Never a dull moment these days!

As if the moldy shower episode wasn't enough for our household, we had another crazy episode last night! This time it involves an ink pen.

Robbie asked me to throw in some of his work clothes into the laundry last night so that he would have clean work shirts to wear today. No big deal, just toss 'em in. I never check pockets when I do laundry because I never carry anything in my pockets. That is what a purse is for. Funny though, last night I just happened to check the pants pockets of all the clothes and found nothing. So the laundry proceeded as usual.

Hearing the washer beep to tell me it was done, I just tossed all the wet clothes into the dryer and headed back upstairs to enjoy more wallpaper removing. (yes, it has been 9 months since the wallpaper removal process began...but don't even go there...our house is covered in almost every room!) About an hour or so later the dryer beeped to let me know it was done drying our clothes. The devastation occurs next.

I open the dryer door to find blue ink EVERYWHERE! Not streaks, or spots. We are talking full on blue tint of the whole inside of the dryer with large streaks of dark blue. It was like a toilet bowl exploded. I just stood there asking, "Really? Is this really happening to the moldy shower people? Come on! Seriously?!"

At first I wanted to cry because this washer and dryer set aren't even a year old, and they were a house warming gift from my parents. Then my mind focused on trying to remove as much ink as possible to prevent future loads of laundry from being ruined. As for the clothes in the dryer, almost everything had ink on it in some capacity. We found out that the ink pen came from Robbie's work shirt. I feel terrible for not catching it, and Robbie feels terrible for leaving it in there. I immediately doused the clothes in "Shout" to soak overnight. But even the label says that ink is unlikely to come out. So if anyone knows how to get ink out of clothes, let me know please!

The task at hand turned to cleaning the dryer. Nothing was working. I tried every cleaner I had. By this time I had developed quite the high from using these chemicals while stuffing the top half of my body in the dryer. I even had an oscillating fan on at the mouth of the dryer. Then it came to me--I've used fingernail polish remover to remove permanent marker...it's gotta work! I climbed the stairs and grabbed all my little bottles of remover and a fresh roll of paper towels. Success! The dryer is definitely still covered in ink marks, but not nearly as bad.

As I am about done using the fingernail polish remover, the warning label on the outside of the dryer catches my attention. "Do not use any sort of flammable material or vapor inside or near the dryer. This could cause fires, explosion, or death." Holy crap what did I just do? Use only the most flammable liquid known to man all over the inside of the dryer. I am really trying to prove my intelligence these days.

I panicked in a big way, and by now I'm literally sweating. I rushed upstairs (believing that I could prevent the nail polish remover from soaking in somehow...can it soak into metal???) to grab a huge pail of soapy water. Most of my body is in the dryer by now trying to scrub every inch of the dryer, even the parts where I know I didn't put nail polish remover. I'm soaking wet. There are suds all over the dryer, the floor, and in my hair. This process lasted for 2 hours as I quadruple washed every inch of the dryer.

That night as I tried going to bed all I could envision was waking up in the middle of the night trying to break out of our bedroom window as our house was ablaze in a fiery inferno. Would I have time to grab Belle? Would I have time to grab non-replaceable things? So dramatic, but these were the things buzzing in my brain.

After a weak sleep I went downstairs to check out the dryer. The time had come to use it. I needed to wash and dry the inked clothes. Before I put the clothes in the dryer I sniffed around in there to check for "flammable vapors". None. So I proceeded to toss all the clothes in with all of my hopes and fears. I seriously considered using a broom or something to press the start button so that I could be as far away as possible in case of immediate incineration. But I ended up pressing the start button and running for my life.

I am happy to report that the house is still standing and the dryer worked just fine. For the first 20 minutes I jumped at every noise. I am not so happy to report that the ink in the clothes didn't really wash out, but my expectations weren't high.

It all seems so silly and ridiculous now. But it makes me wonder what would have happened if I chose not to be obsessive-compulsive about washing it with soap and water.

Quick! Grab the Haz-Mat suits out of the front closet!

