The Insanity That is Our World

This is from an e-mail I sent out to some friends the other week, so some of you may have already read it. It describes our cat situation and why we constantly talk about de-catting, which has become a LARGE part of our lives. This is about the first weekend in our new house.

Lesson 1: NEVER underestimate the size of the truck you'll need.
It all started on Friday when we began moving what we thought wasn't that much stuff from Gaithersburg to Frederick. After about 2 hours of packing the truck, it quickly became obvious that we were either going to have to do some extremely creative packing or we were going to have to make two trips. Somehow through the God-given talents of engineering that my brother has, he was able to figure out a way to get it all in the truck. We piled the rest of the stuff in Kevin's SUV, Terry's Outback (my brother) and Bill's Toyota (our friend who helped). Yes, we had a caravan.

Lesson 2: Think When you Wheeze
We unloaded fairly uneventfully (thank goodness) took everyone who helped out to dinner and went home for our first night in our new home. Kevin decided to go running the next morning at 6:30 am with his friend Bill who helped us move (yeah - way too much energy.) Well, this just about killed him and me. Getting 5 hours of sleep didn't do much for us after moving a ton of stuff.

We took the day and went to the movies, a leisurely lunch and tried to enjoy ourselves. When we came home, we took a nap to recover and the wheezing began shortly after. As Kevin was sitting at the bistro table and chairs (currently residing in our kitchen) he asked me to come over and look at the window screen - cat hair. Uh-oh.

Kevin's allergic to cats, VERY allergic. Could this be the cause of his wheezing?

Lesson 3: Wheezing = Cats
After tossing and turning, reading and pacing, Kevin decided to go to work as he couldn't breathe. Did I mention that it was midnight on a Saturday? So off he headed to Gaithersburg where he worked from 12-4 am and then slept on the floor of our old apartment.

Sunday was pretty insane. We knew we had a problem, we just needed to decide what to do about it. I found the card for the daughter of the former owner to confirm that it was cats. Yes, Sadie had 3 cats in and out over the years. Kevin had done his research the night before on the Internet and the only way to go was to rip out all of the carpet and wash down the walls.

Out went the emergency call to my parents and brother. They came to the rescue after church. In 6 hours, we managed to rip out all of the carpet, tacking strips and staples plus wipe down the walls in the upstairs. The only carpet left was in the Living Room, which was covered in, yes, BOXES.

We slept in Gaithersburg on an air mattress Sunday night in the middle of our almost empty apartment. Kevin had a 10 hour roundtrip ride to upstate NY for work the next day, so he had to get up at 4 am.

Lesson 4: The Next Time We Buy a House, Buy a New One!
That pretty much sums up our crazy first weekend in "The House". Can I just say, "I'm tired..."