...because everything is funny when it's happening to someone else!


Friday, March 30, 2012

Give Up The Funk*

Oh, Lordy.  Where to start?

Since my last post, I've spent some time navel-gazing and coming to terms with the definitive end of my relationship with my father.  As long as we were both kicking around this old world, the possibility existed that one day we might come to some sort of cessation of hostilities.  With that option gone, there were some things I needed to work through.  So, I took a break from things for a while and dealt with all that stuff and now I'm feeling more like myself.  I'll leave you to decide whether that's a good thing or not.

Today was the annual training/meeting/get-together for the staff of the adoption agency where I work part-time.  The meeting was about 2.5 hours from Gilligan's Island and about 45 minutes from the Taj MaHell, so Tank and I drove up yesterday and spent the night.

But it wasn't quite as simple as that.  Oh, but no.

As soon as I got out of the car at the Taj, I smelled it.  That unmistakable smell of "somethin' dead."  Urgh.  The cloying scent of rotting animal flesh was everywhere.  Tank and I investigated and determined the general area of the crawlspace under the Taj where something had met its end.  I couldn't actually see anything and there was NO WAY I was going to crawl under there.  My unbelievably wonderful in-laws came over and helped try to locate the carcass, but we still couldn't see anything.  I went to bed last night in a stinky house and slept fitfully, waking up every hour or so to remember I once heard that your sense of smell is directly linked to your sense of taste...so that anything you smell has crossed your tastebuds for processing.  All night long, then, I was tasting something dead.  Yum.

This morning, I was up before the sun, getting ready to teach a couple of short sessions at our meeting ( and feeling really unprepared and anxious).  Just when I was about to wake Tank up to take him to Farm Maven's for the day, I realized I'd locked my keys in the Jeep.  OHMYFREAKINSTARS.

Frantic phone calls ensued:
To Shawn:  couldn't get him to answer

To the Farm Maven:  she sent Diamond Dave to come get Tank but didn't have a spare automobile for me to take to the training
To the City of Mayberry Police: whose non-emergency line was unmanned for another hour
To My Inlaws:  who brought me a car and who also discussed the issue with a local City of Mayberry police officer...and that officer later came to the house, unlocked the Jeep and stowed the keys away for me
To the Farm Maven: again and again, because I got lost on the way to the meeting and had to get her to Map Quest my sorry butt

By the end of the day, I'd managed to teach the sessions, had received several texts and photos from the Farm Maven documenting Tank's Excellent Farm Adventures, had an unlocked Jeep (at no charge!), and had returned Papa's car, with a full tank of gas and my undying devotion. 

In the meantime, Shawn had been working hard from Gilligan's Island.  He called a  Mayberry pest company who told him they did not do dead animal removals, but after hearing that I was here alone with a little one, the Very Nice Pest Dude came out, crawled under the extremely stinky house and emerged with one very large, very dead possum.  Well worth the $90 I had to pay him.

And now I'm just sitting in the den, with approximately 900 scented candles burning (now it smells like a flower pooped out a dead animal, but you take what you can get).  Tank is snoozing peacefully in his bed, worn out from a day of hard play with his cousins.  My Jeep key is safely in my pocket and I don't have to worry about power point presentations or flop sweat again for a while.

All in all, this day served as another reminder that life in Mayberry definitely has its advantages.

Yes, I have had some really bad times with some of the members of my original family.  But I am so lucky to have the family that I do have, and so grateful that my husband's family has been so welcoming, so kind and supportive...and so delightfully insane!

Wow.  What a rotten, smelly, wonderful day!


(*we don't call the Taj run-down and funky for nothing!)

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