Who said Monday was the Worst Day?

Bad smells bother me. Out of all my senses, sometimes I think it's the one hardest for me to ignore. I can overlook a messy house, tune out whining kids, push pain to the back of my mind and swallow down something nasty, if I have to. But bad smells... it's like being accosted every time you take a breath. I am not a mouth breather. To me there are three sorts of heath issues: painful ones, ones that make you vomit and ones that stuff up your nose. I have the same level of response to each one. I simply cannot fall asleep unless I can breathe out of at least one nostril. Sadly, though, this leaves me rather handicapped when it comes to bad smells. I have no choice but to smell them.

At some point, some cat peed somewhere on my living room rug. Either that or one of my kids has a serious kidney issue. In any case, the first sense that registered this morning was my sense of smell and the first scent I sniffed was cat pee. This is not a happy way to wake up. This is actually worse than my previous two worst smells to wake up to: vomit and poop.

I'd worked all day yesterday on cleaning this rug. I borrowed a steam cleaner from my parents and ran it through with Dreft detergent, Spray and Wash, Arm and Hammer something or other, Fabreeze, vinegar, and a $75 cleaner that I bought from a traveling salesman. Nothing worked. The smell just seemed to get worse overnight.

Initially it was so bad this morning I thought there'd been another peeing incident somewhere right below our bathroom window. (Which would be the front door, which is where another puddle of pee smell was lurking.) I hauled the kids out the door at quarter of nine so to be at Petco when they unlocked their doors to buy a specialized Cat Pee Odor Eliminator called Nature's Miracle.

(This is where the third of my morning's insults happened. The second was that I found out the email account that I CLOSED last week was sending out spam. The third was that, for some unknown reason, my van thinks the drivers side rear door is ajar and dings incessantly the ENTIRE time I am driving. It's really quite headache inducing and not the sort of thing one wants to hear when one has been smelling cat pee all morning.)

I purchased my miracle at Petco, stopped at Ace for lime to pour around the perimeter of the house (at which the van dinged the entire time we were in the store, despite the fact that the van was off, the key was out and all the doors were shut) and came home to the blessing of a quiet and curse of a stinky house.

I spent all day cleaning. I sprayed, I scrubbed, I vacuumed, I steam cleaned, I mopped, I laundered, I wiped, I scrubbed, I sprayed some more. At the end of the day I carried the rug outside and draped it over the kid's playhouse because it stunk so bad I was getting a headache and my throat was starting to close up. (This could be a result of all the chemical compounds as well, but the point is: THE RUG STILL STINKS.)

Here's the good news: We have 30 new fish as a result of our trip to Petco. All my floors have been mopped at least once, most of them multiple times. Some of my living room windows have been washed, one of them inside AND out. The house no longer stinks. It's 7:00 and I can now put all my kids (and myself) to bed.