Whew!
And then I saw this poster:
Yup, that sums up exactly how I feel about this year.
Even though it's been a terrible summer, our house is smelling a lot better, my car is fine except that two of our passenger-side windows were blown out and right now I still hear pieces of glass skittering across my dash when I make sharp turns, Peter's car only suffered some minor bumper damage, I found Rocky the first time on our sidewalk and the second time the police found him, AND Peter went through surgery and now he's recovering and the doctors think that he'll be fine (knock on wood). Wow--I don't even think that's a real sentence.
I will tell all of these stories in later posts, but I'll start with the skunk incident:
About a month and a half ago, at 2:30 AM, Peter let Rocky and Scout into the backyard, but just as soon as he opened the door, he saw a furry little patch of black and white close to our Japanese maple tree. In an instant, Peter was screaming:
"NO!!! NO!!! Rocky! Scout! Come! COME!! COOOOOOOOME!!"
I was sitting in the living room when I heard the crazy ruckus and when I opened the door, Scout was there with a big smile on her face and Peter was having five conniptions screaming for Rocky in the dead of night. I'm pretty sure we woke up all our neighbors.
Before I knew it, Rocky ran back into the house, retching and smelling like the most God-awful awfulness ever created. There are no words for this kind of skunky awfulness. I felt like throwing up myself, and this all happened a week after Peter's surgery.
The strange thing is that when the skunk spray is fresh, it doesn't smell like the skunk smell you smell in the air whenever a skunk has sprayed. It's super-concentrated and smells like something the devil created is burning. It also permeates everything. In fact, even though Rocky hadn't gone upstairs, the next day, the upstairs smelled worse than the first floor.
Quickly, I ran to my computer to look up how to treat skunk smell and apparently, the only thing that works is hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. I ran out of the house to buy hydrogen peroxide and on the way home, I was pulled over by a cop for speeding.
Yah.
No joke.
When the cop pulled me over, I just burst into tears. I think it was all the pent-up anxiety over Peter's surgery and a scary trip to the emergency room. I hadn't dealt with any of this and so when the cop came up to the car, I blubbered all over him and told him about the skunk and the surgery and his reaction was:
"Well, I still have to write you up for speeding."
I continued to sit in my car, sobbing and then I think he caught the waft of unadulterated skunk. He jumped back a few feet and said, "Oh, I REALLY smell it on you."
That's when he let me go--because that skunk smell TRAVELS. I hadn't even gone near Rocky when I left the house. The cop just didn't want to get any of that smell on himself.
I've found the best way to get out of a moving violation. Carry skunk odor around.
I got home and Peter gave Rocky a bath with the hydrogen peroxide and baking soda. One quart hydrogen peroxide and 1/4 cup baking soda with a few squirts of liquid hand soap. It really worked, but the house smelled really rank for about two weeks and the smell lasted about two months. It was hideous. Every once in a while, even now, I smell skunk when I walk in through the door.
And the very next day, my poor friend Emily and I had a lunch date. She's so sweet that when I told her about the skunk she said:
"I'm from Missouri. There are tons of skunks there. Skunk smell doesn't bother me. I'm used to it."
When Peter heard that, he was all, "Well, if that's the case, I AM NOT ever going to Missouri."
So either Missouri is a very skunky-smelling state or Missourians are just the sweetest, most polite people ever created.
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