Author: livingwiththeoldpeople

After the shit sprayer incident plus both oldies getting pneumonia, we decided to buy a house that would fit all four of us, sell each of our homes, and live as one big happy family. We found a house, which took a lot of looking (bless our realtor, she deserves a medal), prepped our houses to sell, and Dawn’s job was eliminated, but we forged onward.

Closing on Deanna and Clyde’s place was set for the week of December 12. The push to move them into our house, occurred December 10, rented U-Haul and all. My nephew drove over and helped load some delicate items from our house and take them to the garage at the new place. We took a load from the oldies’ home to the storage facility, and the cavalry arrived. Nothing compares to seeing a niece and her husband and a nephew pulling down the long corridor of storage units, one tossing sandwiches to the three of us already there and the others making quick work of unloading the box truck. While we loaded the first truck, we warned Deanna that she and Clyde needed to get moving and take everything they needed for the day to our house because once my family arrived, they would make quick work of the remaining items left at their house. She didn’t listen.

First on our list was the items moving from their house to our house—beds, a dresser, night stand, and a couple suitcases of clothes. Since that wouldn’t fill the truck, we started with items going to the garage at the new place. Thankfully, this gave Deanna a bit of time to heed our, “Teresa’s family moves fast, get out of the way,” warning, or at least we thought it did. While loading up a kitchen table and chairs, my niece’s husband went in to take the beds apart, and then came to find me and Dawn.

“Clyde is still in bed.”

“Ok, we will get him moving.”

The ensuing conversation went something like this:

“Clyde, you need to get up and go sit in the recliner. We need to take the bed apart to move it.”

“You are taking my bed?”

“Yes, to our house.”

“Why?”

“Because you and mom are moving in with us for a month while we get the new house ready.”

“But you need my bed right now? I am in it.”

“Yes, we know. That is why we need you to get out of it.”

“But I was having a nap.”

“Clyde, get out of that bed or we are putting you in the truck while you are still on it. And it’s cold in the truck.”

Ten minutes later, Clyde was in the recliner. About 5 minutes after that, the bed was disassembled and in the truck.

Once again, before leaving the house, we told Deanna to get their stuff and get to our house, immediately. No surprise that when we returned, they were having coffee in their respective recliners.

We were at the tail-end of the furniture, so my family was moving quickly to get to the garage items and be done for the day. While the niece and nephews loaded the remaining furniture and boxes, Dawn and I ushered Deanna and Clyde out the door. Clyde was still confused about everything being moved out of the house. It was then Deanna decided that maybe she should use her power of attorney to close on their place that week to keep Clyde from being completely confounded as to why they were selling the house.

At one point, Deanna kept switching from chair to chair as the boys kept returning to take another. When she was down to the last folding chair, we finally got everyone, and their little 7 pound miniature rat terrier, in their car, backed the car to the end of the drive around the moving truck, and sent them on their way. That truck load was quick work, unloading it at the new house. We returned for the garage items.

We had boxes of tools, a huge and heavy work table, plus a few larger tools loaded when we started on the lawn equipment. Push mower—tossed on with no issue. Garden cart—easy enough to sling on with one hand. Riding mower—maybe we should rent a trailer from Lowe’s? My niece, ever the optimist and great organizer says, “The guys can hold one side while the other side rolls up the ramp to the truck.”

The looks on the guys’ faces ranged from disgust to doubt to pride. Thirty seconds later, the mower was rolling up the ramp, everyone was grunting, and my niece stood at the top of the ramp, pulling it in once it got there. My family never ceases to amaze us. That day was no exception. Two hours, three loads, and one empty house. The storage unit was fully packed. The garage at the new place was a maze of precariously placed furniture and boxes, with the items we needed first arranged at the far back corner, in proper moving fashion, but a huge task was out of the way.

On the last load to the new place, my family decided that they needed to remove a branch that was hanging from the maple tree by our second garage. Two nephews put my niece into a nearly locked arm extension while the third nephew spotted her from the back. No one thought about the result of her pulling forward on the branch and it actually breaking loose. Thankfully, both nephews caught her, albeit right in her ribs, but her face didn’t hit the ground. I suppose I could have done the spotting from the front, but I chose to take pictures instead.

We returned the truck, sent my family on the way home, and got ready to take the oldies out for food. The next five minutes gave us a glimpse of the year ahead.

Deanna stood up to put Thor, the tiny terror, into his crate while Clyde was in the bathroom. In a matter of thirty seconds. Deanna’s sugar was crashing and Clyde’s pants were falling off. Dawn caught her mom, got her onto the couch with a glass of orange juice while I caught Clyde’s pants, hitched them up to where they belonged and tied the drawstrings. Dawn and I made eye contact while her mom was finishing her orange juice. We both registered sheer terror, and as we walked to the car, I muttered to her, “Do you think every day will be like what just happened?” She replied, “No, there will be quiet days.” We quickly learned that quiet meant worry, much like parents investigating toddlers when they are too quiet for too long. That was also the beginning of us referring to them as our toddlers, Later, they became our drunken toddlers, the most entertaining kind.

