Gleaners and Carpet Cleaners

The Bears are in training to become gleaners. They crawl around the house, in the areas they are allowed to roam freely, and look for, and find, the tiniest particles of stuff that one can imagine. And what do they do with these things like a carpet thread? Well of, straight into the mouth!

We vacuum the living room and family room regularly, at least once a month so I cannot imagine how they can find such things on the floor. But speaking of cleaning the carpeted floor, we had a carpet cleaner guy come in and shampoo the carpets. He asked if we have lots of cats because of the amount of hair on the floor. Well, actually we have two cats and a dog. Hence the hair on the floor.

The real reason we had the carpet cleaner dude come and clean the carpets was because there was a bit of spill. To understand the situation you have to understand my morning ritual. After I wake up, if the girls are still asleep, I come downstairs, turn on my computer, and then do my rounds.

I take the bag of garbage from the kitchen garbage can and go into the laundry room to scoop the lumps and clumps out of the cat-shit box. This is a job I had to adopt even though I hate cat shit, piss and cat-shit boxes with a passion. I had to adopt this job when Wifey got pregnant. And then I had to keep it because she is nursing the babies…so it has become my job.

So I empty the kitchen garbage and then walk into the laundry with the bag of kitchen garbage. I feel fairly safe doing this because any kitchen scraps go outside to the composter.

All paper goes to appropriate paper recycle, containers to blue box, etc. Pretty well only pissy diapers in the kitchen garbage (I know, disgusting…) so it is a good place to scoop cat shit and clumps of piss into.

Pick up bag, walk over to computer and turn it on. Go into laundry room, do the dirty on the cat box, walk back to computer, enter super secret login password, watch computer start to process, walk back to kitchen, see Jimmy the dog, pause, scratch her head to say g’morning, and then down the hallway to the front door, pause, realize it is dry outside, go outside to garbage can deposit bag of garbage. All with the lights off and the house in quiet.

Re-enter the front door, step inside and sense something wet on the floor. Turn on the light and see a trail of what I think is coffee dripped on the floor. Wonder, wtf…Go in…what appears to be coffee is dripped in a solid stream all through the house.

I look at the carpet and realize it is like one of those Family Circus comic strips where they show the convoluted path that the kid has taken from the kitchen to the back door. Only my path is marked out on the carpet. And it is not coffee that is dripped around the house.

I go upstairs, and quietly ask my sweet partner if she threw anything unusual in the kitchen garbage, anything particularly…juicy? Out of her sleep obscured mind her eyes suddenly pop open. “Oh yeah, I threw away that old thing of maple syrup.” Through my gentle sobs I hear her add, “Be careful when you take out the garbage.”