Oh, dear Lord, what is that disgusting stench?!?!?

... and other stories.

Not something I get to say often, even with changing diapers. But I got to comment about and smell a horrific stench Sunday evening AND Tuesday morning. I'm just special that way. ;)

So, we had a mouse in the kitchen cabinets. I was pretty sure it may have moved to other locations in the house... honestly, it may have, and the mouse I found Sunday may have been mouse #2. Whatever.

There was this strange smell coming from the kitchen for the past few days. I checked and changed the garbage fairly often. I ran the garbage disposal. Nope, not coming from there. I finally went ahead and looked in the lower kitchen cabinets on Sunday evening. I about fell on my butt, the smell was so bad.

Our electronic mouse trap definitely had something. I couldn't verify for sure until I opened the lid, but that horrific smell was definitely coming from it. The trap is supposed to show a little green light for 24 hours after it has killed something. Unfortunately, I must have missed the 24 hour window. By a few days.

I dumped Mr. Very Dead Mickey Mouse out into a trash bag. It was covered in maggots, and some of it's fur remained in the trap. I'll spare you a graphic picture... I didn't have the fortitude or disgusting forethought to capture a picture of Mickey, unlike the other 2 times I decided to gross out my audience with a picture of a still-alive-but-trapped Minny Mouse, or the picture of my puke on the lawn after a sudden bout of food poisoning.

After talking to my Father-in-Law, he told me it was highly likely the trap wouldn't work again, just on the basis that the smell of death would probably cling to it for a long while. I didn't have the courage to pull out the leftover mouse fur or even try to clean the electronic trap, so $20.00 of mouse-killing plastic hardware and wire went into a different trash bag.

So, that was Sunday evening.

Our female German Shepherd, Ellie, has been getting into the one trash can we have that sits at floor level. Well, we have a 2nd trash can that sits at floor level, but it's very tall, and the dogs haven't figured out yet that it's possible for them to tip it over. Thank the Lord!

Ditto for the fact that they haven't figured out they could probably jump the backyard fence if they wanted to, LOL!

Our male German Shepherd Boss has long been getting into any floor-level trash he can find, even if it was partially burned up in the fireplace. Boss has also been getting really sneaky and taking food off the kitchen counter-tops, or off of my tray next to the recliner. It's been getting worse, and Ellie has decided to follow suite. I guess I can't blame either one of them: they barely get any attention anymore with our baby boy Logan being around. They desperately need to be walked, and their nails are in bad need of filing down. :P They could also really use a bath. Oh, crap... and I'm about a week or so late on their Frontline and Sentinel!!! [Memo to self: medicate the dogs!!!!]

Boss eats poop he finds in the backyard. Thankfully he mostly finds his own or Ellie's poop. Hopefully he doesn't often find other critter's poop... that could give him worms. But anyway, he's used to eating the strangest stuff. His stomach can handle the most amazing things now.

In the little trash can next to the recliner there are often several Reesus Peanut Butter Cups wrappers. Boss eats these w/o any problems. Ellie, however, has been giving herself the runs from getting into them.

Well, Monday night she got into them again. It was a bad night for her to pull that stunt. My husband was getting up at 4:30am Tuesday morning in order to catch a flight. Logan needed comforting at 2am in order to fall back to sleep after a nightmare or some other problem. The he needed to be held and allowed to fall asleep on me while I sat in the recliner with him at 3am. I tried to let my husband sleep through both events considering he was going to have to get up so early.

After I put Logan back in his crib, I let the dogs out for what I hoped was the last time that night/early morning. I was so wrong.

My husband left at 5:30am for the airport. I passed into a deep sleep finally.

At 7:30am, the dogs desperately wanted out. They bugged me quite a bit. I finally relented and got up. But I wasn't prompt enough.

Ellie had left a huge amount of diarrhea on the living room carpet.

It didn't smell too bad just yet. Maybe my nose wasn't awake. I let the dogs out, and put their water outside, and kept them out there. I didn't want them walking through that mess, nor did I want Ellie making any new messes if she wasn't done having the runs.

