Fleas.

I spent the weekend turning my home into a Super Fund site. I cleaned and laundered, threw out and put away and poisoned and vacuumed  every room in the house and poisoned and mopped and cleaned every surface flat and otherwise.. My house is very clean and completely toxic to living things.

Except if you are the fleas I was trying very hard to kill in the first place. You are in great shape! You feel great. The rest of us have had months taken off our lives and have inhaled lungs full of poisonous toxins - to kill you. You are still here.

Fewer of you, yes, I am not entirely useless,I did spend hours doing this. I know I did away with thousands of your brothers and friends, and they will not be back. I spent eleven hours on Saturday working my lungs to the bone. Probably lost brain cells as well.

Rocket was not in any way cooperative with his bath.  The soaping up part is not difficult, and he doesn't mind it too terribly and even even seems to almost like it - but the whole water from the hose, hearing the water, having the water touch him part of the bathing experience is a nightmare.

I had to keep him on a lash for the whole nightmare - I hurt more after his bath than I did two days after my first calisthenics class.  I did this so that I could scrub him with a dog shampoo that could double as a pesticide - the cats got a less toxic washing, but no less fun. They at least didn't try to break my hip for my troubles either. Neither cat loved the experience but I think they did appreciate my lessening their flea load. The dog was miserable before and after - He was covered with fleas! I had no idea, I saw them on the cats and I had found one or two on the dog but the dog was a flea condo. Disgusting.

I spray down and packed up most of my pillows and got ride of a couple of unnecessary throw rugs and laundered everything even passably washable. It will save me time in a couple of weeks when I do all of it again - and I'll repeat it until I have all the fleas dead.

I am still killing fleas. In two weeks I'm using Raid. I used something I used in the past for an infestation - and it worked very well - very toxic but  still vaguely safe-ish for living things, it was a disappointment this time around. Waste of time, next time I go with something that will actually kills things dead. I don't want them suffering from brain damage, I want them dead.