I just bleached and mopped out the sludge that collected underneath our basement stairs. The SE corner floods when it rains, and apparently when it does so, it leaves behind this sixteenth-of-an-inch brownish-yellowish stuff in which large white bubbles of mold form if you leave it sit.*

I used one side of the wash basin next to the washing machine as the mop bucket, with liberal amounts of bleach and hot water, and at the end realized I had to stick my hand in the soupy mess stew it had become to fish out the drain plug. Ewwwwwww!

I had no rubber gloves (and who wants to permanently ruin a pair of those on one lousy task?). So...plastic grocery bags. Double bagged. I did not have to put my naked arm or hand in the icky stuff! Yay!

* This was not intentional. We just don't USE the SE corner because it floods, and because it is a dark, cramped little area next to/under the stairs (where some spiders decided to nest in the fall). So I usually have no reason to wander back there and thus didn't notice the sludge/mold until Rainman's PCA moved the litterbox over there.

An addendum to yesterday's whiny-bitching post; I wanted to say it then, but was too tired/sore/pain to remember:

"But we're done. Completely done. So awesome. So happy. Gladness."

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Here's an update on other things:

Cat: the cat needs two regular insulin shots per day. I bring her in tomorrow for another exam to make sure her levels are stable. She's doing better, though, and using her litter box regularly. Haven't found any urination elsewhere, thankfully. However, we think she's learned to open doors, because she comes strolling up into the rest of the house even after we put her in the downstairs bathroom (behind a closed door). Magic cat.

Court: the sellers on the previous house filed a notice of cancellation to attempt to force the closing and keep the earnest money. At least if I did not respond in kind within two weeks. So I'm responding in kind and serving their lawyer (hopefully) tomorrow because that money is legally mine and I'll be damned if I'm going to let them walk off with it.

Cthulhu: instead of playing CoC, we watched "Iron Man" (and I spent the whole movie double-checking the "its racist because the brown people kidnap Stark for no reason" argument and coming to the conclusion the people saying that are smoking crack -- there are no less than three points in the movie where it is made crystal clear why the kidnapped Stark) and we played Munchkin Cthulhu until the youngest player had to get home.

We also decided to do CoC every other week, and play different games (or whatever) during our off weeks. Have a 3E game set-up in the near future (yes, more D&D, oh well), but I am thinking of running ORX or Donjon, maybe Sorcerer or Dogs soon, too. And maybe some Riddle of Steel gladiatorial combat.

One thing I did find out is that the GM and I are going to clash. He made some remarks about 4E being the worst D&D yet, and I'd mentioned my friends had been raving about it, how no one gets left out because there's always something to do each turn. He argued that's unrealistic -- because sometimes you can't do anything except draw your weapon or search through your backpack for an item -- and if you want to play an RPG, you have to have realism.

For me: "realism" (as indicated above) = teh suckage. I'm there to have fun, not to emulate reality and catch the black plague from sleeping in the wrong inn, and most definitely not to get hosed in the name of playing/fun/realism/whatever. Been there, done that: not fun.

Not sure how that's going to play out when we do sit down to play, but we'll see.

Creating: Stay tuned to this space for a forthcoming announcement and pretty pictures.

Haven't vanished, just still in the process of unpacking here and cleaning the basement/etc at the old house. We need more bookshelves. Lots more.

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One of our cats disappeared the other night. She fell out through a screen on one of the windows that had apparently separated from the frame. I ran outside after her because the last time she jumped out an open window she meowed pathetically to be let back inside; she's not an outdoor cat. But she was gone.

I figured she'd run to the back door or the backyard under the windows there to try and get back in the house, but she wasn't there either. We spent some time calling for her, then figured she'd run off to investigate something and would be back shortly.

Some time later, we heard a cat howl outside, and I went out to investigate. I'm pretty sure she'd come home and been attacked by one of the neighborhood strays, a white cat I hadn't seen before who was sitting on our sidewalk giving me attitude. I looked around, to see if she was lurking nearby but saw nothing, and politely shooed the white cat off.

A minute or two later, there was another howl from the alleyway, so we ran back there, with me almost slicing my bare foot open on a sharp rock (or something) hidden in the dark lawn. I limped down the alley with Jen, calling for the cat, but we didn't see or hear anything else.

Not knowing this had happened, the next day the kids noticed she wasn't around and asked where she was. Jen -- hoping she would come back over the weekend -- said she was probably hiding somewhere sleeping ("It isn't a lie," she said to me, "She probably is!"). But she's been gone for three days now and we haven't seen any sign of her.

We were going to have to find a new home for her as it was, but this is not the way I wanted that to happen. I don't know that she's safe and being taken care of, and I'm very worried.