I took a trash bag and used it to initially scrape up the poop. This disturbed the stench hovering above and in the poop. I about gagged and almost puked then and there.

About 40 minutes and several applications of Petastic and paper towels later, I gave up, poured a bunch of Petastic onto the poo stain directly from the refill jug, and took all the soiled paper towels out to the garage. There they joined Mickey Mouse in the trash can. I gave up cleaning the poo stain as Logan was crying. Ah, time to go from dealing with canine elimination to baby elimination. At least Logan wore a diaper and was unlikely to get poop on the carpet.

Around 8:30am, I gave the Little Guy a bottle and had him come back to bed with me. I was DEAD TIRED, and ended up passing out. I didn't wake up until Logan wanted another bottle after 11am.

The poor dogs watched me wandering around inside and begged to be let in. But I felt like I needed a break from any further doggy digestion problems that morning, plus I hadn't fully finished cleaning up Mr. Poo stain.

I was standing at the kitchen counter, making a bottle for Logan, while he sat in his rocking chair watching Baby TV. It was a little after 11:40am. I was SO late for work, SO dead tired, and had missed a morning doctor's appointment. I looked to my right, and saw some hanging items in the kitchen swinging back and forth. Huh? Looked to my left, and Logan's jumper was also swinging. Looked straight ahead into the dining room, and saw the chandelier also swaying back and forth. Hmmm... I could see we'd had an earthquake, but I had actually not felt it. Very bizarre. Guess my Spidey Earthquake Sense was no longer functioning.

I was 10 miles from the epicenter of a 6.2 earthquake in 1984. Ever since then, I was always hyper sensitive to the ground swaying. It was weird to see an earthquake happen, and not even feel it. I mean, I felt a San Francisco quake that happened in October 1989 and caused freeways to collapse... and I felt it from about 300 miles away, while sitting in the computer lab in college. Everyone there thought I was hallucinating when I asked them if they'd felt it.

Tuesday's quake was a 5.4 (downgraded from a 5.8) earthquake in Los Angeles... which is a ways away from us.

My Mom called to make sure I was ok. She lives in the same city as we do. I was highly amused, as being over 100 miles away from the epicenter of a 5.4 isn't usually cause for alarm! But she'd been lying down when it hit, and had totally felt it. I teased her before hanging up, saying that I was trapped under something heavy, but otherwise I was doing fine. :) "Very funny," Mom replied.

The next person to call was my husband. I don't think he was so much concerned as curious, as if it had been serious enough I'd have given him a call. [Unless I was still trapped under that aforementioned heavy object.]

Finally got Logan off to daycare and my butt into work. Worked really late. Got out... my right rear tire was flat. :P

And my husband was out of town...

But wait! I had the cool tire inflater that I'd purchased after talking to my Father-in-Law about it a while back. It's powered from the cigarette lighter. Worked like a charm.

Then headed off in search of "Fix a Flat", a can of compressed air and stuff that's supposed to seal flat tires. I just wanted to have it on hand. Then picked up Logan from my Father-in-Law's, and headed home to enjoy finishing cleaning up the poop stain.

And to enjoy dealing with a plague of flies in the house! We've been having some extra fly problems of late, but this was ridiculous! Ended up setting some bait out for them such that they would be sitting in a cup and I'd have a good chance of using the battery powered fly zapper on them.

And that's been my weird Tuesday. Well, weird few days.

I never thought I'd find something that smelled worse than skunk, but the dead mouse, and Ellie's diarrhea, were really just phenomenally foul.

Wednesday I get to call the tire place to get my tires checked. This is the 2nd time the rear right one has gone flat. Before the tire shop thought I might have a leaky valve stem. My Father-in-Law thinks I may have cracks in my tires that are more easily influenced to open up when my car is parked in just the right, or in this case wrong, position. His explanation makes the best sense at this point.

Well, I'm typing while sleep deprived. It's time to put he laptop away and try to get some much-needed zzzzzz's.

To quote one of my favorite Baby TV programs, "Shushy-Bye and Goodnight". :)