MOM FINISHED HER BIG PROJECT!

Mom's Big Project, which was to get rid of the carpet in the Cat Room, is all done now.  And it only took Mom two and a half days.  That's a day and a half longer than she thought it would take, but it's done now, like I said.  Sadly, Mom has a bunch of sore muscles and her back aches, but that's because she is old and out of shape.  I think she will survive, which is the important thing.

Here's a picture of the most stained and ugly part of the floor.  I can't believe so many bad dogs (and maybe cats) peed there!

But when you put rugs on it, you can hardly notice that it's so ugly.  Of course, you might notice that the rugs don't match, but Mom may actually put some matching rugs there later.  You never know what Mom will do.

Some places in the floor have these splintery sorts of holes.  We don't know what caused them, but it looks like somebody dropped something really heavy and sharp on certain spots.  We think the floor got wounded in these places before the carpet  was put down because there weren't any holes in the carpet.  Here's a picture of the biggest hole.  It's about 1.5" across.

There are maybe five or six of these gouges, and they all mostly have sharp splinters sticking out of them.  Mom tried to scrape them and smooth them out better, but I am just hoping I don't end up with a splinter in my paw.

Under the edges of the carpet, between the tack strips and the base shoe, Mom found some interesting things.  It was kind of like Mom was an archeologist on a dig, finding clues that showed how earlier people lived.  Here's a list of all the fascinating things that Mom found under the edge of the carpet:

1 sunflower seed
1 bobby pin
1 earring back
1 paper clip
5 or 6 plastic BBs
1 straight pin
Several little plastic pieces that probably came off of toys

Also, Mom found 2 blue plastic things that she couldn't figure out what they were.  So she took a picture of one of them and put it on Facebook.  Right away, lots of people started telling her it was a Lite Brite peg.  Most of these people were younger than Mom, so they played with Lite Brite boards and pegs when they were kids.  Either that or their children played with them.  So now Mom learned something new, in spite of being so incredibly old!

Mom might have finished up the Big Carpet Project on Friday, except that she had to go out and shovel the driveway for a while because the neighbor kid never came over to do it, even though Mom thought he had said he would.  The mechanic at the shop where our car was getting fixed said it might be ready late on Friday, and Mom had to get the driveway cleared off at least enough so she could drive into the garage.  She only did a halfway job of shoveling, but at least she thought she would be able to drive in without getting stuck.

But then our car didn't get to come home Friday.  And it didn't get to come home most of yesterday, but finally it did about 5 p.m.  The reason our car had to be in the shop for so long was because it's old and a whole bunch of things inside it also got old, and they had to get replaced.  So we got a new head gasket and new timing belts and new spark plugs and a tune-up and all sorts of stuff like that.  Which means that now we could go on a nice, long road trip somewhere, if we could afford it.  But we can't because Mom spent a ton of money getting the car fixed.

Oh, but I forgot to mention that yesterday afternoon three men came by, and they asked if Mom wanted the driveway shoveled, which she did.  So they finished clearing it all off in about 10 minutes because they worked really fast, and they did a good job, too.  But now we are supposed to get another 10"--12" of snow in the next couple of days, and more shoveling will have to happen.

Okay, I'm about to finish writing, but I wanted to show you this picture of me with a nice chew toy I found on the floor after one of the cats got it out of the dish drainer.  Mom says it is not a chew toy.  She says it is really a lid to put on a can, but I beg to differ!