My meaty calamity

So, last Friday I was working at my computer desk, intent on my Internet job, when Chestnut the Cat wandered close to me and meowed.  I said, “Do you want to go into the boys’ room?” and I got up, walked across the room and opened the door to the boys’ room, which leads to the laundry room which holds the cat food, water, litter box, washing machine and dryer and the big freezer where I keep extra food. The cat looked at me and, instead of going into the boys’ room, ducked under a coffee table.  Dumb cat.  I closed the door and returned to my desk.

A bit later, back at my desk, I heard a rustling sound.  I figured that Smokey the Cat was cavorting with the Costco-sized box of Cup o’ Noodles.  When the noise continued, I decided to check it out and rescue the noodles.  I’ve had to throw away some of the styrofoam cups before when the cats got a little too friendly with them and left toothmarks.  I didn’t want that to happen.  How tragic to waste any of those cheap noodly cups, right?

I entered the room in time to see Chestnut scurry away from a pile of poo.  IN THE DINING ROOM (which we filled with bookcases and store extra things like cups of noodles and bags of potatoes.)

“NO!  NO!  NO!”  I waved my arms at the cats and they eyed me as if I’d lost my mind.  I may have even stomped my feet.  This out of bounds pooping behavior is uncommon in our cats and I figured it was because their litter box was disgusting and needed to be cleaned–which I had told my boys the day before.  However, they disregarded my request to clean the litter box, so this pile of poo was the result.

I scooped it up with a handful of tissues and headed through the boys’ room to the bathroom adjoining the laundry room to dispose of it in the toilet.  Then, because I had nothing else to do (besides my job which I am being paid to do, hello?), I decided to just clean that stupid litter box myself so the cats wouldn’t resort to pooping on the carpet.  As I leaned over to scoop, I inexplicably turned my head to look at the freezer.

I don’t know why.  It was right next to my shoulder and maybe I felt a breeze.  All I know is that the freezer door was cracked open.

I abandoned the litter box and yanked open the freezer door to find most everything in it completely thawed.  This included a twenty pound turkey, a lot of beef that I purchased last summer from a farmer, leftover Jenny Craig food from last year when my husband “did” Jenny Craig, vegetables and did I mention the beef?

I hollered random non-curse curse-words and called for my boys to bring me trash bags.  I wept, I wailed, I gnashed my teeth.  Then I began to sort through the mess, discarding meat that was not only thawed but also room temperature.  As I worked my way down the shelves, I found that the uppermost shelves were the most thawed while the lowest shelf still held some frozen items.  Everything else was somewhere in between. Once I finished my salvage operation, I just closed the freezer again because I didn’t have time to defrost the whole thing.

Seriously.

I gave my neighbor the steaks.  (Four packages, including some cube steaks which I really have no idea how to cook in the first place.)

That night I cooked four pounds of ground beef.

Saturday, I cooked a twenty-pound turkey and a roast.

Sunday, marinaded flank steak.

None of that, however, was as upsetting as today when I left my desk (while still working) to pick up the kids from school.  It’s my carpool day.  I drove twenty minutes to the middle school and waited five minutes but my kids never appeared.  I finally called the other carpool mom and she answered the phone with, “Melodee, I’m so sorry!  I have the boys!”  My carpool day was switched back to Thursday but she forgot to mention it to me.

I believe I have now reached my monthly quota of frustration and alarm.  DO YOU HEAR ME, UNIVERSE?

In other news, I self-diagnosed myself with multiple sclerosis yesterday, just for fun, based on a comment someone left on my Facebook status after I mentioned how I occasionally (too frequently) fall UP stairs.  Dr. Google is a very scary practitioner indeed.

How was that for a post chock-full of unrelated information?

You’re welcome.

(Also?  I am mailing my last twenty-four Christmas-New-Year’s-Valentine’s-Day letters tomorrow.)