Ooo, ooo... that smell

The moment we walked in the door, Turtle gave me a strange look and I knew we were thinking the same thing: cat pee.

We checked the obvious things first. I scooped the litter box; Turtle tracked down each protesting cat and gave it a thorough sniffing. Finding that neither was the source of the problem, we spent the next half hour moving from room to room, scenting the air like lions on the trail of a pack of wildebeest (or wildebai, of you prefer). Nothing. Through the evening, we’d occasionally catch a whiff but never strongly enough to identify the source.

The next day, Turtle met me at the door when I came home from work.

“I smell it again,” she said. “I think it’s in my office.”

I dragged out the Floor Mate and gave the hardwood floor a thorough cleaning (for which it was overdue, in any case). That ought to do it, I thought, but as I made my way to the closet to put away the vacuum, I smelled it again: cat pee.

So off I went, on my hands and knees, with my nose in the carpet, trying to sniff out where one of the kids had dribbled or expressed his/her displeasure olfactorily. I sniffed my chair. I sniffed the fireplace facing. I sniffed the sofa, above and below, and the pillows. I sniffed the basket of cat toys. Nothing.

Finally, I found myself in the living room and noticed that I only seemed to catch a whiff of the offending odor when standing in the vicinity of the fireplace. My gaze passed over the Fall flower arrangement I’d gotten Turtle for her birthday a couple weeks ago, and I absently wondered how long it would take a pumpkin to go bad when filled with water and used as a vase.

The answer is “a couple weeks”, apparently.

Now you're cooking

This weekend, I've attempted to make a dent in my home maintenance to-do list, which means I had to make a run to the home improvement emporium. I needed weed and crabgrass killer for the nutgrass and other weeds I discovered while mowing yesterday, and some bags of pre-emergent for the next crop, which typically emerges in January. I needed fluorescent tubes to replace the long-dead ones in my clothes closet. And I needed a tube of Liquid Nails and some grout/adhesive for the soap dish that mysteriously fell off the wall of the guest bathroom a couple weeks ago. You know: the usual stuff.

So off I went to the store, where I wound my way up and down the aisles on my own personal scavenger hunt, checking items off my list as I went. My last stop was Lawn & Garden, where I dumped a few bags of pre-emergent in my cart, did not buy a garden gnome, and took my place in the check-out line. There, I waited while a guy in a bright yellow rain slicker scanned the items in the cart ahead of me. Then I waited while he proceeded to have a rather intense discussion with the customer. Something about grilling. I wasn't really paying attention.

When it was my turn to check out, Slicker Guy set about scanning my items – and then it happened.

“So. Do you have a grill?” he asked me.

“Um… yes?”

I detected a rather disturbing intensity in Slicker Guy's eyes, and I wondered whether 'yes' was the right answer, or the wrong one.

“Charcoal?”

I had my suspicions about where this line of questioning was headed and considered lying. But I'm a terrible liar, so I told the truth. “No, I have gas,” I said. Straight-faced. Somehow.

“Propane?”

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition! I thought. I turned to the diminutive Asian woman behind me, who silently pleaded with her eyes for me to just leave her out of it.

“No. Natural gas,” I admitted. “We had a drop put in when we built the house.”

Slicker Guy's eyes sparkled with evangelical fervor, and I knew I should have lied.

“Oh, man. You just don't get much heat from natural gas. I've got…” And off he went on a five-minute screed BTUs, the benefits of charcoal, and how if I really wanted to learn to grill – and who wouldn't? – I had to get serious and start watching some guy on the Food Network who only uses a charcoal grill.

That's when I turned to the woman behind me and said, “Didn't you say you needed some information about charcoal grills?”

Yes, I'm probably going to hell for that, but I escaped and lived to burn chicken breasts to cinders another day.