What's in your house?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Thinking about hurricane Katrina and the people who are selflessly opening their home to complete strangers got me to thinking about the little things I’d have to tell a person who was staying over. Things they need to know but aren’t obvious.

I have a stack of red plastic cake sized plates in my pantry. These are exclusively for feeding my three cats. I reuse the same plates until they’re worn out so I don’t go through the stack so quickly. In my house you just know that if you decide to get a red plastic plate from the pantry you pick from the bottom of the stack. The top three are always the plates the cats have been eating from. (caught my mother a couple of times with that one right before she actually used it)

When the lady who lives above us flushes the toilet or turns on the tap or the shower in one of her bathrooms the plumbing makes an incessant tap, tap, tap, tapping noise until the water’s all drained through. Thankfully that’s not the bathroom she uses most of the time. Still, when it happens at 4:00 am and wakes you from a dead sleep it’s a little disconcerting.

What’s in your house?

2

Don’t bother trying to shower. It doesn’t work and we’ve never gotten around to having a plumber in to fix it. We both prefer baths, so it’s just never been worth the inconvenience of having the wall torn out to find out what’s wrong.

Also, the catfish is probably not dead. He just likes to sleep on his side up behind the heater like that. Okay, maybe he doesn’t like it, but if he sleeps up there the Chinese algae eater might let the rest of his tail grow back. He eats at night when the other fish can’t see him.

3

The only thing I can think of is that there is a weird rustling sound at night that is almost certainly coming from the apartment above me, and that it’s been going on for months and has thus far failed to materialize into anything sinister.

Thus far.

4

That ain’t apple cider in the fridge!

5

When you turn the TV on, all you’re going to get is static. We don’t have cable. Sorry guys!

Other than that, I don’t think there’s anything weird about my place.

6

My dog Griss might stay up all night staring at you, and you may even feel the cool drop of a bit of drool if you smell nice or if he’s hungry.

Otherwise our attack siamese will be nestled in w/ us.

7

I’d have to tell them to beware when they take a shower. The big, brown spiders like to visit when you are in the middle of a shower.

When you flush the toilet, our oldest cat, Arlene, likes to stand up and watch it flush, so you need to move out of her way.

You need to keep an eye on the kitchen faucet, and make sure you don’t put the stoppers back into the sink drain. It likes to turn on by itself, it will fill up the sink with water and overflow. We don’t know why this happens, but it does (the water coming on by itself, anyway).

If you are here during the holidays, you must not use the dog dishes. They have their own set of dishes that we serve them Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in. They know these are THEIR dishes and get rather worked up when they see them, as they know they will be getting a special meal. Don’t use them, for your own good.

In the winter, do NOT step on the register in the bathroom. It gets VERY HOT and will burn your bare feet. You need to learn to step over/around it. I’m sure this won’t take long at all to learn.

The rear, left burner on the kitchen stove doesn’t work too well. It’ll take forever to boil water on that one. Use one of the others.

The foot rest on the LazyBoy couch/recliners we have opens when you least expect it. You’ll need to remember that. Trust me.

Don’t freak out when the touchlamps go on and off. The cats like to touch them with their noses to make them do that. They’ll stop when they’re ready.

8

We keep kosher- there are two sets of dishes, silverware, pots & pans, and kitchen tools.

Luna meows in the foyer, not because she wants out (she’s a strictly indoor cat, since we live half a block from a major freeway), but because the canister of treats is on a bookshelf there, and she’s always hoping that any human that comes near the foyer might give her a treat.

9

The ghost walks down the hall sometimes and has been known to turn on the blender, but otherwise she won’t bother you.

There are eight cats in the cat suite, even if you only see seven of them. Mr. Spock is shy. Watch the door as you leave the cat suite, as Yogi will try to get through before you can shut the door. If he does, he’ll go straight to my bedroom.

10

When you hear cat screaming in the middle of the night, it’s because our loud cat is walking on our faces and telling us she loves us. Really. She is not in pain. I know it’s hard to believe, but that’s a happy noise.
Please put the toilet lid down or the cats will drink from it.

We don’t have good soundproofing. Please walk quietly and try not to thump.

11

When you run a bath, you have to turn on the tap and then back away quickly, because the first rush of water will come out of the showerhead (regardless of the position of that bath/shower switch knob), and then it stops and comes out of the regular bath spout.

Heh, when my inlaws visited last summer, my MIL ate out of the cat’s dishes. We decided not to tell her. They were clean. The cat was confused.

12

My hot water doesn’t get very hot. Most times I can turn it on full and not touch the cold water knob, and get a comfortable temperature.

