Martin’s been doing pretty well these last few months. I swear, the presence of my Rover pups– even if they don’t interact that much with Martin during their stay– works some kind of magic on him. That said, with him being as old as he is, magic only carries us so far. Yep, things are definitely starting to break down with poor old Marty. In recent weeks, I’ve noticed that he is SUPER slow getting himself situated in his bed. He twirls and twirls and then finally just flops over. In his sleep, he’s been wetting his bed a few times a week. During the day, his back end falls down at the slightest bump or touch. When he stands to eat from his elevated bowl, his front and hind legs slide all around beneath him.

Cognitively, he’s slowed down a lot. But damn, he still gets so excited and happy to go for our walks. Sadly, he has trouble controlling his bladder: there’s like a continuous stream of urine on the sidewalk from our house to the park.

The morning of our flight to LA, he shit in the house for the first time since like the early 2000s!! Yeah. I woke up all bleary-eyed that morning and walked into the kitchen. John was already up, watching tv. I looked at him, and he said, “Well, that happened last night…”, and he pointed to a drippy pile of shit on the green mat next to the front door. Mind you, at this point, Bubs had already been up for hours. No matter. He just left the poop there. Nice.

That’s the thing about Bubs. He’s a total wuss when it comes to bodily fluids and anything remotely related to black water. Every damn time, his defense is that he leaves that shit to the “solid waste expert.” Um, I haven’t been a solid waste engineer since 2001, dude. Sigh. What can you do: that’s my Bubbey.

Remember that time when I was home alone and both bathrooms flooded? Yeah, when I told Bubs what had happened, he was so relieved to have NOT been home. Had our roles been reversed, he would have just left the premises and posted the house for sale. I know, thank goodness we don’t have kids, right? Can you imagine? They would just be hanging out in their diapers chock full of urine and feces. I’d be horrible in my own way too: I mean, you know I would be overstretching the use of each and every one of those plastic, super-lined fuckers. Diapers are THE worst: they remain fully intact and last FORever in the landfills. Just sayin’.

So anyway, while we’re on the topic of bodily fluids… this other time? Martin puked on the carpet. Bubbey’s solution? He ripped off a few sheets of paper towels, folded them over into a square, and then patted the squares right on top of the puke. Just covered it up with a paper towel and continued about his day. I removed the paper towels today, thinking it was just a random cleaning square that the wind blew onto the floor. Nope. Puke stains underneath. Are you disgusted yet by our squalid conditions?

Anyhow, now that Bubs is back East for a few days, I’m taking the opportunity to do some more cleaning. Today I actually replaced all the floor runners in the house. The other day, we came across some cheap runners at Costco, so today I came home with like five of them. Not a very chic look for the designer Houseboat, but at this point, with Messy Marty and Queasy Bubbey, we just need something practical and cleanable. The grip on these new runners is amazing btw. Vacuuming was a total breeze!