Where Have I Been?

I have been muddled in the midst of a home improvement project gone very very bad, that's where.

In the process of this project, coating the bedroom floor with the same epoxy industrial coating my brother and I put on the spare bedroom floor, I horribly inflamed my neck and shoulder nerves. Talk about screaming pain!

My car also is going haywire.

And I've had zero cat adoptions. This has been slightly stressful, all in all.

When I coated the floor, Monday afternoon, I had to remove all the furniture, including the computer desk and computer. I hook the computer connection cable to a coat hanger in the closet, to keep it off the floor, and finally this morning, I reached way in, since the floor still is not dry, and grabbed that coat hanger around which the cable was looped. I pulled it through the screen door on the bedroom, and hooked up the computer again.

After all, that floor may never dry. It was supposed to dry in eight hours. Something is very very wrong.

My brother thinks its the moisture in the air with the storm system that has come through Oregon, dumping tons of rain and flooding much of southwestern Washington.

I am not convinced. I think something was wrong with the product or the catalist for the product that I mixed into it before application. It seemed to be setting up very quickly, exactly like the product we applied to the spare bedroom floor, when I rolled it out and on. But it is now Thursday and that was Monday and the floor is still tacky to the touch.

My brother said yesterday, "Well, it needs more air movement. The other room had the screen door on it." So I removed the screen door from the spare bedroom and put it on the bedroom door. And I bought a fan and hung it by zip tie on the inside of the screen door.

I thought the floor would be dry enough to walk on by the next morning, like the other room was. So, all my clothes hang in the closet of the bedroom, inaccessible to me. I am living in two blouses. Fortunately, the second blouse was in the wash, or I'd be living in one blouse.

This is not the same product, actually. The product we used on the spare bedroom floor was discontinued that same week, due to problems with color retention. This is supposed to be pretty close to the same product. Not close enough!

I can stare at the room that was once my bedroom through the screen door, but that's it. I got the HUD inspection postponed until Monday. My life has been on hold since last Monday, when I carefully mixed the paint, added the catalist and mixed some more. I then quickly poured it out along the edges of the bedroom wall, using a brush to get it into the edges, then rolled it out across the rest of the floor. You have to work rapidly because the stuff gets tacky very quickly. This stuff got tacky quickly, which I thought made it seem exactly like the other. I was excited.

Coverage was not as complete because it was the same amount but the bedroom is bigger, slightly, than the spare bedroom. The two gallons did not even cover the spare bedroom, so it just barely coated the bedroom floor.

I thought, "Well, at least it should dry even quicker, with the thinner coating." But it's Thursday and I am still waiting. However, I had to wait three days on the spare bedroom floor. Today is the third day of wait for this floor. But, the difference is, I could walk on that spare bedroom floor the next day. The surface wasn't tacky. It wasn't hard underneath, however in the thick spots. Two and a half days after application, the surface is still tacky on this application.

I'm fairly sure I know what is going on. When it rains as hard as it has the last few days here, the corner of the house under the bedroom fills with water. There's no insulation under the house, so that moisture creeps right on up into the floor. That's whats going on, the water on the house problem is preventing the bedroom floor from drying.

So that's where I've been. I took in four cats to be fixed Monday and I took in six cats yesterday. All six yesterday were from Columbus Greens trailer park. Four were owned and tame cats, from a residence there with many cats. I believe I've taken in 8 before from that trailer. She had said there were four teens and their mother needing fixed but when I got there, she said one teen had breathing problems and held her up to me.

I put her body to my ear and heard what sounded like a massive heart murmur. "Dadadaaalop, with the "lop" very loud, and shaking her body. My face went sullen and the woman said, "What's wrong?" I said, "You need to take her to a vet immediately." Then I told her what I thought I heard, but told her I couldn't be sure because I'm not a vet. They wanted to know all sorts of things I don't know, not being a vet. And I just repeated over and over again, "You need to take her to see a vet."

Of those four, from that trailer this time, three were females and one a male. I also took in two adult females from another colony in the trailer park.

I'd also been called about another colony being fed in the park, started by a woman who gets kittens, then tosses them out when they're "not cute" anymore. The cats are fed by others, not the teen tosser. They are not fixed and if they survive, they breed.

There were nine little cute kittens from two moms, and a Siamese teen, who didn't fit in at all with the tabbies and tuxes, which are the colors of the rest. There are five adults, two black and whites, whom I trapped the night before last, with my remote control selective, necessary because the kittens would run into any trap set, and there are two tabbies, one a tabby tux short hair and the other a straight brown tabby longhair. Both are allegedly females. Then there's an all black short hair.

One of the black tuxes I took in yesterday for spay is pretty much tame, the latest dump of the teen tosser trailer woman who lives nearby. So I'm hoping all the kittens are two pounds and I want to take them all up to be fixed very soon. The wild car is my car is making a horrible noise. I was supposed to take it in yesterday, but I was in too much pain, had to pack my body in ice and lay that way most of the day.

I feel a little better this morning. I think the storm is almost over, so maybe the water will drain out from under the house and the floor will dry! I whacked out my neck not by moving furniture, because I did that very slow, knowing I could easily hurt myself with my spinal problems.

I hurt myself trying to whack the leaves off the cat yard wire with a five foot piece of pvc pipe, using it like a baseball bat. The leaves were piled on the wire, heavy and wet. I haven't yet rigged a way to lower it, because it does hurt me, to work arms over my head, hurts me bad, so the cat yard wire project, making it so I can lower it, making it workable, I have put off and put off, because it is such a painful endeavor for me.