My apartment was last inhabited by a psychotic electrician, who seemed to believe that every light fixture should have a dimmer switch. I had to replace them all with “real” switches.

Coin-operated washer and dryer.

52-inch television. :slight_smile:

Cat . Stay out of her way, feed her if shes hungry. If her food dish is empty at any time, expect to be bitten on the back of the calf when you least expect it.

13

The light switches downstairs are all flat pushbuttons, and there are switches inside the doors of each room and outside the doors also. All the rooms have overhead light. There is a master panel by the side door and in Grandma’s room, so if you turn on a light anywhere in the house, or leave the porch light on, she will know because the little buttons light up red. So don’t use the overhead light upstairs at night, use the lamps instead. \

The dryer has stopped turning off unless it is actually in the off position, so if you open and reclose the door, you don’t need to press the start button. This will be very obvious. Make sure to turn it to off when you are done.

The jars of apple juice or white grape juice in the door of the fridge have been doctored up with vinegar because Grandma read in the Home Remedies column of the paper that it works on arthritis. So don’t drink them if you know what’s good for you.

All the electical outlets in the house are child-proofed with plugs from 1950, so when you insert the plug, you have to give it a quarter-turn before you can push it in all the way.

The side door doesn’t close tight in the winter unless you push on it, so make sure to tug on the door before going all the way in the house, or you will never hear the end of it if the wind pushes it open in the middle of the night.

All the doors downstairs are sliding doors, and none of them lock, not even the bathroom, so get over it.

My dad wired the house himself, so there are more electical outlets per wall than is normal these days, so enjoy!

Why yes, the seafoam green tile in the kitchen and the red countertop and the fake woodgrain tar-backed wallcovering WERE on sale when they built the house, why do you ask?

14

Be careful where you put your hands. The place is cat-proof, but there are knives, guns, swords, axes and implements of destruction everywhere. Don’t look under the bed. Don’t turn the sound system above 7 unless you want your ears to start bleeding. The good chocolate is in the crisper.

15

1.) Beware when you open door. Cat will surge past you and get out into the hall of apartment building. Pick her up and toss her back into apartment. She’s small and easy to heft.

2.) Prepare to thread your way through piles of very old furniture, tapestry pillows, mounds of mouldy books and errant gobs of wax left by drippy candles. We’ll alleviate your trepidation with many strong, well-made drinks.

3.) Be not afraid if I offer to show you my newly-purchased big-ass fako Crusader-style “Toledo Steel” Spanish broadsword. Promise I won’t use it. Really. :smiley:

16

Don’t sit down without first checking for sewing scissors/knives/sewing needles/staves/swords/cats/piles of fabric.

17

The hot and cold water are switched at the bathroom faucet. They each have their separate spigot and the previous owner swapped them. I had planned to swap them way back when, but then we found that it’s easier to rinse our mouths with the cold on the left.

And yes, we will use that same shade of orange when we repaint. We don’t care if you’re trying to flip a house behind us or not.

18

Same here.

Also, don’t bother looking for a landline telephone. We don’t have one.

When taking the very first shower in the house in the morning, wait a good minute before stepping in, it takes that long to get up to temp.

There are two alarm clocks in our (master) bedroom. The one to the left (mine) is 30 minutes fast. The one to the right (my husband’s) is 45 minutes fast. Just about every other clock in the house is accurate.

One that still gets my husband every now and then:
We use cast iron skillets and pots almost exclusively now. They are heavy and bulky, so I like to keep them within easy reach for me. They are also a bit unsightly sitting on the stove top, so I like to stash them. The obvious place? Inside the oven. Check the oven before pre-heating it. You’ll need to remove the cast iron dutch oven and about 5 cast iron skillets of different sizes first.

When walking out the front door, make sure the lock on the door knob is in the vertical position (unlocked) if you don’t have a key. Even though you can open the door from the inside while it is in the horizontal position, it is locked from the outside.

19

Don’t let the black cat in the house unsupervised unless you want poop in your bed.

Don’t let the white cat outside. Ever.

If you hear a garbage pail tip over outside it was a racoon not a burglar.

If you find my secret chocolate stash and eat it you will have to replenish it.

Yeah the bathroom’s purple. We like it that way.

Yeah there are thousands of books in the house. We like it that way.

20

All the doors must be dealt with firmly.

All the closed doors are closed for cat-related reasons, so don’t leave them open!

All the faucets are leaky, and must be dealt with firmly.

We know that the house transmits noise, especially at inopportune moments, but we’ll pretend we’re deaf if you will.

The upstairs toilet must be dealt with firmly.

It’s your turn to clean up the cat puke.