Smell

So, the skunk smell is still strong in the house even after all the work we put into de-stinkifying everything. Yesterday pretty much sucked. I washed Loki 4 times and Piper 10 times. Piper still stinks. My house: we deoderized all of the carpets, baked spices, boiled Wassail all day, make cookies, put out baking soda, coffee grounds and Renuzits, and washed all the couch cushion covers and sprayed down the couches with Febreeze and hubby got the expensive air filters for the house that are supposed to keep odor out...and it STILL stinks! I was reintroduced to the odor when I returned from the library this morning. I didn't think it was bad until I walked into it again. My nephew is spending the day with us and when Becky dropped him off I asked them if it smelled. They both looked at me like they were sorry that it smelled so bad! ugh.

Loki and Piper were washed in a bath of baking soda, vinegar, peroxide, soap and I added NoMos (no more odor, no more stains - can't find a website to link to) to the mix. Left it on for 10 minutes, rinsed and then washed with a deoderant dog soap. Poor Piper was washed with a ton of vinegar and is probably not feeling so well today. Vinegar is supposed to really help pull out the stink.

From what I have been told over and over again is the skunk smell stays in the house for a few weeks...some say even a month. I guess skunk oils are pretty potent and need to be neutralized (?). The smelly enzymes or whatever the heck they are don't just dissolve and go away. WTF?! This is such crap, but what am I supposed to do? Have a smelly house, I guess. It is so awful, and I hope P, E and I don't smell when we go out. :)

Cloth diapering update:

I bought a bumGenius 3.0 diaper from Wildflower Diapers. They offer a money back guarantee within 14 days. I figure by then I will know if I like it, have washed it and hopefully experience pees and poos in it to see how it performs. It will be a good indication, as well, as to my dedication to doing laundry every day/every 2 days. I should be doing laundry that frequently anyhow...and maybe this will help me get used to doing laundry more often...or at least not loathing it. I think once we have the basement done I will actually like doing laundry and ironing because I'll have a nice new laundry room to do it in. Right now I think it is drudgery because it is just exposed drywall and cement floors.

I am super syked to start CDing and am probably driving my friends who do it nuts with questions. But, from what I read, people who CD love to talk about it. Hopefully that is true!

Skunk?!

Last night Piper killed a skunk. It was HORRIBLE, and still is HORRIBLE. The smell is stuck in our house, mainly because the smell is in the air and is coming through our vents and also because I let Loki in and didn't know she had been sprayed. UGH!!!

We went to my parent's house for some 4th left-overs and were both really tired. P has been up for the passed three nights in the middle of the night crying and then the baby is still up, so we were just plain tired. We thought oh, get the kiddos in their pj's at Gammies' house and then come home, put them to bed and then crash. Well...it didn't quite work out that way. I let the dogs out, as usual, when we got home. Well, when I went outside to let Loki in Piper wouldn't come to me. My gut feeling was that he was killing an animal. I was right. Last time it was a baby raccoon, and this time worse, a stinkin' skunk. It was pitch black so all I could do was hear Piper making these weird sounds which made me think it might not have been him that won the battle. I ran in and grabbed the flashlight, I wasn't about to go out there without being able to see my enemy. As I got closer I could hear Piper and see him. He was savage. It was foul.

I ran in and grabbed hubby from putting P down and asked him to go out there. He came back in and told me that Piper had killed a skunk and that the dog was making sure it was dead. That was the noise: Piper's death dance. YUCK.

So, we got back inside and determined that Piper had to sleep outside. He smelled worse than anything I have ever smelled before. It was like a mixture of sewage, super strong onions and that putrid hit-by-a-car skunk smell. Hubby put on gloves and grabbed bags to get the skunk - we dumped him in the dumpster at the school....shame on us, but we couldn't have that revolting stentch in our garage trash can. Besides, the kids are out for the summer. While hubby was disposing of the carcus, I was frantically in search of ways to clean the dogs and get the smell out of the house. All I wanted to do was scream obscentities at the situation, but I couldn't wake the kids. :)

Well, when hubby got back from his little errand, we came to the conclusion Loki was the reason the house smelled so bad...and, she was laying on the couch downstairs. I swore I couldn't smell it on her. I think because it was so potent that she just blended in with the eminating stentch. I immediately took her upstairs for a bath in a mixture I found on a forum and then washed her down with deoderizing shampoo, baby shampoo and then used my Aveda Rosemary Mint on her. We put her crate together and she is still in it. I am afraid to let her out - what if that smell is laying in the grass and she rolls in it. But, I don't want to stand outside because it smells horrible out there.

This makes for such a lovely day. I had thoughts of getting rid of Piper when E was born for the ease of having just one dog to take care of, plus Piper had a hard time adjusting to the new baby and I was annoyed with his weird dogginess...now I really want to get rid of him. Hubby thinks I am mean, but now I have to take care of his mess instead of my kids' messes and that just makes me angry.