This story is sort of embarrassing to share with the general public, but we must share tales of our newlywed life right? This weekend a really awesome friend of ours is coming to stay for a week in honor of our other best friends' wedding. Knowing that we want the best place to offer for many of our friends who will be stopping by, we have been on ultra-cleaning duty for the week. We're talking about dusting window sills, scrubbing the floors, and polishing our fake wood furniture.

I literally have a schedule of cleaning to get done by Saturday. Among other items, today's agenda included an attack on the bathrooms. I hate to use the word attack from the start, because we are generally tidy people and the bathrooms were not all that bad.

For some background information here, I need to tell you that when we first moved into our house we primarily used the master bathroom attached to our bedroom. All was fine and dandy except the shower plumbing was starting to get tricky. The shower head began leaking water even after the nozzle was turned off. It was getting so annoying that we had to keep the bathroom door shut at night. Robbie was annoyed by the sound, while I was annoyed by the thought of wasting so much water. (ask Robbie how it drives me kaaa-razy when he brushes his teeth with the water running!) After a trip to the hardware store that brags about helping you fix your house, we thought we had fixed the leaky shower head.

All was fine for about a week, then the water pressure went to almost non-existent. We are talking weaker than pouring water out of a bottle. With no time to fix it, we just moved our shower routine to the guest bathroom. Until then, we had never used the guest shower. Why walk further than 10 feet from the bed? This is quite a task at 5am! We were over-joyed with the discovery that the guest bathroom shower had water pressure like a power washer. Soon our memories of the master bathroom shower were sprayed away.

Fast-forward roughly 4 months to today. The last time we used our master bathroom for showering (circa mid-April) we just closed the shower doors and left it at that. "We will try to fix the water pressure later, it's fine for now" is what we said. Famous last words.

I opened the shower doors today and almost had a heart attack. I sat on the nearby toilet (lid closed thank you!) pondering how we used this bathroom for everything but showering for this long without getting sick. Apparently the shower head had a very tiny water leak...not loud enough to notice...but enough to have stagnant water on the floor of the shower. There was pink mold. Brown mold. Black mold. You-name-the-color-mold all over the floor of the shower and the tiles closest to the floor. I was so appalled because even though the shower doors are frosty clear, you couldn't notice anything from the outside of the shower. No smell. Nothing.

Wishing I had a Haz-Mat suit, I prepared for battle. Elbow high rubber gloves? Check. Every kind of antibacterial/bleach chemical known to man? Check. Hazardous waste container? Check. Exhaust fan turned on? Check. Disposable cleaning cloths? Check. Face mask? Thought of this one afterwards.

After carefully and thoroughly cleaning out the shower floor I scrubbed my arms (even though I wore gloves) and changed clothes. Ugh. How did we not notice that? More importantly--who can we get to help us fix that leak!? My mind started thinking about mold and its potential dangers. Then I realized my best friend who is coming to stay with us this weekend just had a horrible experience with mold. Oh crap.

My friend just moved out of a house that experienced what we did with our shower...except on a house-wide scale. They had an unknown leak in their plumbing throughout the foundation of the house. Both my friend and her father got pneumonia from the mold exposure. As a result my friend has terrible asthma now. It has been making her pregnancy quite uncomfortable and a concern for the baby getting enough oxygen. Thankfully it hasn't been too bad recently. The doctor even had some reservations about her flying because of it.

Our shower mold is nowhere near the scale of what happened at her house, and it is cleaned up now. But it really makes me wonder if we escaped getting sick from our mold, or if cleaning it today with the exhaust fan going has exposed me to some crazy mold spores. I doubt it. I soaked that floor really well before I even started scrubbing. Time will only tell.

I'm supposed to be impressed?

I am so tired of those fast food commercials that are trying to impress you into thinking their food is unbelievably amazing or something. I'm talking about the commercials where they have a "hidden camera" set up on customers who they think are experiencing delicate french desserts or 5 star gourmet hamburgers, and after a costume change and an unexpected, "Look how dumb you are" speech from an actor, find out that they were really snacking on fast food.

What are they trying to prove? That their food is so incredible it tastes expensive and cultured? All they are showing is that people are products of their environment. Of course the people in the commercial (who could easily be you or I) are going to believe that the chocolate dessert sticks are French because they are asked to sample a stick from a "French speaking Chef" inside some sort of fancy restaurant that looks eerily similar to The Ivy restaurant. How could you expect anyone to suspect otherwise?

