Finn-anigans

Finn's settling into the menagerie pretty well. His partial house training was a bit exaggerated, but he learns quickly. At the beginning of the weekend, he had realized that when we go outside, he's supposed to pee, so he would coax out a little something. By yesterday, the volume had increased to the point where it seemed like he was figuring out to hold it until we got outside (inasmuch as he can; I know his puppy muscles aren't quite capable of full control yet, and there are still some messes in the house). Now we have to work on getting him to make the same connection between pooping and outside. Good thing I moved in knowing I would have to replace the carpet. Good thing the carpet is dark blue.

He and Sebastian have become fast friends already. In fact, Finn and I spent a couple of nights on the couch so I could get some sleep, because Thursday night they spent so much time chasing each other and wrestling and running over my face that I didn't rest much. I keep thinking Finn might be playing too rough for the Skittin, but then I see how much of it Sebastian instigates, and how when he runs away from Finn he does this dolphin-like skip so the clumsy puppy can almost keep up. When I take Finn out of my room, Sebastian stands on the dresser by the door with this forlorn look.

The other cats are getting acclimated more slowly, but they've started to venture out and sniff him a little. He thinks this means they want to play. I am hoping eventually they will. Fender decided she was ready to come out of her cabinet (to which she had retreated several days before the advent of the pup; she and Puck had some sort of falling-out), and if Finn wanted to sniff her, well, too bad. She did the classic Fender move of turning around and settling down with her back to him; if she doesn't deign to see you, you don't exist. Kashmir is timid but curious, and Inanna is getting bolder. Even Puck came out briefly Saturday night and woke me up on the couch for some attention.

I had another mishap with the washing machine (long story involving this bright idea to put the washer in the doorway, so it could flood outside, which did not work at all; flooded floors, wet clothes, flooded garage, flooded boxes of books in the garage, me cracking open a fingernail against the back door, me taking the doorknob out of the back door so I could open it, mildew, me being subsequently so tired and annoyed that I accidentally banged my toe against the edge of a wooden crate, splitting it open in two places, and then immediately forgot about it and tracked blood all over the kitchen. Today the toe is swollen enough to hurt when I have a shoe on.). I have fans running but the mildew stench is still strong. When everything is dried out, I am going to pry up the rest of the tiles. I started Friday night around 1 a.m. and quickly realized much of the stink problem in my house is because of standing water and mildew beneath the two layers of floor tiles, and given the raunch of the tiles that I pulled from beneath the stove, I am quite sure the problem pre-dates me. I am hoping the tile removal helps, and the fans help, and I can someday walk into the laundry room without feeling ill.

I am going to see if the Salvation Army will haul the washer away.

I lost more books in this flood. I guess that isn't a bad thing, necessarily; on reflection, I realized I could live without a surprising number of them, and the ones that I can't are mostly salvageable.