The Saga Continues...

Mom thought I should share the other part of the story about fixing the basement ceiling and wall.
So here is the other part of the story. It, too, involved the girls, but there won't be any pictures to illustrate. You'll see why here shortly.


Day 1 of our roll as the "handy man" fixing the ceiling. Malcolm was setting up downstairs to get started after breakfast, and there wasn't anything for me to do. So I stayed upstairs and wrapped some things up, cleaned up the breakfast dishes, straightened some things, gave the girls their much over-due pedicures, and brought in some firewood.


After all that was done, and Malcolm was ready, I went downstairs, leaving the girls upstairs to rest by the fire while we worked. (And this was before they knew what was going on and thought I was coming right  back, so they actually were by the fire when I left. Little did they know they'd hardly see us for three more days!)


About an hour or so into the project, Malcolm asked me to go upstairs for something.


About half way up the stairs, a person is eye level with the wood floors of the main level of the house, and I always take advantage of this to admire how terribly dusty my floors are and especially all the little paw prints in the dust that really make it show up. And so this is what I did as I came up the stairs on this day too.


Only it wasn't the dust that caught my eye. It was the blood!


Blood...everywhere! It seriously looked like someone had been slaughtered. There were drops of blood all over the kitchen and dining area floor, up and down the CARPETED stairs to the basement, in the hall way, splattered on the guest bath shower curtain,...need I go on?


All three of the girls were acting normal...ecstatic that I'd come upstairs to join them....so for a brief moment I wondered what they'd killed, and then I realized that was impossible. Even a mouse wouldn't have that much blood in it! And so I immediately started snatching up each dog to see where all this blood is coming from. And finally I found the culprit. Carlie Jean's back toe was just gushing.


Why it had started to bleed till well after the pedicure, I'm not sure, but it was certainly bleeding now, and like no toe bleed I've ever seen. I do occasionally trim a toe a teeny bit too short, and we'll have a little bleeder, but nothing like this! It probably took about 5 minutes for me to get it to stop, by applying pressure with tissue to soak it up, all the while cursing myself for throwing away my old case of styptic powder.


Anyway, the toe FINALLY stopped bleeding, and I was relieved to see, though somewhat surprised, that Jeanie was still conscious! OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration! But it was a lot of blood.


Malcolm had to run to town for some materials he needed, and so he left and I cleaned the floors. I'd been admiring my dust pictures all week, but really it was time for a good floor mopping anyway. And I took down the shower curtain and treated it with stain remover, all the time praying that it would work. And I got out the pet stain and odor remover to see how it would do on the carpeted stairs, and (miracle) managed to get all those spots up as well. (I was rolling my eyes thinking "great, here we are fixing the ceiling for any future house buyers, and now we've got blood all over the carpet!")


Malcolm got home, I re-checked Carlie Jean's toe for the 100th time, and we went back downstairs to work, leaving the girls curled up by the fire in peace. (who am I kidding? They were standing at the top of the stairs looking down at us all forlorn and starting to whimper.)


About an hour later I went upstairs to get us something to drink, and half way up the stairs when I was eye level with floor, I looked out across it to admire my nice clean dust free, paw print clean floor....and was horrified!


There was blood EVERYWHERE!  Around the table, up and down the hall, around the kitchen island, a PUDDLE by the fridge, and so on! (well it was like a quarter size spot, but at the time if felt like a puddle!)


Jeanie, bless her heart was laying in my glider chair (which thankfully has a very dark floral upholstery; I can't find any stains if there are any!) and shivering. I think she thought she was in trouble. I scooped her up with soothing words and we rushed to the bathroom and got the flow stopped again, cleaned the floor again, did the whole process again.


And thankfully that was the end. She didn't bleed anymore after that, never limped, never passed out from blood loss, and actually never acted like anything wrong had gone on. I think she liked the extra attention. (maybe she gnawed her toe back open so she could get a second round of extra cuddling?)


One might wonder why the blood was all over the house. We have several names for each of our girls, and one of Carlie Jean's names is "the patroller." Jean patrols the house. When we get home, after she's played a little while, she goes and patrols. While the other two watch us eat our meals, Carlie Jean patrols. She is constantly getting up and just making rounds of the house, making sure all is well and in its place. Our little protector.


There was a miracle in all this, aside from Jeanie not bleeding to death. On the main floor of the house, is the guest room, and I leave the door open and Jeanie loves to go in there and roll around on the bed. I have a very beautiful and treasured quilt on the bed that Malcolm's mom made for me for my birthday a few years ago. Its done in fabrics of bright pastel, and I followed her bloody footprints to the threshold of the room, with a sinking heart. But bless her heart, she apparently didn't patrol that room! In fact, never stepped over on the carpet and thus never got to my quilt. God is good!


In the end, after the trauma (hers and mine) had subsided it was all OK. Carlie Jean got two rounds of extra cuddling, and my dirty floors finally got mopped....twice.

Alls well that ends well.