What Grosses You Out?

I don't even know if that's the term that's used anymore, or if I'm dating myself. Grossed-out. It sounds right to me, but then, I'm a bit on the old-fogey side so it could be outdated. Sit a spell and let me tell you a story. A gross but true story. But don't let me influence you... you decide for yourself.

We live in a rural community outside of a larger town not far from a pretty good-sized city. In the course of our daughter getting divorced several years ago, we found out a farmhouse on some land we farmed was going to be available for rent at a very reasonable price. This was at a time when I was between "town" jobs so I volunteered to help my daughter get the new house ready to move into. It needed quite a bit of work because the people who lived there before were slobs. That's a very kind word for what they were, as you'll see.

The entire house interior needed to be painted. It wasn't a very big house, but there was a lot of prep work. I'm not just talking fixing holes and cracks, but trying to wash... and eventually scrape snot off of one whole wall in what was the kids' bedroom. Yep, you heard me right. Green, grody, petrified snot.

Then, of course, we had the mice. They were thick. The basement was one massive mouse hole. We put poison down there and a box would be gone in one night. After discussing the problem with the exterminator who was already helping keep the mouse population down at our old house (we lived in an old farmhouse that was a mouse house, too, if we didn't stay on top of it) and he gave me some 'super' poison. Within a few weeks we got a handle on that problem. It was a shock when we first were in the house to see a dead one in the toilet. The toilet with the closed lid? A gift from the previous tenant, we figured. Nice.

The carpets had to be cleaned, and some actually replaced. My daughter's friend from work - who is now her husband - came to help clean carpets. As they were moving some things around in the bedroom they found... wait for it... a used condom. Yep. Talk about embarrassed! She about died. She and he were just friends at this point and not even really close friends, he just was nice enough to offer to come help and whoops! there it is... Geez... I was embarrassed and I was in the kitchen at the time!

Last, but far from least, they had a dog they'd kept in the breezeway between the house and the garage. You can imagine the condition that space was in. The smell? Indescribable.

Yep. It was an adventure... in grossdom.

Oh, and she and her husband own their own very nice home now in another small town nearby... and I really don't think she misses that particular period in her life.