Skunkventures

So ok, I'm sitting in the den (part of our walk out basement) with my spiral notebook on my lap and my pen in my hand. My husband is flipping channels, but I don't care because I just got finished listening to a lecture about putting romance into your novel and I'm thinking about how to write a scene I need to insert before this huge looming dark moment. I'm in the zone. Getting into the grove...then I smell it.

Burning rubber and scorched coffee. Overwhelming. In unison, my husband and I groan. We've smelled it before. Skunk, and one of our dogs just got it in the face.

I quickly change into junk clothes, then go outside to corral the dogs. Jordan, our black lab is fine. Yes, I grab her by the collar and sniffed her all over. Squeezing her into the house, I go after our other dog. Cameron is running over the yard rubbing her face in the grass.

We used a concoction of baking soda, dish soap and peroxide to wash her. It worked before, but tonight it doesn't. So we whip out the cans of tomato paste and rub it all over her like shampoo. Of course she shakes, so now the scene looks downright macabre.

Finally, after over an hour of pasting, rinsing, and soaping over and over. She's finally clean... mostly. There is one spot on the corner of her mouth where she kept licking the paste off.

I'm exhausted, and the scene that I was grooving on has faded into the cloud of skunk stench.

Sometimes there's nothing to do but laugh.