Way back in early December, there was this smell. It was sour in nature, but easily remedied by lighting my Yankee Holly Berry candle, which I did religiously each morning. Other than that, I didn’t stress. I didn’t even spend much mental energy on The Smell. Perhaps my lack of concern was related to the simple fact that living with four members of the male species provides me with an intimate understanding that sour is not the worst smell in the vast smell repertoire.
By the time my in-laws arrived for Christmas, the The Smell was downright embarrassing, and quite possibly a health hazard. The Wonder Hub and his Wonder Dad set out to locate the stench, and in a relatively short period of time, found the culprit.
(Pretend I found and inserted here pictures of dead, decaying mouse, to include WH removing little buddy with my kitchen tongs and simultaneously realizing that our friend still contained…juice. )
Gaagg.
The smell was horrific. It brought to mind every single tv/movie rendition of a newbie cop at the scene of his or her first decaying body…and made me realize that every single rendition had likely been under-acted. It was beyond horrific. How one little dead dude could create that much odor is beyond me. In fact, the smell of mouse juice exceeded any previous mouse smell by such a great degree that we had no choice but to leave the house and take a week-long cruise to the Bahamas.
It was a hardship, to be sure.
We returned on Christmas Day to a mostly smell-free home and carried on with our lives.
In mid-January, I started smelling The Smell again.
In February, the Wonder Hub (finally smelling what I smelled) joyfully and with an inordinately calm spirit (ahem) removed the garbage disposal from under the sink and cleaned it thoroughly.*
It was full of a dark sludge he repeatedly (and obnoxiously) referred to as Pâté.
*I was really busy that night, and couldn’t help.
In early March, we removed all the kitchen lights to see if a mouse had died in the ceiling. We (and by we I mean the WH) cleaned dishwasher lines and traps and whatever else you clean to make a dishwasher smell better.
In late March, we took everything out of the kitchen cupboards to see if a mouse had given up the ghost there. Finally, one desperate night, I convinced the Wonder Hub to pull the dishwasher from its housing under the counter….and voila!
Standing water and black, black, horrendously smelly mold.
What happened next included dudes in Hazmat suits tearing out ruined cupboards and flooring before applying numerous toxic-smelling, throat-searing, black-mold-spore-killing chemicals to the general area. They left industrial-sized, conversation-prohibiting fans with enormous HEPA filters running in the house for 24 hours..
It was really fun. When they came back to collect their gear, we kindly asked them to hook up the dead dishwasher so that we could have hot water in the kitchen. They obliged before going on their merry way.
The very next morning, I smelled it. The Wonder Hub had a cold, and didn’t. The dude who came to lay new tile and put in new cabinets didn’t. They both thought I was nuts when I sent the tile dude away and asked my Hazmat buddies to come back. Which they gladly did. They happily tore out more cabinets and more flooring and more drywall…
and found nothing. While I was at a bit of a loss, I knew what I smelled, and I knew I was not going to have my brand new kitchen installed on top of black mold or mouse juice or whatever it was that was now stinking to highest heaven. I stood my ground. Finally, on the glorious three week anniversary of the Black Mold Discovery, the Wonder Hub’s nose cleared. Hallelujah, he smelled it!
What happened next could have been written into a sitcom script. I picture Will and Grace:
The Wonder Hub stands in one area of the kitchen, I stand in another, and he calls out urgently (and perhaps a little louder than absolutely necessary),
“CAN YOU SMELL IT?”
Then we both move, as fluidly as dancers, to different areas of the kitchen (and surrounding rooms, as The Smell has now officially breached the perimeter), and– one of us with a head in the sink, the other balancing precariously on one leg– freeze in position…
“CAN YOU SMELL IT NOW?”
We do this on and off for some time, both freezing instantly when the other yells, “I SMELL IT!” while the Monkey sits idly by, sipping on juice and periodically flashing his best are you kidding me? look, when all of a sudden, we hear a
BEEP!
The Wonder Hub whips around and stares at me. “WHAT.WAS.THAT?” I make my eyes big in response and put a finger to my mouth. We hold our awkward positions in absolute stillness and wait…and wait…and wait…
BEEP!
The dead and defunct dastardly dishwasher! All inertia forgotten, the Wonder Hub may or may not utter a teeny-tiny expletive that may or may not curse all future generations of anyone dumb enough to run the dead, defunct, dastardly, LEAKING dishwasher, while simultaneously throwing open its door.
AAAAAHHH! We stumble backward as The Smell hits us like a Mac truck doing 80. In the 3.5 seconds it takes the Wonder Hub to slam and lock the dishwasher door, I catch a glimpse of several inches of murky-colored standing water in what very well may be the largest, smelliest Petri dish on earth.
As quickly as we could manage, we* unhooked the hot water and dragged the smelly, mold-filled dishwasher out to the garage and placed it next to the new, bright and shiny dishwasher, patiently waiting for Julio to find the time to come back to lay new tile, build new cabinets, hook that bad boy up, and bring this particular saga to a blessed, stench-free close.
*you know
.
