And a very odiferous day to you too, sir!
After tucking Mom in bed last Friday, I was relaxing on the back porch, basking in the receding colors of the sunset, with a glass of wine on one side and a loyal dog on the other. The peace of the night was suddenly shattered by a rapid-fire, high-pitched clamor emanating from a previously sleepy-eyed Barnaby Bones as he barreled head first into a hydrangea bush at the far corner of the yard.
Before I had time to give a loud roar of admonishment, Mr. Bones came racing back, his enraged bark now carrying a distinctively shrill note of "What the hell?" in its tone.
Barnaby Bones had met his first skunk. Or what he likes to call...
The WORST cat ever!
Poor Mr. Bones. That skunk had clearly been saving up the goods - Barnaby was soaked. We immediately tossed him in the utility sink and got to work with various home remedies. All to no avail. After 45-minutes he was no longer desperately trying to wipe the skunk oil off his snout, but he still stunk.
There was no way he was going to be taking his customary place next to me in bed later, so, a dejected Barnaby Bones slept in pink purgatory that night.
Mom had slumbered through the ordeal but must have woke the next morning with her dementia-sense tingling - there's an interloper in our midst! A challenger to her title of Miss Most Malodorous! At least, that is how I explain to myself what happened next.
(Well, that and my laziness...)
I heard Mom moving about around 7:30 a.m., but was so tired I thought to myself, "Just 10 more minutes, then I'll get up. How much damage can she do in 10 minutes?"
Stupid, stupid girl.
An hour later my eyes popped open much more refreshed, but puzzled at an unwrapped Hershey's Kiss sitting next to my pillow upon which my head lay. "Who's been hiding the Hershey's Kisses?" I thought to myself with a pouty huff. But before I could work myself up into a real lather and tear the house apart looking for the unjustly concealed confections, Mom distracted me by shuffling by the bedroom door trailing what appeared to be every blanket in the linen closet behind her.
And in her wake the blankets appeared to be smearing chocolate on the carpet. And suddenly a smell that didn't smell like freshly washed blankets from the linen closet crashed into me. And I immediately snapped my attention back to that naked little Hershey's Kiss placed in such close proximity to my face as if it a vengeful act against a sleeping daughter.
It was then that I realized Mom's turn-down service was never gonna yield much in tips upon check-out. In fact, she better hope there's no customer feedback cards anywhere in the vicinity!
It took about an hour, and two of us, to wipe up, wipe down, disinfect, and sanitize Mom and all surfaces in the house as it seemed she had spent the time I was catching up on my shut-eye touching EVERYTHING! My cleaning cohort, The Boyfriend in the Basement, stuck with me until it came time to decontaminate Mom via shower. He made a hasty retreat, but she and I soldiered on, getting through it with only a little bit of yelling.
Don't tell Mom but I do believe Barnaby Bones unseated her on this round, seizing the Mister Most Malodorous crown for himself. By mid-day the house was pretty much free from the aroma of Mom's ambitious entry, while Mr. Bones spent the next three nights all on his own.
From all of us at Stumped Town Dementia we hope your dementia journey
is currently smelling like roses!
p.s. This isn't the first time our neighborhood skunks have applied for Stumped Town Dementia citizenship. At least this time we were smart enough not to involve the authorities!