It’s not that I don’t want you to poop, it’s that I don’t want to see or pick up your poop.

I am sitting in my dumpster on a brown toilet. Life is good.

You see it is good because:

a. We owned a brown toilet that is now in a dumpster, and

b. Once they destroy our house, they are planning to put it back together all pretty like.

I get a bit giddy (hee hee) seeing a dumpster in my driveway, unless it is filled with my clothes and shoes, I wouldn’t be giddy then.

We have lived through two renovations. One basement and one kitchen. Both on our old house. This is the first bin (hee hee) at this house. We have lived here for four years and have lived with a brown toilet, sink and tub for that long. Thank you, therapy has helped but donations are not necessary. If it weren’t for the sewer flies, I may have been living with it for longer.

The renovation we did on our previous basement was our cherry popper. We didn’t know what to expect or how it would go but we were really pumped about it. I remember coming home one day to a note. “We poured some concrete in a patch near the laundry room door. Please avoid it”. Did that say laundry? Must. Do. Laundry. This is how that went.

The second renovation was the kitchen. While that one was being done, we had several issues:

• We hired a guy who was not a General Contractor so I played GC. So when the windows were wrong and then delayed by 8 weeks, we had no one to blame but me. I don’t like being blamed for anything /should never be blamed for anything so I blamed Mister.
• I am a mite picky or, seriously problematically picky. I saw no granite I liked until (cue angel harps) I found ‘the one’. I tagged it, called my contractor and skipped out of the store. Later he came by to wipe that grin off my face and tell me it was unavailable. Some bitch designer had taken every slab right out from under me and that they couldn’t get it again because it was a fluke cut. After I cried uncontrollably in one of those really ugly snot-type snorty cries and the three guys at my house avoided eye contact, they said they would get it if I would just stop crying. Amazing how that works. They negotiated with the delightful designer who gave us the one slab we needed. Grin restored.
• We (by we I mean the guys) opened the floor to discover 11 junction boxes buried there like little land mines. For those of you unfamiliar with DIY shows or electrical work – buried junctions boxes are bad…

• The worst of it was that the bin (hee hee) was nestled in our driveway beyond our gate. Beside it was a 4-foot wide path to the backyard. In that path were several mature trees. Seem practically bucolic doesn’t it? So why is this crazy lady saying this is the worst you ask?

We had small kids and the backyard had a swing, not to mention the BBQ which was better than nuking everything. All was well until… (duh duh duh) the raccoons discovered that they had a perfect little private lavatory. They loved it right there under those trees in the confines of the bin on one side, gate on the second side and the solid fence on the final side. Practically a private latrine! So every time we passed the kitchen land mines to get to the door for outside time, we had to pass racoon land mines. I kept throwing the shit piles in the bin thinking it would be gone in the first week. NO! Remember the windows that Mister did wrong?

So the bin full of clean shit from the house and not-so-clean shit from the racoons sat in our driveway for 3 months. You heard me correctly… 3 months worth of poop sitting in the direct sunlight in the path of getting to our food and entertainment.

We tried putting cayenne pepper down near the bin. HA

We tried fox urine (yes you too can have fox urine in your house. Just follow this link for free delivery). HA

We tried spraying the offenders with the hose. HA

We just had to live with their poop.

Guess what? After the bin was removed, the racoons still liked their new outhouse so the piles were neatly displayed right outside our new kitchen window – every morning. They too appreciated our decision to renovate.

So, we got a dog. And, we got the last laugh. HA!

OK, so maybe they are laughing again since they are having a zombie party in our attic. I really don’t like racoons! This will not be the last you hear of them, I am sure.