I was hoping for a nice relaxing drama free day today, but I guess it’s not to be.  Ellie and I did enjoy sleeping in this morning, but that’s really the only good point of the day so far.  We crawled out of bed at 10am and followed our normal routine.  Usually she stumbles to the couch in the playroom, I tell Bubba (our bulldog) to get off the couch, and then Ellie crawls up for a diaper change.  I then proceed to stumble in the kitchen to start coffee, let Bubba out to pee, and fix Ellie breakfast.

Our normal routine got as far as stumbling into the playroom and telling Bubba to move.  Apparently he didn’t want to move this morning, and it pissed him off that I made him.  He climbed off the couch, walked across the room, and lifted his leg on Ellie’s stuffed giraffe chair!  W-T-F!?  I yelled at him to stop, and he just gave me this “what ya gonna do about it?” look.  UGH.

I picked Ellie up and put her in her bedroom, moved the baby gate over so she couldn’t escape and dance in the pee, and I hauled Bubba outside by his collar.  He has an issue with excitement that will cause him to pee in the floor when strangers come over, but I don’t know what’s up with this new thing he’s doing.  This is the third time in the last month he has done something like this, and I swear it’s like he’s retaliating and peeing because I’m making him do something he doesn’t want to do.  Replace the car window sticker of the little boy peeing on *insert car model, sports team, etc, here*, with a cartoon bulldog peeing on something, and you’ve got the new version of Bubba.

Thank goodness we’ve got linoleum throughout the house, so I mopped up the pee, sprayed it down with enzyme cleaner, carted Ellie’s chair off to the bath tub, and after one more quick mop let her back into the playroom.  That left me with two new problems to work through (and I hadn’t even made it to my coffee yet).

I went to work trying to figure out how to clean the chair.  Bubba has excited peed on stuffed animals in the past, and those get tossed in the washer with some enzyme cleaner.  The chair is much too big to wash.  I left it in the tub and gave it a good spray down with enzyme cleaner, and after letting it sit for a few minutes I rinsed it with the shower sprayer.  Now it’s outside on the porch soaking up some sun, and I hope it will dry quickly.  Still, I’m not feeling like I got it clean enough.  I don’t want to throw her favorite chair away, but now I’m always going to wonder if there’s still a hint of dog pee soaked inside.  It may get another good spray down with lysol and more enzyme cleaner after it dries.

Onto my second problem…what the heck is wrong with my dog?  Why the heck is he purposely peeing when he’s mad at me?  I’ve got to have a talk with Ben about this when he gets home this evening, and we’ve got to come up with a plan to put a stop to this.

I don’t think this has anything to do with an underlying medical issue.  It has become obvious he’s doing it on purpose.  We sold our kennel years ago because we no longer needed to use it, but I think we need to make a trip to Tractor Supply for a new one tonight.  I hate to put him back in a kennel, but I will not allow him to use my house as his urination station.

I’ve been so busy today, but while I sit here looking at the huge pile of laundry across the room that still needs to be folded I feel like I haven’t gotten anything accomplished besides washing the dang clothes. Ellie spent the day with my Grandparents, so I thought I’d have this house sparkling. It’s exactly the opposite.

I’ve been on the couch glued to my computer all day trying to help Ben find any job that’s available while he’s out going to every business and staffing agency he can find. We’ve expanded our search to Anderson, Greenville, Spartanburg, and Greer. He doesn’t want to commute 1 1/2 hours each way, but something’s got to give. I have $20 in my Paypal account, $3 in savings, and enough in the bank account to pay the car insurance…oh, and a $20 Walmart gift card I got for my birthday that will be going to buy groceries this week. If he doesn’t find something soon we’re screwed. I do have more money coming in this month, but work has dwindled down to nothing for me this week. I have just enough coming in at this point to keep the power and water on, but I don’t have enough to make the car payment. It really upsets me knowing we’re right at $1000 away from paying our car off, but we could lose it if something doesn’t turn up soon. It’s even tougher knowing it’s our only vehicle. Well, we have the bike, but you can’t transport a toddler on it, and it’s been sitting at the in-laws for a few months now with a flat tire that we can’t afford to replace.

I want to think he’ll find something, but I have to admit I’m not very hopeful. The last time he was laid off it was right at a year before he could find anything else. This time…well…let’s just say it isn’t possible for us to go that long without one of us finding something. It’s discouraging, though, when we’re both spending hours upon hours searching, submitting applications and resumes, and nothing is coming of it. We’ve even discussed trying to move to a new place with a better job market, but we both know how that will go. The job market sucks everywhere, and you have to have money to move.

*Sigh*

I know something good will come soon, but it’s the wait that’s killing me. We’ve always managed, and this has happened plenty of times before. It’s just different when I look at Ellie knowing that someone has to find a job to support her. I know it will happen, but sometimes I just need to vent about it.

I don’t have many people I can talk to about our situation. The people I’ve tried to talk to, well they either are in the same situation and don’t want to hear someone else’s problems, or they just don’t realize how close to rock bottom we’ve gotten. Yeah I still have my internet, but that’s because I have no choice. It’s the only way any money is coming into this house right now, and I’ve already cut everything else out. Our cell phones will be the next to go, but thankfully we still have them right now. We’re 3 weeks behind on that payment, and we know we can go up to December 3rd before service is suspended. I’m very thankful we’re in the cold months now because that means our power bill drops drastically…well if you don’t count those $400 power bills we’ve been battling every January that are outrageous. We don’t have heating costs. We use the wood stove for heat, and our power bill is never over $140 in the other cold months. It just makes no sense, but no matter how much I bitch about it nothing is ever solved. At least I know we’ve got a couple more months before we have to worry about that bill.

Okay, I have to stop now. I’ve ranted as much as anybody can take for one day, and if I keep going I’ll keep sidetracking from thing to thing to rant about. I need to take myself away from the computer for a bit, get a bite to eat, and try to chill out.