This Battle Scarred Floor

Never trust your children when they're getting along. If two siblings are not fighting they are plotting a takedown of the mommy.

Mine got along once. Then I walked into my kitchen and discovered that they had been using a butter knife to pry up my kitchen floor tiles.

It was one of those peel & stick floors, only the sticky part was kind of patchy so a handful of tiles came completely off. Another handful of tiles had all four corners lifted and broken off.

While the sticky wasn’t sticky enough to foil those little prying fingers and a couple of my butter knives, it was sticky enough to pull your socks off if you walked across the bare patches. We needed to do something and because we were young and always broke, new peel & stick tiles it was.

It was a Friday, so once the kids were fed and sort of settled for the night the ex's drinking buddies arrived and we started trying to peel up the rest of the tiles.

Apparently the kids managed to find the only tiles that weren't firmly stuck.

So there we are trying to scrape off the glued down floor tiles with a putty knife. We managed to scrape off a few in pieces before the guys were ready for a beer break. While we were sitting there yakking, the cats started investigating the floor. We spent some time watching them try to cross the death trap of sticky. One cat made it across fine every time because she ran.

The other cat would stop after each paw was lifted and try to shake the sticky off with that look of total disgust only a cat can wear. While he was looking after one paw the other 3 paws had enough time to really stick to the floor. As the sober one of the bunch, I was still tired enough to find this hysterical. Every so often one of us would gently toss the cat into the middle of the floor just to watch him try to shake and wash the sticky off his paw, only to put it down and start all over again with the next paw.

Finally somebody came up with the idea to warm the tiles with a hairdryer as we scraped. By that time the guys had made a little too much progress into the beer, but with the hairdryer I was making some real progress on the floor. Eventually the buddies left, the ex went to bed, and after a couple more hours I had the floor scraped off.

The new tiles were stuck down the next day. Those tiles are still there. Fifteen years later if you're looking for them, you can see the battle-scars. If I'm looking for them I can see the memories of silly fun we used to have. I like that I can see those memories now, even if they carry a few battle-scars of their own.

I'm linking up with Yeah Write for a very special celebration. This week Yeah Write is hosting their 100th challenge. This month Yeah Write turns two. If you've got a post that fits the spirit of the Yeah Write community in 500 words or less come check us out.