Memorial Day Weekend

Mom drove up Saturday morning for the long weekend and the first thing we did was play exterminator - whats that you say? Oh, you've never played exterminator? Well then poor you, apparently you've never shared your living quarters with about a million of these little guys. Needless to say, they are pretty hard to kill, so it was really an all-weekend activity but it started out Saturday with us spraying the yard with a couple different types of things that probably aren't too great for the ecosystem. Then we locked the (flea-covered) dogs up in the laundry room so that we could fog/flea-bomb the inside of the house. We had to give this stuff about four hours to work its magic so we decided to travel over to Palatka for the 19th annual Blue Crab Festival. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon if I do say so myself. We got a nice sampling of the local talent with a full blown dance recital (we're talking outfit changes and sequins ending with a stars-and-stripes routine to the tune of "I'm Proud to be an American") all you can eat beer and blue crabs, and topping it off with this little number...
After all that excitement we got home to a flea-free house and yard so the last step was getting them off of the dogs with a flea bath. Believe you me, this is easier said than done. Maggie hates getting a bath so by the time we had wrestled her into submission we were just as wet as she was. Molly isn't so bad, she doesn't really mind getting wet, but her hair is so long that the fleas don't just wash out nice and easy, no sir you have to pick them out one by one as she stands there shivering and looking pitiful (some people might say ugly, but she is growing on me so i'll just leave it at pitiful). Sunday morning we woke up and mom couldn't find any coffee in the kitchen so we went out for breakfast, on the way home we stopped at the grocery store to stock up for the week. When we got back to the house we realized that there wasn't much space in the refrigerator so we decided to do a quick clean-up. One thing led to another and we ended up with a laundry room-like situation on our hands. Once we were done pitching all stale and/or out-of-date food items we had filled up not only our city-provided industrial sized garbage can but we had also filled up one belonging to an out-of-town neighbor, resulting in a spick and span fridge and some very well organized kitchen cabinets. And we found the coffee. All six containers of it. Today we finished up the transformation by vacuuming up all of the (presumed) dead fleas from the couches and rugs, and mopping the floor to get rid of the film left by the flea bombs. Our efforts seem to be paying off, the dogs aren't itching and I'm not grossed out - we'll see how long it lasts.