 

The trip up from Florida was long, and hot, and stressful, but we made it in time to pick up the oldies from the airport. We unloaded and situated boxes in the garage, and that summer was spent fitting their old lives into their new home. Deanna was noticeably relieved to be here. Clyde was noticeably skeptical. They had a fence installed for their little seven pound miniature rate terrier, aptly named Thor. We added a couple more garden boxes to keep Clyde busy. Deanna set about making improvements to their house. Dawn and I settled in to a slightly new routine of checking in on them every couple of days, helping clean, push mowing and trimming, inviting them out to dinner, and generally just being present in their lives. I worked at our house, fervently ripping out and installing new landscaping. Dawn bought her dream—a small camper, and we escaped frequently because Deanna and Clyde were built in dog sitters. Deanna was happy to stay at our house, and Clyde enjoyed the solitude of a weekend alone or occasionally joined Deanna at our house. A simple, calm routine set in. The biggest event was Thor’s refusal to go out in the snow to potty. He met his match in Dawn, who simply tossed him outside until he learned that fluffy white stuff was not dangerous. We decided if these small changes were our biggest inconveniences, taking care of the oldies was not nearly as difficult as people made it out to be. That blissful ignorance soon disappeared in a day that lives in infamy in our family—the shit sprayer incident.

One nice Saturday morning in April of 2016, we prepared to go to my mom’s to help my nephew refinish the dining room table. We lounged around that morning, planning to meet my nephew at noon, but thanks to his Army Reserve physical, he said to put it off until later. Thank goodness for Army Reserve physicals because had the shit dried any more that day, we would have been using a chisel instead of a dustpan turned scooper.

Deanna called us at 10:30 that morning, out of breath and sounding desperate. Dawn answered and asked her mom if everything was all right. “No,” Deanna replied, “I,” she took a breath, “need,” breath, “you to come clean,” breath, “for me.” Dawn told her mom that we could come clean Sunday because we were headed to my mom’s house for the day. “No! I need you now! Clyde had an issue.”

We quickly agreed to go there immediately. We knew she was having out of town company in that week, but we could easily have cleaned on Sunday, and were planning on doing a thorough cleaning for her guests. The comment about Clyde having an issue scared us. He often missed the toilet, even using a urinal, so whomever drew the lucky straw to clean the bathroom was in for a gel-like scraping experience at times. But, surely, Deanna wouldn’t be frantic over a miss of the toilet, even a big miss. We had our answer soon enough.

Deanna met us at the door, apologizing, “I am so sorry. I just couldn’t handle it by myself.” We told her it was fine and that we would clean up whatever happened. Then the smell hit us. “Did he shit himself?,” asked Dawn? Deanna replied, “Yes, and the whole bathroom.”

We made it to the door of the bathroom before I gagged and Dawn headed to the back yard to puke. Shit plastered every surface from the bathroom floor to the top of the toilet bowl, in the shower, across the walls, and up the vanity. Nothing was immune.

After we gathered our composure, the first question to Deanna was, “How in the hell did that happen?” Looking back, we didn’t need the answer to that.

Deanna commenced, “Clyde has been backed up for a few days. Last night, he took two doses of milk of magnesia, after eating a lot of prunes. When I fell asleep, he still had not gone, but I thought I had all the laxatives hidden. I guess I didn’t.”

“Mom, two doses of milk of magnesia does not do that!”

Deanna continued, “No, but 4 plus an enema will! At some point in the night, he took at least two more doses of laxatives. According to him, at 4:30, nothing had kicked in, so he gave himself an enema.”

Dawn, “Why the hell do you have enemas? Never mind, I don’t want to know that, go on.”

“After the enema, it all broke loose. I am not sure what happened, but he pooped from the early morning until 8:30, when he woke me up. Even after he woke me up, he went a couple of more times. I think he is done now.”

“It all broke loose,” did not even begin to explain the catastrophe in that bathroom. I am sure scenes of multiple murders clean up easier than this confined bathroom with layers of crap on it.

As far as we could figure, Clyde tried to make it onto the toilet at first signs of movement. He didn’t quite get settled in for the long haul, and some poop escaped onto the back of the toilet seat. He finished, or thought he finished, stood up to clean the toilet and shot shit onto the wall. At this point, it became a vicious cycle. He turned to clean, more shit storm, in all directions. Toward the toilet, the shower, the vanity, the wall, even as far as three feet away onto the door flew shit. He literally sprayed shit all over that bathroom. And we had to clean it.

One of the more entertaining parts is that Deanna had been cleaning since 8:30. Two hours of cleaning resulted in one waste basket and one diaper pail being mostly cleaned. We were in it deep, figuratively and literally. I stupidly had worn flip-flops. Looking back, I should have learned my lesson to always wear shoes if it involved cleaning and Clyde.

Dawn and I cleaned for a three solid hours. The solid hours were the only solids that day. Dawn alternately gagged, puked, and cleaned. I stuck to mostly gagging and cleaning with moments spent in the fresh air of a rainy April Saturday. We started by scooping with a dust pan and moved on to wiping with paper towels. I am fairly certain an entire tree lost its life in that shit storm. After the surfaces became smears of poo, we started in with the bleach wipes, then progressed to bleach spray.

Everything had been cleaned, but we still smelled it. No doubt it was on our clothes, and my innocent feet, but the smell was too strong for that little of residue. So we sniffed. We sniffed the door, the shower, the sink. Maybe we had run too much water trying to rinse rags in the sink and clogged it? No, the sink did not smell. It was the cover of the hose to his bidet sprayer. Clyde had installed what looked to be a heavy duty sprayer from a kitchen sink to the toilet to use as a bidet. The cover of the hose allowed it to be stretched, much like a slinky. The shit was in the middle of every single coil. No one has lived until they have cleaned their step-father-in-law’s crap ring-by-ring from a bidet hose cover.

Three hours later, we emerged from their house, not wanting to even sit in our own car for fear we had crap on us. That afternoon, we showered, separately for 30 minutes. Then, we dried, did a sniff test, and went back in to clean up again. By the time we arrived at my mother’s, we looked haggard and battle worn. After recounting the story, and watching my brother gag, we heard him utter the words, “You know ServPro cleans up messes like that. It might cost you, but I think it might be worth it to get their local number.”

Those numbers are still programmed in my phone.