gripe fest, week of 5/16

kboydbowman

What sucks?

pangolindrome

RODENTS are what suck!
I caught a live mouse today because it was scurrying around the living room area. I'm glad I caught it or I would not have been able to go to work. We have had issues with mice since about a month and a half (LOADS of rain drives them indoors) and having to clean up. We have one in a live trap and I found this little bastard today. We have poison out so it's not like I could leave it with our dog - if she ate it, she would have been poisoned. Not that I think she would. I'm not sure if she has ever met a mouse/knows what one is.

newbabymama27

@pangolindrome eeewwww I hate mice 😭 and feel zero guilt for killing them. Have you tried an electronic mouse trap? They are incredible! You put a bit of peanut butter inside to lure them in and it works like a charm. We haven’t had any in a while but we are in a house surrounded by farm land so it’s part of our reality that they try to come in once the cold hits. Thankfully they’ve only been in the basement and nowhere near our main living area, plus my husband was able to locate a few gaps in the walls between the garage and house so they need to work harder to figure out how to get in. Ours looks something like this, though likely an older version. It’s small and discrete. 

pangolindrome

@newbabymama27 We got a four-mouse live trap (with one mouse in it at this time) and two electronic traps arrived from Amazon, so hubbs put them out. However, this mouse snuck into the main living area so it was not under the kitchen sink where they've been. We live in the Cascade Foothills right on the edge of national forest, so it's expected to have rodents every now and then, but apparently the jaw-style trap we had malfunctioned at some point, so there was a long stretch where there was no functional trap... ... 
As of this morning, we now have a large, lidded bucket 1/3 filled with water for the live-trapped mice.

jhysmath

Our house in NY is in a large field and it's 175 years old, so not sealed well at all. We get mice constantly. I suggest catch master glue traps that say they're for rats and snake. We have caught 3 on one trap before. Now, they do suffer and die, but we don't want them in the house. My husband has killed 5 squirrels this year as well, using the green pellets. I'm hoping when we live there we don't have these problems. 

newbabymama27

@jhysmath yes the sticky traps are also great! Though last year we had a cricket apocalypse so they mostly trapped crickets 😅

jhysmath

Ugh my husband's fsa is all messed up and we need to use it by June 30th. I thought there was $2k sitting in it to use up, but the company we work with says there was no account this year even though he's had deductions every paycheck for it. Better yet, there's $1k unaccounted for from last year that he didn't submit receipts for so I feel like that is what messed up his account. How hard is it to upload an eob. I take care of all the ones for myself and the kids, he just needs to upload his own. I'm also the one who uses up all the extra money or finds things we've already bought to use up all the extra. 

laj0217

We’re in our new house, which has carpet in the bedrooms. I hate carpet because we have 2 cats and a dog. I replaced it all with tile in the old house, but my husband really wants it in the bedroom. 

Anyway, walked into the nursery last night and it reeked of cat pee. Found at least 7 spots where they’d peed. I lost my shit - absolutely and 100%. And my husband wants to blame my cat for it, but he’s literally never peed anywhere except the litter box. Except, that’s my husbands chore now, and it gets done maybe 1/week. 

So, now the carpet in the nursery needs to be replaced (or, realistically cleaned really well, but my pregnant brain is not allowing for that option right now), and my husband is upset because I actually yelled and cussed last night, which I never do - and not at him mind you, but the situation. And the half of the house with the litter boxes smells terrible because they’re being cleaned infrequently and at this moment I don’t know if I’m more upset with my husband for shitty housekeeping skills (it seriously takes 5 minutes and should not require a daily reminder) or the cats, who are not good at change and are trying to adjust to a new house. 

Ugh! I just wanted the house to be nice until the baby messed it up. That’s like 6 months. I just wanted 6 months 😩

pangolindrome

@laj0217 That is infuriating and deeply frustrating! I want to guess that the cats smell previous animals even if the smells aren't discernable to the human nose and want to claim the space for their own. I wouldn't think that they were doing it on purpose - if that makes sense.
If your husband needs daily reminders, how about having him set a calendar reminder or alarm titled "Clean litter boxes"? My husband has ADD and I have ADHD, and if we fail to remind each other or are too tired for the extra mental space, calendars and alarms literally save us. 
Also, carpets are terrible. Rugs are where it's at. We have rugs in every room, including our carpeted bedroom (to protect the carpet for resale value). We got a Ruggable for Christmas present and are really enjoying it because it's both cushy and washable. They're pricey for sure, but if it's financially feasible they are 100% worth it.

laj0217

@pangolindrome I’ve been eying the ruggables! So good to hear an unbiased review 😊 I didn’t even think about prior animals, since it’s new carpet, but I know the smells linger - just didn’t think of it. 

