Stinkenstein

A couple days ago, I was walking from one end to the house to the other looking for a finger nail clipper when this tsunami wave of nasty gag-reflex inducing smell hit me in the face. It smelled like old diapers. My chest locked up tight and I couldn't breath. My first thought was that the dog found another dead critter and brought it in for show-and-tell. He does that once in a while. Come to think of it, the dog isn't the only treasure hunter living with me. Sometimes a sparrow with a broken wing falls into the cat's jaws then gets tucked in between the top sheet and the bedspread. Once in a while, a newly hatched duckling decides to play russian roulette with the cat.

The dog brings in bigger stuff. He brings in deer or elk bones, bags of food he pilfers out of the garbage can or whatever forest animal slow enough for him to kill.  Once in a while we find squirrels without their heads in the living room and figure the dog had another busy afternoon thinning the local squirrel herd. If he tucks his treasure in under the couch, we don't see it right away and after a few days it gets to smelling like holy hell.

The smell that hit me this time was different. This one smelled like an ammonia factory explosion, so I got down on my hands and knees and started to crawl around with my nose to the carpet, looking for where the cat pee was. I spent forty five minutes on all fours smelling the carpet. Nothin.

I tried again the next day. Same deal, hands and knees, sniffing the carpet. Nothin. I gave up. Then about three days go by and the smell hits me again. It made my eyes water. I wandered around doing the hotter/colder thing until I was able to triangulate the smell down to the laundry room.

My running shoes live in the laundry room between runs. They get wet and muddy and I don't want to track mud into the living room so I jamb them under the leaky sink in the laundry room when they aren't in use. My yard shoes go in there too. After my recent bout of aroma sleuthing, I realized that both pairs of shoes could have been launched as primary weapons in the WWI mustard gas attacks. The garbage guy comes on Monday, but I don't think I can wait that long, so I might make a special shoe disposal trip to the dump tomorrow.

My dog stinks too. He gets in the lake twenty to thirty times a day, so he never dries out. He is wet twenty four hours a day. I think he has a yeast infection. I called and booked an appointment this afternoon with an OBGYN to get my dog the right meds.

Since my race is less than thirty days away, I need to order up my shoes today. I have to plan my shoe purchases a couple weeks ahead because my size thirteen double E can only be found online or at the local feed store between the shovels and the garden gnomes.

I took a farewell run today in my smelly shoes, four miles with the dog. Felt good, no knee pain. Tomorrow I bike to the stump. The new shoes should be here next week.