Running on fumes and sheer willpower

I’m wiped out, and so is Badger.
It’s 10 PM, and we’ve done all we can today.
We’ve reached our limit for the day and aren’t feeling well.
We’re stopping for the night, going to bed, and will continue tomorrow.

We put in a lot of effort for nothing today. 
If the company had called, texted, or emailed like they were supposed to, we would have known not to waste our time doing all that work.

We woke at 7:30 AM, grabbed breakfast, and moved the cats to the she-shed. 
Badger cleaned the laundry room and reorganized the kitchen cabinets, while I cleared the bathroom and piled things on the bed. 
By the time Cowboy got up, we’d settled the dogs on Heron’s catio and were finishing the kitchen when the exterminator arrived.

The exterminator showed up right on time and was courteous, friendly, and knowledgeable.
He sprayed the outside for spiders but didn’t need to do the living room or bedrooms.
He did treat the kitchen and bathroom for roaches, and the good news is he found no signs of any.
The whole visit took about an hour and 24 minutes, from 10:30 to 11:54.

Badger wasn’t happy that we spent all morning moving stuff on the beds and out of the house for no reason.
The exterminator said we didn’t need to do that. 
We were going by what the old company used to require.
This new company is different.
No puddles of poison on the floor, no awful smell.
They use gel and spot spray, putting just enough into the cracks.
I’ll admit he went a little overboard outside.
He sprayed the perimeter twice and tossed pellets into the air like confetti.
One was for roaches, one for ants, and one for wasps.
I’m pretty sure the roach treatment also covered spiders, because he mentioned it when I told him about our spider problem.
He took a long brush and swept around the house, which I assume was for the cobwebs we can’t reach and honestly don’t want to reach.

This was a good experience, and I really hope I get the same tech next time. 
Someone’s coming back in two weeks for a follow-up, and then it’ll switch to every three months.
As long as the money’s there, I’m renewing the contract. 
It’ll be nice to grab my outside camera without dodging hairy spiders.
And no, I don’t care if the outside is their home because their home is on my home.

After he left, while everything was outside and on the beds, with the cats shivering on the she-shed and the dogs stuck on Heron’s catio, Badger decided it was the perfect time for a fall cleanup.
I helped with the moving, but the cleaning was all her. 
She has her own way of doing things, and she says my ADHD style of cleaning drives her crazy.
She scrubbed everything down, and I mean everything.
The house sparkles now. 

Before we had finished cleaning, it looked like a storm was coming, so we rushed to get everything inside that might be ruined if it got wet.
Once that was done, she insisted we take showers before bringing in the kitchen things, not wanting dirt and germs on our stuff.
By the time we were both clean, we realized we were hungry.
We’d eaten breakfast at 7 AM, and by then it was almost 7 PM.
Pizza had been delivered at noon so Cowboy could eat before work, but we hadn’t stopped to eat ourselves.
So we finally sat down, had our pizza, and watched an episode of our TV show.
Then the rain started, and we began to feel a little sick.
Maybe pizza on an empty stomach wasn’t the best idea.
Maybe it sat out too long.
It wasn’t like we could get to the fridge to put it away.

To back up a bit, around 6:30 PM we had another very loud, very long rumble.
Everyone is saying it's the mines again.
All I know is it was freaking scary and I hate those things.

Now we're turning the TV off and we're heading to bed.
Hopefully there's always tomorrow to finish up.
You can only go so long before your body says “hey stupid, stop.”

Badger has to sleep on the couch again. 
She has no bed.
I had no choice but to get my bed cleared off.
I have Uncle back on the bookshelf, and out of the car.
The rest of the stuff in the car can wait until morning.

Badger kept saying, “Well, what if someone steals the car.”
People have prowled around our cars before, so tired or not tired, feeling good or not, I had to wobble out and rescue Uncle.

That was the very last job of the day.