#StinkyDog #HappyEaster #Skunked #Mindset #Awareness #Options #SkunkStink #Lesson #Learn #Life #Clean

by SHAWN TRAUTMAN @shawntrautman

Easter dinner this year with my parents was extraordinarily delicious and everyone and everything looked amazing.

Oh and the smells… Can’t you just smell it? My goodness, if only you could.

If so, your nose would have taken in all sorts of mouth-watering aromas.

The grill was fired up and laid flame to a couple dozen Savory burgers, thick sliced summer squash, and a plethora of hot dogs. Inside, homemade greek potato salad had been hand mashed with all the fresh spring flavors & greens to boot, and freshly baked carrot cake from scratch.

If only we could.

Huh?

Well, what you don’t know is that we’d all just finished laughing about an incident that had happened some 8 hours earlier. A quite peculiar series of events that, well, stunk.

—> Important story note: my parent’s dog is named “Lady”. Follow along as best you can. <— Somewhere around 10am yesterday morning my dad was out with his Lady friend. His Lady friend struck up a conversation with a mixed-race carnivorous mammal. My dad’s Lady friend is nearly blind and wanted to take a closer look at the unique features associated with her new friend. This was the first mistake. My dad’s Lady is not very big, and she’s very white. So, when a she lunged at her new mixed-race friend, it was deemed offensive. As such, Lady’s new friend took a defensive posture. Lady’s coat went from white to a yellowish-green in a matter of a second as a noxious odor from well-developed scent glands covered her from head to toe. Here comes the second mistake. My dad sees his Lady friend getting hazed by her new sorority sister and decides to intervene. This was not my dad’s smartest move. I’d consider him pretty wise, but wisdom usually comes from experience. He had NO experience that helped his decisions here. An experienced person would have backed up quickly and isolated the problem. Now, not only is his Lady using colorful (mostly green and yellow) language, my dad joins the party. As he jumps in to save his Lady friend (again, it wasn’t his fight and this isn’t advised), he finds himself in the middle of a fire-hose he knows very little about. My dad’s hat, shirt, arms, shorts, legs, socks, and shoes all get hit as he scoops up his Lady as she was a real-life damsel in distress. Mistake number three. My dad, with a Lady in his arms, chooses to walk back in the door where he came from. He walked through the girls’ art room. Then through the music room. Then through the entire bottom floor. Then up the 19 stairs and through the hallway to the laundry room. Then past the pantry and dining room to find his way to the kitchen. You know how in cartoons where there’s a visual of a green squiggly line portraying a smell floating in the wind continuously behind something like a skunk? Yeah, well, apparently this is a fairly real depiction of real life. The not-so-pleasant aroma leapt off of my dad and his Lady and decided simply linger and attach itself to anything and everything it could. My dad clearly had choices. He has a phone. We have doors and windows to knock on. He had a support crew that could’ve taken care of everything for him outside. A fear many hunters have is when their dog is being chased by something, say a bear, or a pack of wolves, and runs straight back to you for protection. It’s at that very moment when you want nothing to do with it. “No, no, no. Don’t come to me. Go anywhere else!” Well, yesterday, my dad was “that guy” and Joanna, when she saw and realized what was happening was “that hunter”. “Get out!” she said, nicely (was it though?), in her most loving manner filled with hand gestures and facial contortions until such time as a plan was put into place. Mind you, my dad may have temporarily lost his ability to smell anything. You know how some people think their shit doesn’t stink? Well, that might truly be the case. It could be their body’s own protections kicking in. My dad walked from person to person asking “can you smell anything?” only to find a bowling-pin-like reaction of nearly knocking people down. Mistake number four. After showering and getting all cleaned up, my dad comes back up to the kitchen and is telling stories when I mention that I keep getting strong whiff of the smell in short bursts. Those short bursts coincide with his movements and whenever he’d walk by it would happen again. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math here, so I launched into a new investigation. Turns out, my dad (the one who’s temporarily lost his smell but doesn’t know it), showered & got cleaned up but put the shorts he was wearing BACK ON since he couldn’t see anything on them nor did they smell (to him). Mistake number five. At this point, every window and door in the house is open and all fans are on super-duty trying to push the stink aroma back outdoors while the wind has other plans. Mind you, the original “incident” happened a mere 10 feet from a door downstairs and, if you’ve ever been around the floating-in-air stink storm you’d know that it doesn’t just stay in one place. Well, that door, right next to the strike zone, was opened to air out. I don’t know who’s brilliant idea this was, but it “backfired” as it let in much more than it let out. We probably could have done without the additional “infringement”, but nonetheless, we didn’t. Mistake number six. A couple of hours have gone by and our house is heating up (it’s nearly 75 out and gorgeous). Well, our air yesterday was set to 68, so it was running the whole time. I bet you’re already shaking your head knowing where this is going. Yep, well, we didn’t. I happened to find myself next to one of our vents when I felt cold air gently caress my face (normal) and then it slapped me (not normal) with a full-on power punch of that same smell. It was now being recirculated throughout the house as the intakes had been doing their job, but this time we wished they had called in sick. Who knew we should have turned the air off? Yeah, probably you. Mistake number seven. When showering last night we were smart and got freshly folded towels from the laundry room. After a nice cleansing and refresh of my senses, I dried off only to find myself smelling the towel and nearly turning green myself. That smell that I mentioned earlier... you know, the one that “leapt” off of things. Yeah, well, it landed on my damn towel. And, now, I find myself drying every part of my body with the same stink bomb perfume that I just scrubbed off of me. Back to the shower and back to using the previously unacceptable, but now perfectly fine, old towel to dry off with. Perfect. And that was it. That’s the extent of how our day went. Do you see the mistakes now? The thing is, I’m not at all mad. Amused? Absolutely. It’s funny and odd at the same time. It’s easy to reflect and wonder “what was he thinking?” Or “what were we thinking?”, but that’s what happens when you don’t know what you don’t know. Turns out, the black and white issues we all deal with might not be the issue. It may just be that we don’t all know what to do once we get sprayed by the media’s fire-hose of stinky information. Were there lessons in this? Many! Are we all better prepared for the “next time”? Certainly. Will we make the same mistakes again? Who knows!?!? Can you laugh at the descriptions and not be offended? Hopefully so. It’ll really stink for me if if someone can’t find the humor in it. Is it a good story though? You be the judge. (in other words, comment and let me know)[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label="Social Share" _builder_version="4.7.7" _module_preset="default" global_module="248243" saved_tabs="all"]

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