"Life's a shit sandwich, and I just took a big bite." I learned this saying forty-five years ago and have felt the sentiment several times since then. Today I took two big bites. My nerves are shot and I am so depressed that I am weeping. The two bites involved our dog Foxy and poor old Toad. It started the moment I woke today, which was 2pm. I had been unable to sleep last night until dawn, despite reading for hours, and had fallen asleep on the sofa. The sound of Toad and Foxy coming in the back door, just a few feet from the sofa, jangling the metal rooster I put there to keep track of Toad's comings and goings, roused me from a weird dream. Within seconds I smelled fresh dog shit and sat up in alarm. I asked Toad if Foxy had just pooped and he said yes. I said that he had poop on him, that I could smell it. Toad cursed and immediately stuck his bare hand under Foxy's tail and pulled out a handful of shit! OMG! I was shocked and grossed out and very upset, as you can imagine. I said "Don't move!" but he did anyway, of course, cursing me and ranting. With his non-shit-filled hand he took a used paper towel from his computer area and grabbed the shit on his hand with it. Now both of his hands were shitty, but especially the one he had stuck directly into the shit. It was a horrifying sight!


Before I could get to the back door he had opened it with the paper towel hand and had gone outside. He soon came back in and when I told him not to touch anything he cursed me and yelled "Shut Up!"  and "I'll kill you!" at me. I told him not to wash his hands in the kitchen and he again yelled "I'll kill you!" He was in such a rage! I had to keep the shitty-assed dog from jumping on the sofa, which he wanted to do, and so could not follow Toad to the bathroom to supervise his handwashing. When he returned to the living room I asked to see his hands. He was angry and swore that they were clean. I saw shit between his fingers and under his fingernails. It was horrible. I had him go into the kitchen with me and sit down with his hands up while I prepared some soapy bleach water and gathered some paper towels and a metal nail file. I kept checking to make sure that the dog was still on the linoleum. I had Toad soak his nails, one hand at a time, in the soapy bleach water and cleaned the shit from between his fingers. I also cleaned a streak of hit from his forehead. I used the metal nail file to clean shit from underneath his fingernails and soaked them again; repeated this for his other hand. I could not see any more shit on his head, so he must have just touched his forehead.

I had him continue sitting in the kitchen while I prepared a bucket of soapy bleach water and gathered a bag of paper towels, and then let Foxy loose from his tether. Foxy started to run to the kitchen but smelled the bleach and stopped in the doorway. I had to pull him in by his collar, with him yelping in fear. I put on disposable gloves and washed his ass with paper towels soaked in soapy bleach water and found big clumps of shit stuck to his butt hair. Gross! I had to wash him over and over, discarding the shitty paper towels into a garbage bag and washing the floor so that the shit water didn't run everywhere. I had to cut a bunch of shitty ass hair and keep washing. It took nearly an hour to get the dog's ass cleaned. When the paper towels were no longer shitty after wiping his ass, I removed the gloves and used an old towel to dry his ass; I had Toad continue sitting in the kitchen, holding Foxy's collar and making him sit on the towel. And then, sobbing with frustration and back pain, I cleaned the floor and the scissors and metal nail file with soapy bleach water. And my hands, of course. And the door knobs and bathroom faucet. My back was screaming. Once Foxy's butt was fairly dry I had Toad release him and made him go into the living room near the door. He kept wanting to jump onto the sofa but I yelled NO at him each time he tried. I also gave Toad a Risperidone and then he went to bed.

A few days ago I went to the bathroom to pee and was horrified to see a huge wet turd on the floor next to the toilet, with smears of shit around it. Toad had done this and either was not aware he had or deliberately left it. He had tracked a bit of it through the hall and kitchen and living room. I returned to the living room and told him what I had seen. He looked at the bottoms of his shoes and then had the gall to say that since it wasn't on his shoes he hadn't done it! He's big on denial. Well, it wasn't on his shoes because it had all been tracked onto the floor. I asked if he was having trouble with his bowels and he said no. But, of course, he would say no even if he knew that he had shit himself and/or the floor. I made him go look at the bathroom and pick up the turd with toilet tissue and flush it. I turned on the faucet for him and squirted liquid soap onto his hands and supervised his hand-washing. I had to clean the floor with bleach water.

I can't take much more of this. While all the shit cleaning was going on today poor old Tommy began screeching for canned food for the umpteenth time today. I'm ready to have him euthanized and to re-home the dog and Toad. I'm trying hard to locate my sense of humor.


I finally calmed down by doing today's jigsaw puzzle, with Tommy sleeping on my arm across my chest. And then I went to the kitchen to fix myself a bite to eat. I found the new peanut butter jar left open and the new plum sauce bottle had been opened and left unrefrigerated, so I had to take care of those items. Toad had obviously made himself a peanut butter sandwich and nuked some egg rolls, which he ate with plum sauce, before I was so rudely awakened today. I made myself two black bean tortillas, ate standing by the stove, cleaned up my mess, and then took my meds and changed my pain patch. I've spent time writing all this, on and off, throughout the afternoon and evening.

After doing one French Practice, and then spending a long time trying to figure out this new system, I finally worked on the first unit called Basics 1, doing three lessons out of the eight needed to advance from 2 crowns to 3 crowns. After the third lesson I was invited to read a story, so I did: Duolingo French story: Enfermée dans les toilettes  (Locked in the bathroom).  

Goal is to turn the units to gold by achieving a crown level 5

Thanks Be For: a peaceful evening devoid of shit

I'm Reading:   

• Maud Lewis: The Heart On The Door, by Lance Woolaver 
• Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff
• After You, by Jojo Moyes (sequel to Me Before You)

French Lesson Sentence(s) of the Day:  

•  Vous branchez le clavier et l'ordinateur. You connect the keyboard and the computer.
•  Les bougies sont vertes.  The candles are green.
•  Leur frère a des allumettes.  Their brother has matches.
•  Je ne veux pas en parler.  I don't want to talk about it.  (from story)

Photo(s)/Capture(s) of the Day:

Today's Jigsaw Puzzle