So yesterday morning, while my brain wrestled with a plot-and-character problem in Revision One of the Mess In Progress, I invoked one of our favorite post-baby purchases: the Shark dust buster. We call it the Remora--'cause, yanno, it's a little shark.
The Remora has proven invaluable when it comes to sucking up all the little schmutz (spelling?) in the corners that Wallaby invariably finds and sticks in his mouth. So much so that we just bought a second one (hello, Black Friday sale) for the downstairs. Anyway, there I was while Wallaby sat in his high chair eating his Cheerios, dust busting away with the Remora.
And I smelled something. Again.
It wasn't a good something.
"Ugh," said I to my son. "Did you do that?"
But like it or not, Arizona and I are both pretty familiar with Diaper Funk, and it wasn't that. It was more like a litter box gone over--except that I had just cleaned the litter box, having smelled Litter Box Funk earlier. Which I was still smelling. Okay, so I missed a chunk. Except I didn't *see* anything hiding out on me. So where was the invisible culprit?
I hunted high and low. I Remora'd cracks and crevices, inside the baseboard, around the litter box … all clean. By the time breakfast was cleaned up, I was walking around, talking to the smell.
"Think you can avoid me forever? Ha! You'll see. I will find you, and I will END you!"
The baby, wisely, decided it was time for a nap.
Some time later, I sat back down at my revisions, determined to make headway on something, darn it, when Arizona came up from his downstairs office for a snack. He came over to me, kissed me, and griped good-naturedly about a client as he made himself a bowl of cereal. Then he headed back downstairs.
As an afterthought, he stuck his head back around the corner of the stairwell. "Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure?"
Me: "Yes?"
"I may have sucked up a cat turd in the Remora this morning. So you might not want to let the baby play with it until we've cleaned it out."
(Or, yanno, get my face down really close to the exhaust port as I try to suck up whatever stinks. Sigh.)
The moral of the story, and one which I am preparing to bring to my revisions this week?
Sometimes the thing you're doing to fix the stench is actually the source.
Have a good one, ReaderFriends!
