Thursday, September 18, 2008

What's that smell?

This is a question that often goes through my mind. Fintan's dirty diapers are obvious of course. Less obvious, but also easily identified are Coen’s dirties which as a breastfed baby have their own special smell. But there are other smells, too. Say a sippy of milk is tossed from a highchair and rolls unnoticed under the old kitchen cupboard where it begins to putrefy. That was a bad one. Or say you have 2 dogs and live in the country…nuff said.

This morning was an eventful one at our house. Pat took a shower in our newly “finished” (as in not really finished except for a working bathtub/shower and working sinks…and some tile. No toilet, walls or mirrors) master bathroom which has the added feature—as it was designed by yours truly—of requiring a towel to be pressed up against the tub to catch the torrent of water that cascades over the side whenever the shower runs. But what’s one more soaking wet towel added to the laundry, right? Anyway, after Pat’s shower Fintan decides to help me get dressed and we walk towards the hallway leading to the bathroom and the closet and see a puddle in the hallway. For a moment I think that the shower puddle has extended much further than usual, but then I get a whiff and realize, no—that’s dog pee. A good sized puddle, too. Lovely. Pat cleans it up while Fintan and I find the antibacterial spray to spray it down afterward. Then we all go downstairs.

Pat is in a hurry to finish getting ready and feed the dogs because he has a friend picking him up for work. (He bought a new (used) car yesterday after selling his last week and he left his parent’s borrowed Suburban at his office to drive the new car home.) So I’m changing Fintan’s soaking wet diaper and slightly damp jammies (yep, we’re swimming in urine around here) when Pat notices the kitchen ceiling is leaking. Great, I had a feeling that shower was going to cause trouble. The water is dripping out of the side of the light fixture hanging above the island. Pat turns off the electricity and gets up on the counter to take the light fixture down and see what the damage is. As he takes it down I see a gush of water pour out of the top of it all over the countertop. Fabulous. Pat doesn’t have time to deal with a shower leak, his friend will be here any minute. So he just starts wiping up the puddle. I walk into the kitchen with a plastic bag holding a soaking wet diaper and somehow the smell of urine grows stronger with every step. Pat has soaked most of the puddle up with a towel and as I walk by it the smell grows overwhelming.

“Um, Sweetie, it really smells like pee in here.” I said. “Is that….?” Pat, looks at me and slowly bends over to smell the towel.

“Yes” he says, “it is”. Then he adds, “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Oh, that is so gross” I say, but within a few minutes I'm laughing uncontrollably.

That large puddle of dog urine in the hallway must not have been even half of it. But at least our shower isn’t the problem….so that’s good, right?

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