Friday, February 17, 2012

Keeper of Corpses

I've been working on a post about reality, but it will be waiting in the wings as I deal with an actual, nefarious, and unavoidable reality.

Remember the foot smell? It was suggested that it was the pipes, or the produce, or the Hooligan. Well, drain cleaner a-go-go to no avail. Sparkling clean kitchen, refrigerator, fruit basket (I even checked all my shoes because sometimes produce ends up in there. Don't ask.) The Hooligan is an advanced little boy and he can generate some very mature smells for his stature, but alas, I have never known him to smell like a corpse. I sniffed him just in case.

Yes, foot has progressed to corpse in the continuum of bad smells. Dead, rotting, bloated, reeking corpse in an, as yet, undisclosed location. It is beyond a mild "did you catch that whiff?" kind of smell. It is evil incarnate, winding its sticky fingers around the back of your neck and breathing its hot, fetid breath right up your nose. It assaults you. It bludgeons you with slime covered billy clubs and then kicks you while you lie there in a fetal position gasping for your life.

I have long been convinced that there were hobos living in our garage, and now I think one of them has crawled under the house and expired. It may be a squirrel or a raccoon. Possibly a rat. Our neighbors keep chickens and you know what they say - where there're chickens... I don't suspect it's our resident donk-um ('possum the size of a donkey) because he died under our other neighbors' house last winter. It can't be a mouse. The stench is just far too large. So tomorrow will be spent in the crawlspace under the house, looking for remains among the mud and the shanty town that I'm positive exists down there.

I have joked about this. The Chief Lou emailed me last week about an outstanding bill (it wasn't just great, it was outstanding!) and I promptly replied: "I've taken care of it. I put a horse's head in the appropriate bed." Sometimes I tell the monkeys to "hide the bodies" when we do that last-minute blitz clean before Daddy comes home. When the fire dies too soon and it's chilly in our bedroom, I tell the Chief Lou that I will warm up by slitting him open so he can be the Tauntaun to my Han Solo. I have joked about this. This isn't funny anymore.

As I type, the Chief Lou and the monkeys are en route to the airport to pick up my mother-in-law, who will be spending a few days with us. I have an amiable relationship with her because her only son has been happy with me for nearly 15 years and I raise and feed two of her grandchildren, but she has always thought I was a little bit odd. I have lit heavily scented candles in every room of the house. I have burned incense. I have scrubbed all that can be scrubbed, including myself (just in case.) I have done everything short of calling in a priest for an exorcism, and yet it lingers. In a very few minutes I will have to welcome my mother-in-law into a house that smells like the lowest circle of hell (with heavily scented candles) and concede that I am, in fact, odd. Yes, that's me, your strange daughter-in-law: sewer of clothes, lover of underdogs, breast feeder of babies, protector of trees, eschew-er of make-up and bras, keeper of corpses.


24 comments:

  1. Ask her if she has a cold. A very severe cold that has her nose all plugged up and she can't smell anyzing.

    And, I wish you good luck. I also hope it is anything but a corpse.

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    1. Luckily (?) I now have a severe cold, so I can walk around thinking there's no stench.

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  2. I'm betting there is something dead under the house or in the wall boards. When Mark and I were kids, there was more than one time when one or both of us was sent under the house on the hunting expedition for said corpse. NO FUN at all. Actually, I think he more often had to do it as I was clearly not enamored with the stuff under the house - not that he was but he complained less. And he was a boy. Score one for sexism.

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  3. Oh my gosh - I'm so sorry. We've had animals die in the walls before...it's really, really icky. It's probably a corpse but I hope the smells goes elsewhere very soon.

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  4. Replies
    1. Thank you! I think I'll have it printed on business cards.

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  5. If it was or is an animal, the smell should be gone by now. I suspect that you have copper pipes and if there is a leak somewhere it smells like you describe. as copper oxidizes it releases a terrible smell. i had the problem and i fixed it with tape. the marvelous tape that us men love. duct tape. works on everything.

