A day that starts with a game of Good/Bad
BAD
Woken up by postman knocking at door. Bedroom cold. Have to fall out of bed & stumble downstairs.
GOOD
Knock at the door rescued me from a vivid ‘you should have got up when you woke up two hours ago’ dream just as I realised that the desert rat moccasins I was half way through putting on weren’t actually dead, and the one I was holding in my hand had just started to growl quietly at me. Very troubling.
BAD
Step, bare foot & still half asleep, in cold dog poo at the bottom of the stairs. Hippity-hop-stumble onwards - as knock at the door is surely postman who will go away if I’m not quick - shedding bits of poo stuck to sole of foot as I go.
GOOD
Parcel at the door. Yes!
BAD
Dog poo stuck to bottom of foot.
Clean off dog poo with kitchen towel and dettol surface killer (closest cleaning thing to hand, and it does kill 99.9% of germs, after all. I’m sure feet aren’t too different from kitchen surfaces. My toes have probably never been cleaner), saying disapproving things to dog as I do so.
GOOD
Clean foot. And a parcel!
Head upstairs armed with kitchen cleaner (it’ll have to do - fabric/carpet spray has mysteriously disappeared), kitchen towel & plastic bag to clean up rest of poo.
BAD
Step with newly-cleaned foot in one of the bits of cold poo shed from foot as I hobbled downstairs. Clean foot with Dettol again. Tell dog I don’t like it anymore & that no one makes friends with dogs that poo inside.
GOOD
Discover Sj tidied the bathroom last night. Mmmm… tidyyyy.
BAD
Find two more bits of old dog poo residue that have presumably been missed from other clean ups. One of which is all crusty on the carpet (it’s patterned & blue, which is better at camouflaging dog poo residue than one would expect).
GOOD
Come downstairs to find chickens have ambled in from the yard, out of chicken food & hoping to steal some of the dry dog food. Nerys, the head chicken, is moulting & looks entertainingly skanky.
BAD
Chicken poos on floor on the way out.
GOOD
Dog nearly eats chicken poo, then opts not to when I say NO, very firmly.
With plastic bag full of poo & poo/dettol infused kitchen towel, along with my cold but germ-free foot, I decide that Jaffa Cakes are - given my brief rollercoaster morning of parcel joy, dog poo horror (not to mention the fearsome living rodent foot-sheaths) a perfectly acceptable breakfast food.
Maybe some toast, too.
BAD
Find out that, while I was distracted eating jaffa cakes & making toast, dog has run delightedly in from yard with a stick that it has then proceeded to chew into little pieces alllll over the rug.
GOOD
Tea. Hot, restorative tea…
Final GOODs:
Moulting chicken amusement
Parcel
The cleanest foot in the land
Tidy bathroom
Final BADs:
Brought to full consciousness by DOUBLE cold-dog-poo-foot-sensation
Nearly out of kitchen towel
So, when it comes down to it, more goods than bads. Also, the arcel is full of treasure - hurrah! So, all in all, a win morning that I shouldn’t actually complain about.
But, come on. Bare foot into dog poo. Twice. Arrgghh.
