an aside, they don't nees as great a quantity of food when you buy high quality food, which I do).

My sister wants me to confront this woman but I don't really see the point; it's not exactly as if we will ever use her again (and I am willing to give out her info if you email me so you don't either).

All this when I had 6 days to prepare for Nina's birthday party. And the arrival of my sister, her friend, and my inlaws.