Yeah, I’m not really mad at any of them, just a sucky situation. I may pull up a corner in the closet and see what’s under it. Fingers crossed and it’s hardwood - a lot of these old houses are. Tiling killed my back pre-pregnancy, though. Not sure it’s doable now. Might have to wait til I’m back in shape and just disinfect the heck out of it now. 

jhysmath

@laj0217 we lived in an apartment with only one room with carpet and we had two elderly dogs. They couldn't walk on the other floors without their feet slipping out from under them. We had to put runner rugs all through out the house... in our ny we have carpet on our stairs because the dogs couldn't go up them, so we had someone come in and carpet them just for the dogs...so something to think about if your dog is getting older. 

kboydbowman

@laj0217
we only have 2 rooms that have carpet and go figure those are the only ones pets have accidents in.  I hate carpet. I second you on the litterbox stuff - he hasn't let me touch litterboxes since we started trying to conceive and he is HORRIBLE about doing them regularly - he doesn't even like to scoop, just dumps fresh litter on top of it, and NEVER actually washes the boxes, just dumps out all the litter occasionally.  SO AGGRAVATING.

laj0217

@kboydbowman our guys must be talking! I watched mine just dump the whole thing out the other day. And he was all “it’s too gross to scoop now.” Um, unsurprising sir lol. 

@jhysmath I almost wish it was the dog. Cat pee is way worse for some reason. One cat does have hip issues, but he gets around well enough still. The dog has old lady bladder and has to pee as much as me now lol but moves just fine. I think it’s more the adjustment and they were too scared the first week or so to venture far. We did have a box in the bedroom then but long term I don’t want one in any of the bedrooms. Too gross. 

kboydbowman

I my cats, but cat pee is definitely worse than dog pee both in terms of smell and in difficulty of removal.

pangolindrome

Oh gosh yeah. Dog pee you're like "I think it smells like pee here?" but cat pee is always "A CAT PEED HERE."
Brgh. This brings me back to renovating the old Marlette doublewide on the ranch where we lived for a few years. It had been empty for years and the ranch hand who lived there previously had cats (in the BAD WAY) who peed everywhere. Somehow, the very worst spot was behind the fridge. I learned to worship Kilz Paint. The rancher and his family tore out the carpet but we did the linoleum and it was still horrendous. We Kilz'd it all and put in that cheap click-clack wood flooring. It looked so much better and was actually possible to clean.

That place had the best view. We woke up to Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood every day unless it was cloudy, which it rarely is on the Columbia Plateau - this was out by Condon, OR. I miss it, but I don't miss the rattlesnakes, black widows, and brown recluse spiders.

laj0217

@pangolindrome um, no thank you. Those are some heavy hitters for the venomous team. I’d be out so fast lol!

pangolindrome

@laj0217 I mean... yeah. I had to get over the worst of my arachnophobia really quickly, especially since brown recluse would wander into our home. My favorite tool is the tennis racquet-style bug zapper. What I neglected to include is that the doublewide was seated on a basement that hadn't been cleaned since a long time and was overrun with spiders, so our visits were more frequent than is probably common.
We most likely had a rattlesnake nest under the porch, since we found a chonky rattle boi about two feet off the porch (my husband shot it and we burned the remains), so we filled the space with Quikset Concrete. It's a very different world for sure.

jhysmath

@pangolindrome in happy to live where there's tons of snow so we don't deal with poisonous reptiles and spiders. I can barely handle when a house spider decides to swing down near me. If it could actually kill me, I'd likely burn the whole house down. 

newbabymama27

@jhysmath same here 🤣 I’m creeped out just reading the stuff @pangolindrome wrote about! 