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    1. The pipes are next on my list. I think they may not be copper, but in fact made of some sort of resilient slime mold.

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  6. I live with someone who has no sense of smell. A few years ago we had an expensive humidifier system installed. Whenever we would turn it on, it emitted the most horrible oder, but only in the bedroom. I could smell it, Ross could not.
    He would try to test me, by turning the system on without me knowing. As soon I walked into the bedroom, though, I knew. i would check the controls, and sure enough it had been turned on.
    We had the installer come out to check and he gave us some hooey about it taking time for something or other to burn off. Well it's been years and the smell is still there and just as strong.
    I am the official smeller in the house, especially during the weekly refrigerator clean out.
    I guess having no sense of smell has its advantages, but I am sure I have saved Ross from food poisoning on more than one occasion.

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    1. My dad had no sense of smell the last few years of his life. It is a mixed blessing.

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  7. I vote pretending you don't smell anything and letting her think it's only her sense of smell that's off-lol.

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  8. Replies
    1. I got tired of them. Blogger was messing with them and it was just a hassle.

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  9. I feel your pain. We had a dead mouse at the office, caught in a sticky trap under the fridge, stinking up the place. I remember how that smell (if smell is a strong enough word for it) climbed up and lodged itself in our collective noses. *shudder* It's amazing what a powerful odor a tiny dead creature can emit! I wish you luck in finding the source of the stink.

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  10. In corpses, as in many other things, timing is everything. If your mother-in-law's coming to visit, OF COURSE something is going to die in or under your house. Here's hoping it's something grocery-bag-sized or smaller.

    PS--Donk-um! Love it. Have some experience with the beasts. ;)

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    1. Of course. I am having a complete giggle fit over "grocery-bag-sized or smaller" - that is my hope, exactly!
      Donk-ums are serious stuff. They must be feared and respected because they can kill a man.

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  11. This is so beautifully written, I am actually glad that something died in your house so that I could enjoy it. That makes me a bad person, I guess. It's true, though. ;)

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    1. You are a truly terrible person. Glad you enjoyed it! It takes a terrible person to revel in corpses, I should know.

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    2. I hope the smell has improved! It's the worst feeling when you clean and clean and clean and it doesn't help. I was scrubbing our bathroom everyday from top to bottom before we figured out the drain smelled bad...I hope your house is smelling fresh and lovely!

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    3. Ha! Thank you, Emily! The smell has improved. We purchased a great quantity of Drano after crawling around under the house and not finding anything. Thankfully there was no corpse. Just a drain that smelled like a corpse. That might be grosser in the long run, actually.

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  12. Okay, so this post is a little funny and a little gross and all that. This, however, "winding its sticky fingers around the back of your neck and breathing its hot, fetid breath right up your nose" is excellent writing, my dear. I mean, it all is, but that phrase? Got me. Kind of in the gut.

    Have you read I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak? There are phrases he uses in that book that have a similar action to the words, etc. You might enjoy it.

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    1. I have not read it. I shall have to check that out. Right now I'm reading Uncle Stevie's "On Writing" as per your recommendation (and Masked Mom's).

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  13. Holy Cripes! As I read your post, I was continually reminded of my family's Saturday house cleaning, which includes absterging our counter tops with a mixture of water and bleach, followed by a wet-mop soaking and subsequent sopping up of water from the kitchen floor. Imagine how perturbed I was at the end of this process to detect the putrid whiff of some mysterious and vile decomposition. After further investigation, I concluded that the offending scent emanated from the kitchen garbage can, which was briefly allowed to release it's "gift" to this world when I changed the liner...my solution, assess the viability of ensuring that one of the kiddos always changes the liner :-) (either that or spray bleach in when next I change the liner). Thanks for your post...made me smile! and cringe!

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    1. Thanks for stopping by! So glad I could gross you out! The underbelly of the trash can is a scary and odoriferous place. Good call on making the kids deal with it. Builds character.

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