The News from Withering Heights: The Skunkening

 

SKUNK?

We have had a lot and I mean a LOT of stuff going on at Withering Heights of late, and thus my absence. 

Between the unending loads of laundry, which are washed with care and must be carefully folded - Cookie is not a clothes horse, but we buy high-quality basics - my care has provided them with a long shelf life.  I just hate buying clothes and then having to replace them shortly thereafter. And then daily chores of hunting and gathering, there has just been a lot going on. 

The Great Covid Scare of 2024.  We had family come in from the West Coast, and that called for a family gathering.  While great fun was had, and family gossip was shared ("Wait, he told his daughter what?"), also passed around was COVID.  So the husband and I laid low, masked, kept our distance from people, tested, and somehow only four people from that gathering didn't get sick, and I am relieved to report that we were half of that foursome that didn't get it.  People were so effing sick.  Thank god that recovered and thank God no one ended up in the hospital or at death's door.

Work Stress.  There has been a lot of work stress in this house.  Suffice it to say that we are eagerly looking forward to retirement. 

Local Travel.  Cookie has tried to give the husband a continued look around NE Ohio, and he seems to love every moment. Let me amend that to read at least I think that he is.  No comments like "Just now where do you want to drag me to," haven't been heard aloud and it is in good spirits. 

Reconnecting.  I have been reconnecting with old friends that we have missed since leaving Ohio. One such serendipitously happened last week in Columbus. This friend is someone I have known since OSU and it seems all strange that one minute were young and talking about career paths, and now we are talking about what we hope to do in retirement. 

Doctors, dentists, oral surgeons, and therapists, oh my!  Cookie now finds that I have a calendar that is nothing but medical appointments.  There is still post-surgical blood work to make sure the cancer has not spread.  Then there is the therapist that urologist said I needed to deal with ongoing post-surgical issues.  The therapist is handsome and makes my heart flutter-flutter, but he is there for my mind not as a sex surrogate. Besides, I look at my husband and I love him more today than I did when we first got together way back when.

On the dental front, we are trying to repair damage that happened way back in the summer of 1970 when a bicycle accident nearly knocked my front teeth. Well, 54 years later, one fractured and snapped out, so what was left had to be removed, and now we hope the other one holds until I can pay for a second implant. It has been painful and expensive. 

The Skunkening.  Our neighborhood is very wooded.  And one thing that never happened to us before happened the other night.  The dogs have been stirring at about 3am for the past month.  But what they have been smelling is the scent of a Skunk, or multiple skunks.  How were we to know.  They're old, we thought they, like other men in their golden years needed to pee in the middle of the night. Well, yesterday morning we discovered what a dog who has been sprayed by skunk smells like.  And it was Kevin who got it.   The odor is a cross between burnt coffee, rubber, and burning tires.  And it gets worse with each inhale.  We started giving him baths with Dawn dishwasher detergent at 4am.  

By six AM we needed something more. The American Kennel Club had a recipe for a concoction comprised of a quart of hydrogen peroxide, a half cup of baking soda, and a tablespoon full of Dawn to break down the skunk odor oils.  The Wal-Mart on Warrensville Center Road is a scary place at 6AM, because it isn't well stocked, and it's not well organized.  It certainly isn't "clean". And the people like me who shop there out of necessary deserve better.  Anyway, the homebrew worked reasonably well, but Kevin needs a day of beauty.  Poor little stinker.

WARNING! NEVER, and I mean NEVER make this up and put it up on a container so you have it on hand should you need this.  Everyone, from web sites to my high school chemistry teacher, AND including our vet says it creates an unstable and dangerous compound that can explode. Wash what you don't use down the drain immediately. You have been warned, and admonished, and Cookie assumes no responsibility if you don't follow that instruction.  People, just make it fresh, period.

So that, and even more stuff, is what Cookie has been up to.