Edit to add:

laj0217

The current gripe: you pee before you leave to go somewhere, you get stopped before you reach the door and have to talk to someone, now you have to pee again and you still haven’t left.

kboydbowman

@laj0217
the struggle is real.

pangolindrome

Or you pee before you have to leave and your bladder/baby decide it's time to pee again five minutes later, and it's an amount that makes you question whether you actually already went

lucyg00cy

@laj0217 @pangolindrome I can’t believe I used to go hours without peeing, now I feel like my part time job is to pee with how often I feel the need to go.

lucyg00cy

Gripe outside of peeing is that the ticks are so so so bad right now. We took the dog out for a walk yesterday (in the neighborhood, on a road with some grass to the side- so didn’t even let him run in the fields), and he came back with 7 ticks on him. He’s treated and we look out for them daily so I’m not super worried about anything, but they’re still so gross to me. 

laj0217

@lucyg00cy ticks gross me out! I seem to remember there is some cool/easy removal tool you can buy though. 

pangolindrome

I want to be asleep more than I want anything else in life right now, and I have three hours until work ends. Then, we have a person coming by to pick up our elliptical because we're not using it so we're giving it away. Then, I'll need to walk our doggo.

I don't wanna.

ETA: June is treating my bladder like a trampoline today. I gotta be REAAAAALLY careful how long I go between bathroom breaks or one of these kicks is going to end very poorly for me.

lilienne

I cannot seem to fall asleep, but I am incredibly tired - to the point that I have a headache. I wish I was better at sleeping during the day.

whitta1015

Curtains are freaking expensive. That is all.

wiseh

Yuckkkk to mouses @pangolindrome! I hope your new traps work.

I might be an odd one out here but I love carpet. I hate when you have hard floors if they're even a little bit dirty and things stick to your feet, then you climb into bed & have to brush them off 🤢

My gripe right now is my husband. We are moving house and he is amazing because he's moved pretty much the entire house himself, but also just not on the same page as me at the moment. I have this uni assignment I've been trying to do for 3 weeks, I even got a 5 day extension that is quickly running out, and he just has absolutely no idea about how stressed I am, even though I tell him regularly how stressed I am. Today I told him I'd spend the day doing my assignment and he went and invited friends over?? So the house was so loud and they, and our daughter, kept coming in to talk to me so I got absolutely nothing done in the morning. Then in the afternoon he went to our old house while our daughter was sleeping to do some pressure washing so I got about 2hrs of uni work done. I said I would take our DD to the shops when she woke up so I could have a break from trying to do uni, and assumed that he would be like "ok I will meet you at home when you're back from the shops". I let him know I was at the register paying ready to go, but when I got home he wasn't there. When I asked how long until he'd be home he said 1-2 hours because he still had X, Y & Z to do and didn't realise he had to be home by a certain time?! It's 6:30pm, dinner hasn't been cooked, I have 2/3 my assignment still to do (it's due in 24hrs) and I have to be up for work at 3am. I am SO pissed off right now I can't even concentrate on doing my uni work. I just want to cry and regret ever starting this stupid degree 😭😭😭

jhysmath

@wiseh ugh I'm so sorry. My husband does the same things. I'm thankful I got my masters before children, but it was still a pain in the butt. I remember I had a paper due one night, and he invited people over to watch the football game. He decided he wanted to cook chicken wings and came in over and over asking how to cook them. He dumped the bag of frozen chicken into hot oil, got oil on the burners and started a fire. Set of the alarms and comes in to tell me he took care of it by throwing water on it. I just couldn't believe it.

My gripe, is we're at a hotel this weekend for my oldest birthday. Friday night was fine, last night people were having a party above us. I seem to be the only one who was bothered by this, but between bladder kicks, a toddler who kept waking up coughing, and no those people who didn't go to bed until 4 ish I'm just so annoyed. I called the front desk and asked for them to be quiet she got nothing. I'm really tempted to blast baby shark one the older kid is awake and have them screaming and shouting knowing these people above me went to bed 3 hours ago.

wiseh

Hahahahahaha I am petty so I would totally do that @jhysmath!

I'm glad (but also not glad) that I'm not alone with the way my husband thinks sometimes! It's seriously so infuriating. 

blanket_girl

@jhysmath and @wiseh there is no accounting for what goes through the male mind when they make these choices. 

My husband is USUALLY such an on-top-of-it adult but occasionally it’s like …did you temporarily swap brains with a six year old when you made this decision? 

jhysmath

@wiseh we went for breakfast, an good my husband cranked the TV for me before we left lol

pangolindrome

Why in the hell would Subway discontinue gluten free bread after having it for eleven years?!

whitta1015

Coworker who works in the same office as me came to work today. While she was here, her husband tested positive for covid. So she left for "close contact", took a test, and it's also positive. Ughhh. Really hope I did not get those covid germs.