Honey, I'm Home

We just returned from visiting Brian's parents in Washington D.C. for the last ten days. We had a great time... I'll post about it later. On our way home from the airport late Sunday night I thought several times how glad I was that I had killed myself to get the house clean before we left because it would be so nice to come home to. Little did I know that our full of fun surprises house (there's wallpaper under all this paint?, the entire bottom of the door is rotten under this kickplate?, there are scorpions in here!?, etc.) had yet another big one for us.

At first I thought we had forgotten a diaper in the garage. When we opened the door to the house, the smell nearly knocked us over. I had to take Caroline back outside so that she wouldn't throw up. Our less than five-year-old fridge that I so proudly won in a contest had stopped cooling and instead was heating the food. Rotten melted gunk (I had just bought a ton of meat and cheese) was all over the kitchen floor and the smell was fierce. I quickly put the kids to bed while Brian got all of the food out. We then spent the rest of a late night scrubbing and gagging.

This may be the most fake smile I have ever seen.

I have scrubbed my kitchen floor four times and mopped it five and I think it's almost clean now. I begged my garbage company to come and pick up my rotten food even though it wasn't my trash day. We have had every window open and fan running since what will forever after be known as the 'fridge incident'. The fridge is now in the side yard stinking up the rest of the neighborhood. I spent most of the morning fridge shopping because we fear our once heralded major award is a goner.

Thankfully the smell has gone from an eye watering, dizzying, run for your life smell to a 'wow your house really stinks' smell. I'm grateful for the progress. We're also grateful that the fridge didn't catch on fire and that the physical mess stayed on the kitchen tile and didn't make it to the carpet.

Brian has remained admirably positive the last few days. The kids think it's super fun to eat our meals at the park or upstairs (where it stinks slightly less) and were excited to learn that McDonald's has kid's breakfast meals. They also like all the increased outside play time. Brian was joking that we should just move instead of trying to clean up and Caroline said, "we couldn't leave this for someone else, it wouldn't be nice." Miles told his class all about our stinky fridge. When I asked him if he told them about the monuments, museums, or all the other fun we had during fall break he said, 'no just about the fridge'. Funny that's all I can think about right now too.