All those commercials are telling me is that their marketing payroll department must not be high on the priority list.

What is up with all the new World/Olympic records?

Every evening the past week or so, like millions of other Americans, we have been watching the Olympics in awe. We are amazed for many reasons watching different sporting events. It seems like each sport is experiencing new records and athletes are performing outside the box like never before. So everyone is asking, "Why are so many records being broken?"

The spotlight for this question is undoubtdly focused on the miracles occuring in the "Water Cube". Is Micheal Phelps truly a machine? Or is the new technology the reason for his success? The answer is yes. Micheal Phelps (and Company!)is a remarkable athlete whose hardwork and dedication is magnified by the advances in technology.

So I did the right thing and searched the almighty internet for the answer to our question. After reading lots of articles and blogs, I felt that this blog did a great job of answering our question.

The news of the Swedish wrestler who threw is bronze medal on the floor is completely appalling. I understand the frustrations that come with losing (or the shady politics of the judges' scoring according to this wrestler). All I ask is for him to look past his pride and gaze upon a true Olympian who deserves to compete on this level.

During the swimming re-cap, a bit of attention was brought to a swimmer from the Republic of Congo. He walked out with the rest of the swimmers to compete in his heat, only he had his giant beach towel slug over his shoulder. He didn't have a fancy warm-up outfit on. Just the desire to compete for his country. Having never competed on this level before, he had to look to his competitors to learn how to set himself up on the starting blocks. Visibly shaking from the excitement and nerves, he jumped in and did fantastic. Even though he finished last and some 14 seconds slower than the winner, no one had to even mention the fact that he had already won.

The Stink Smelled Round the Block

This afternoon I was tired of watching Robbie play the Wii, so I decided to play outside with our dog Belle. As soon as I walked out to our back porch I was immediately knocked over by a rancid smell. (Just even thinking about it makes it filter through my nostrils again)

My first thought was that it had rained a bunch the night before, so it could be some sort of rotting plant life. But this smell was beyond anything I could imagine rotting. So my eyes were skimming the backyard for some sort of clue, and I noticed a big brown rock that had not been there before.

In our backyard, there is a place under these huge overgrown bushes of ours that Belle likes to sleep. She is all about having a "cave" of some sort to sleep in. Inside the house she sleeps under our computer table or under our foot stool. Outside she sleeps under the bushes or under the covered part of our porch while sticking her face out through a wall.

The big brown rock was tucked under the overgrown bushes in Belle's "cave". One step closer in that direction sent an immediate signal to the brain: the smell was coming from the big brown rock. By now a quite obvious signal was present: a swarm of flies. Upon further squinting I realized that the big brown rock was a deceased animal of sorts. After some consultation with Robbie and his friend Nate, we decided it was a groundhog.

Like any concerned parent I started to freak out about how long it had been there, because I was afraid Belle may have been exposed to some strange diseases. Fortunately it was all still in one piece, so Belle didn't mess with it in any measureable way. We don't know if she killed it and then brought it back to her "cave" or if the groundhog had just crawled there to die in the blazing heat.

Now the issue of removing the putrid carcass was at hand. I was all about calling the animal control people and having them do the removal and disposal, but Robbie and Nate decided to just shovel it into a trashbag and throw it out with the trash. The thing was so huge they had to use a snow shovel to scoop it. Robbie double tied the trash bag and put the poor thing in our garbage can.

So instead of our backyard smelling like sizzling heat-death, the whole front yard including our garage was infected with the smell. There was nooooo way we could wait until Friday morning for the trash truck to haul that thing away. The smell would have permeated into our cars and who knows what else by then. So I called the animal control people and they said they could come by to dispose of it.

You know its bad when the person who scrapes up road kill for a living says that the smell is unbearable. He graciously put the unlucky groundhog into his truck and took him away. Now our garage and trash can are open to air out the smell...which I think is going to be around for a while.

You know how smell is the quickest link to memory? I hope I never have to smell anything like that ever again!