For posterity, pics in 2023

Been forever since I did photos .. someday I’ll come back to this for the memories of these days ..

FB memories are hard - silly laughing memories of Babes and our daily life together .. days I took for granted.

Anyway .. this is recent me, I think around Babes’ birthday in November. I haven’t coloured my hair in a year .. I used to hate the grey .. now I want to embrace it, I’ve earned it.

My bestest goodest girls, Sadie & Grace. Sadie is my 7.5yr old American Bulldog (the big white landwhale) and Gracie we adopted together from a special needs animal rescue when she was 10 weeks old - she’ll be 2 in June. She lost half her left front leg to a birth injury and emergency amputation at 3 weeks old. She’s an Alapaha Bulldog .. and the absolute brain of this bulldog regime I am surrounded by …

Crochet I’ve been working on over the last while … blanket I finished for the girl child, blanket I’m working on for the oldest boy child, various dishcloths …

Crochet keeps my hands busy while I have documentaries on the TV and the days just pass by .. it’s easier that way.

Not much else to say I guess.

I shampooed the entire hall and entryway the other day and somehow it smells worse in here. The (only) downside to a ground floor apartment unit is the humidity/dampness all year ‘round. And given our particular unit hasn’t ever been renovated (except for brand new windows in 2016 I think?) in easily 40 years .. these carpets are nasty.

Dee’s room had the carpet ripped out at some point and faux-hardwood put down, so that’s amazing. The master bedroom has original carpet but zero padding under it, so it’s simply the thin indoor/outdoor carpet over concrete. The rest of the apartment is the same carpet but at least has a layer of padding under it - which realistically is probably what smells so god awful when it’s damp.

I bought a $300 Bissell carpet shampooer when I first moved in here with Babes and initially I was determined to get the carpets spotless .. until I realized that would be virtually impossible.

I deep clean sections of the carpets at a time and never ever do I get the water to rinse clean.

NeVeR

I used to use bleach in the machine even to try to get them clean - nadda. Smelled like a pool, carpets still wouldn’t ever rinse clean.

I spent more than I care to admit on various carpet shampoos and cleaners etc. Nothing works.

Now I fill a 3gal bucket with hot water, splash a good amount of liquid Gain laundry detergent in it, soak 2×2’ sections of the carpet at a time with the bucket solution, straight hot water and nothing else in the Bissell and then I spend an hour on that one spot soaking up the dirty soap water and “rinsing” with at least 2 tanks of straight hot water … it doesn’t ever rinse clean, but it eventually rinses “clearer” brown than when I started and I call that a win.

However .. I never do get the musty mildewy smell of ground floor apartment out.

Ha. Long entry about my disgusting 1980s carpet and apartment .. gonna go vacuum now.