-- well, SOMEONE bled all over the floor... I just don't know who.

My twitter post, 2 minutes ago:This will all be clear shortly.

me: "I need to spend more time blogging. When I put up boring blog posts, my readership drops."*
*[from like three to two readers/day... Hi Mom! Sis! Thanks for sticking around!]

Dan: "It's time-consuming to come up with good material."

me: "Yes! And also to be a good blogging buddy. If I don't have time read, visit and comment on other people's blogs, then my blog karma suffers.*" (*to all the cool new people who commented enthusiastically about those hideous shoes, I'm totally going to add you to my blog roll!)

Dan: "Right, there's so much out there to read and keep up on."

me: "And! You can't just leave crappy comments. The comments have to be good. Thoughtful. You can't just write "lol" and be done with it."

Dan: "Well when you get home tonight, you can blog."

Fast forward past the commute home.

I swung open front door, smiling at the progress our handyman's made on the kitchen renovation project.

Earlier he came by to work on the carpet-to-tile transition which involved gluing strips of carpet tacks to the floor.

The entire kitchen/downstairs project (now going on 1.5 years) is inching forward at a (crippled) snail's pace but even the most meager progress makes me extremely excited.

Smiles quickly turn to frowns.

"Is this blood?"

I bend down and peer at the tile. Hmm. A reddish-brown paw print. Please let this be mud.

"Where's the dog??" (slight panic in voice.)

Scrambling noises emerge from the garage.

Yay! Someone thought about locking the animals away so they wouldn't get hurt by the bare rows of tacks pointing upwards like shark teeth.

But wait. More paw prints. Not brownish. Bright red. Arterial blood red. Fresh murder victim red. Anna Nicole Smith Lips red. And omg, it's everywhere! A two foot smear of blood along the entire perimeter of the carpet line. Good lord, what happened here!

Dan and I rushed to the garage to examine the animals. We both assumed the dog trampled the tacks by the look of the prints.

Dan swung the door open and the dog burst out like water under high pressure, the cat close behind. They'd never been left in the garage before and were freaked out by the alteration in their schedule. Anyone that has animals knows they abhor change.

My mind raced. Someone put them there, but who? The dogwalker? Did she find them covered in blood after the handyman left? But she would have mentioned this in her note, right?

We wondered this out loud as the animals windmilled at our feet, delirious at being rescued. And then we noticed the garage floor was sopping wet.

The smell hit after the visual. As if our brains had been protecting us from reality and it wasn't until we saw fluid that we could officially admit that Things Were Not As They Should Be.

The dog hasn't peed in the house since he was a pup. But anxiety at being locked in a new place unleashed his normal restraint. Great puddles of urine seeped under the foam floor cushion covering half the work area and flowed gracefully into the garage's many concrete cracks.

Lovely.

Not only was the garage floor now coated with noxious waste but its depth and spread was almost artful, as if a ghost from house-past urgently seized upon the opportunity to return the dwelling to its original state, resentful that its new owners (us) so thoroughly eliminated the original stench of piss that had permeated the residence. (See the page I put up for my parents who wondered why I didn't call for weeks after we moved in.)

Immediate triage procedures snapped into place. Check paws! Let dog out! Feed animals! Mop floor! Clean blood!

Examining Tycho's feet.

Mopping garage floor, still in work clothes. No time to change.

Remarkably, the dog wasn't injured. And strangely enough, the cat also seemed fine. Both animals' paws were beautifully unmarred. The cat did have some blood on her fur but we couldn't find the source. It almost looked like she'd rolled in someone else's blood during a kittenish frenzy but we couldn't imagine who.

Well, someone bled all over the floor. I hope we find out who soon.

So much for going to sleep early. And for expanding my blogosphere with quality content and comments. For now it looks like (both of) you readers are stuck with the domestic bliss that is animal piss and house renovation. If one more person asks me if I'm having a baby soon I'm going to scream.