Monday, October 12, 2009

Painting Butterflies

WORK IN PROGRESS Butterfly painting


After a couple of weeks of thunderstormy weather, I was so looking forward to the perfect fall weather that was predicted for this week: 4 or 5 days of partly cloudy to sunny skies, highs in the 70's, lows in the 50's. Luverly.

But it didn't happen. It's been raining and raining and raining. And then this morning it rained some more. And now they’re saying we’re in for 4 or 5 more days of this. Bummer.

Plus we have this terrible rotten smell in our laundry room that started weak and has grown strong and is very yukky and we can't tell where it's coming from. We moved the washer and dryer to see if something was under there, but nothing. Except a bunch of Mountain Spring Downy scented dust bunnies under the dryer. I went outside and smelled under the house back where the laundry room is and it just smells like damp earth. Not rotten at all, but very pleasant compared to The Smell inside. We finally figured that some critter like a mouse or maybe something bigger, has died inside the wall, and we’ll just have to ride it out, until decomp has been completed. (This happened to me in the house I lived in before Paul and I were married; only then The Smell was in the kitchen ... way worse than having A Smell in the laundry room. And I was in the process of putting my house on the market, too. Very bad timing. In time The Smell subsided and went away, and I did sell the house and got married, so that smell story at least has a happy ending.)

I put a bunch of scented candles all around the laundry room to see if that would help, but I’m afraid the candles are fighting a losing battle. And now it looks kind of like a voodoo parlor or something. Except for the sign on the shelf above the washer that says “Dogs accept you as boss -- cats ask to see your resumé.”

Paul tried to creep me out by saying that even after the smell goes away, the bones of whatever it is will still be inside the wall. But I said that’s ok by me, as long as they’re odor-free bones.

The point of all this is to say that to counteract the bit of a bad mood caused by gloomy weather and annoying Rotten Smells, today I chose to paint butterflies. And to be grateful for a roof that doesn’t leak. And to try to keep my mind on the really important things.

2 comments:

Denise Rose said...

Karen, it has been doing the same raining here like in Louisiana. I am so tired of it! I want the cool, dry fall weather instead of this mushy rainy mess everyday. We have had so much rain the past month and I am positive I have not seen the sun very many times in the last two months. Hopefully it will let up soon! I love the butterflies though and they brighten my day!

Kelley Carey MacDonald said...

Yeah... sounds like a mouse'y smell to me... yup it WILL go away - but tough to live with, I know. A lot of rain is so tough to deal with - we had that here in NE for the whole month of June! Oh, and I love the sign about the cats taking your resume! But I think cats are SMART not to trust us until we prove ourselves to be kind!