Stank You Smelly Much

So when we moved into this house, we knew there were some things we would want to change. The previous owners did a fine job taking care of the place, but it definitely needs a bit of that home improvement action that's so politely referred to as updating. You know, like:

"Oh, it's in great shape, it just needs a bit of updating."

"The house is from 1908, but it's been completely updated."

"Ripping out that green shag carpeting will go a long way towards updating this place."

Yay for HGTV. One of the updating projects we knew we were going to do at some point was the floors. Most of the house has rather dingy carpet that's long since done its duty and needs to be retired. So we added floors to the list, content that we would return to it soon enough.

Which brings us to last Friday night. We had just finished season 1 of "The Wire", and were on our way to bed, pausing only long enough to let the dog out to relieve himself. At one point, I looked outside to see him squirming around in the grass, and smiled at the sight of it.

"Silly dog."

Oh, if only I'd known. A few minutes later, I opened the door to let him in, and was immediately assaulted by the smell of burning tires. Elliott ran inside and proceeded to do his squirming routine all over the carpet. I went upstairs where Ashley was brushing her teeth.

"Do you smell that?"

I had barely gotten the question out when she pinpointed the odor's source: "SKUNK!"

The family dog had been sprayed.

Neither Ash nor myself had ever dealt with a skunk spraying before, so we had to consult the 'webs. We found a lot of ideas and surefire cures, but unfortunately, they all involved stuff that we didn't have on hand. We finally ran across one post by someone claiming to have limited success with dishwashing liquid. So at 11:00 at night, I found myself kneeling next to the tub bathing a rather stinky, rather confused, and very unhappy dog in dish soap. I could almost hear his voice of protest. It sounded just like Bobcat Goldthwaite.

"That cat-looking thing sprayed its yuckies all over me for absolutely NO REASON, I was just trying to say hello, ya know? And now you people are giving me a bath? What gives man?"

I bathed him 3 times before it was all said and done, and his resistance grew with each lather-rinse-repeat. He still stank enough that we made him spend the night in the garage.

Of course, we still had the smell in the house to deal with. The dog had effectively rubbed skunk scent into the living room carpet, the very carpet we were planning to tear out at some point. It seems Some Point had arrived. We yanked up the carpet and hauled it outside. I made it to bed by about 1:30 after pulling up enough of the carpet tack to be reasonably safe, leaving the rest for the next day.

Saturday was supposed to be test-drive/buy car day for my wife, which meant she was going to get a pretty kickass Mommy's Day present. Instead, we spent the day purchasing new flooring, which is now sitting in its unopened packaging, waiting to be laid down very soon. We also bought some skunk smell remover at the pet store.

Now it just remains to be seen whether or not ours is the type of dog that learns his lesson on these things. Based on past experience, I'm not tossing out the Skunk-B-Gone anytime soon.

So how was your weekend?

House of love

Recall, if you will, that whole house thing I was all scared to even talk about a while back. Well, the deal went through, money and keys changed hands, and the house is ours. We moved last Friday, thus saying goodbye to the teeny little rent house that my wife had taken to calling The Shack, and hello to a house that we're falling more and more in love with. I love the house, the yard, the deck, the trees, the street it's on, the talkative old neighbor, the whole package. I even love the idea that I've got a ton of home improvement projects in my future. A lot of things worked in our favor to make this happen, not least among them a very cool landlord who let us out of our lease free and clear, asking only that we list the house for rent on craigslist for him. I ask you, whoever heard of such coolness?

This is eldest son's third move in his short life, and I'm determined to make it his last until he heads off to college. He seems to have picked up on the fact that this place is, in fact, the house where he lives now. We tried to reenforce that feeling after cleaning up the rent house by going around and saying goodbye to all his favorite spots there. Goodbye green room. Goodbye mommy daddy room. Goodbye back yard. It was cute, but I gotta say, it was not a difficult farewell.

We got to meet the woman who was selling the house. She lived here for almost 30 years, almost as long as the house has existed. She raised her kids here, and seemed to get a little bit emotional while we talked about it. She met the boys, and seemed happy to see that there would be children living here.

Earlier this evening, The Ash and I were putting our clothes away, and were raving about how we actually had room to put everything away without having to squash it all together. It occurred to me that it's good to be reminded not to take little luxuries for granted. A little gratitude always feels good.

Labor Week

I kept intending to write this week, but the time kept getting eaten up, as if by magical creatures who sustain themselves on precious precious time. Consequentially, I dont' remember any of the stuff I was going to write. Anyway, our place is good to go now and it's up on the great big market, so now somebody just needs to come along and fall in love with it. It is quite lovable, after all.

We did still manage to have ourselves a little gathering of folks over here this weekend. I guess it was the house-warming party that we never got around to having. Maybe we'll do better about warming up the next place.

This one's on me.

Dispatches from the Holmesfront

Blurbs of a random flavor.

These are the things that occur to me
I think it would be really cool if Wu-Tang would take a sample from the show "Deadwood" from any one of the thousands of instances where Al Swearengen says "Fucking Wu!" and then use it in a song. My apologies to those of you who are not familiar with "Deadwood" and/or the Wu-Tang Clan, but you can trust me that it's a really great suggestion.







Fucked Statements: Statements Which Are Fucked
One should refrain from making statements structured according to the following pattern: "I'm not [blank], but [blankety-blank-blank]" where blank = a label or descriptor, often of a negative nature, and blankety-blank-blank = a declaration that clearly indicates that the speaker is in fact what they disclaimed to be in the first portion of the sentence. Examples:

"I'm not a prude, but when I'm in a crowded public place, it sometimes occurs to me that every person I see has genitals and I get so upset that I have to sit down!"

"I'm not a racist, but I sure liked this neighborhood a lot more before those people moved in."

"I'm not an especially vulgar person, but motherfuck this cocksucking son of shit."

To prevent such inconsistencies, one should consider one's disclaimers before appending them to the beginning of any statement. If any incongruities are detected, one should remove the disclaimer before speaking, and simply accept the fact that one is what they would perhaps wish not to be.

The E is for Electronic
An old friend from college whom I've not seen or heard from in over a decade found me recently. Since then we've been emailing back and forth, and it struck me as interesting and kind of cool that we were communicating through a medium that was hardly even on my radar the last time he and I spoke, which in the grand scheme of things was not that long ago, but in technology terms was eons ago. Trippy.

Helper Toddler is Helping
Henry seems to be big on housework these days. His latest thing is loading and unloading the washing machine, a task which seems to bring him enormous pleasure. He'd love to try his hand at the dishwasher, but we keep him away from that for now since we can't afford to replace all of our dishes. Soon enough though. Perhaps he'll be like David Sedaris and ask for name brand appliances at all gift-giving occasions. Then he'll grow up to write fabulously hilarious stories about his childhood and growing up with his quirky but lovable parental units.


I are tawk funny sumtim
I am beginning to believe that regular viewings of ICanHasCheezBurger may be having detrimental effects on my command of the English language. Sitting in a meeting at work the other day, someone made a suggestion that I really liked, and the thought that passed through my mind was "dat am da ossumest ideeyuh evr!" Fortunately, I was able to translate it into something coherent before I opened my mouth.