I would have you over but God hasn’t changed our cedar shavings for a while
June 26th, 2006
I can’t take it.
Our house smells like a hamster cage. A neglected hamster’s cage.
I know you’ve heard that Necessity is the mother of Invention, but that’s just what they want you to believe. Desperation is the biological mother of Invention. Necessity raised Invention after Desperation was declared an unfit mother and committed to a mental ward where they took all of her carpet cutters away.
They don’t want you to know that Desperation escaped the ward this week. Relax. You have nothing to worry about. She made a beeline for our house and she’s currently in our upstairs hallway, just outside the bathroom door, prying up the carpet that smells like pee. The pee is one of these five varieties, but we are not sure which:
1) very, very antique human pee
2) very, very antique cat pee
3) very clandestine modern dog pee
4) very clandestine modern human child pee
5) very noteworthy ghostly pee
The pee smell was here when we moved in, and we employed our usual Denial-Laced Homeowner’s Wisdom to the situation.
Hmm. Just the rain. A lot of rain this month.
Yes. The rain. Not a lot of ventilation up there.
When we have a few sunny dry days, the smell will go away.
Of course it will.
It can’t be pee.
Of course not. Because that would be disgusting.
Absolutely. Completely unlivable situation.
Fast forward five years on the shiny pretty distracting Denial Remote Control. Not improving.
Add a very, very humid spring and early summer here…well.
Desperation has taken me hostage. Desperation is a homewrecker. You should see her, falling out of her tube top, trying to give me a backrub. By 5pm this afternoon, she—with my help—will have rendered our upstairs hallway floor completely demolished, and I will not be mad at her. If I can keep her hidden from David for a few days, I will let her tackle the stairs and the downstairs hallway too.
I am going to go offer Desperation a cold drink now. Then I am going to let her keep at it while I go
1) to Agway to buy Nature’s Miracle odor-eating enzyme cocktail, which I plan to pour all over the exposed (original) pine floorboards
2) to wretched Wal-Mart to buy fake Crocs and and Krazy Glue so I can securely attach protective footwear to my family’s feet to save them from tetanus
I’m serious. I can’t take it. If we’ve been to your house for dinner and we’ve never returned the invitation, this is why. I am so sorry, but this is why. You deserve better than Eau de Hamster Malade when you are eating potato salad and hot dogs. It would be far ruder of us to have you over, the way things are now. It’s horrible, the smell here.
Desperation is licking my ear now. I must go. But maybe in a few weeks you can come over. If I find a Magic 8-Ball at Wal-Mart I’ll have a better sense of how things are going to turn out.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Not right now. (Money)
27 Comments
1. Spot the Wonder Dog | June 26th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
6) Rodent pee.
7) Dead body hidden inside the walls.
8) Olfactory Hallucination
…you know, when you live with a smell for an extended period of time, you become accustomed to it and stop smelling it. People who are not accustomed to the smell can smell it much more strongly than you can…
just saying…
2. A new commenter | June 26th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Urgent recommendation from a fellow pee-smell sufferer… don’t buy Nature’s Miracle, buy Pet-Tastic — the NM folks sold the company and the new NM formula is mostly alcohol. The OLD NM, the best NM, is now called Pet-Tastic.
Good luck! I know how a stinky house in the summer can drag a gal down.
3. karina | June 26th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
So Norman’s really sticking it to you for kicking him out of the bathroom, eh?
I love your description of the geneology of Invention. Hopefully Desperation’s stay with you will be productive!
4. JustLinda | June 26th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Just do what the New York taxi drivers do… buy about 100 of those little smelly tree things - make sure to choose several very incompatible scents (vanilla and pine are the two that come to mind) and hang them up all over the hall way up there. Yes, that should do the trick.
5. Simon | June 26th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Hmmm. That’s redolent, err, I mean reminiscent of the landing by our back door. The carpet there now sports a plastic cover, a concealing IKEA rug and is topped off with a patina of denial.
Dogs… yum!!
6. the Mater | June 26th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Once you get to the bare floor, why not just pull all the disgusting carpet down the steps and out of the house and then open windows all over and declare a 24-36 hour armistice to see if you’ve eliminated the source of the foul odor. I wouldn’t go spraying Pet-tastic or anything strong onto the bare floors unless you still smell something rotten in Denmark.
Crap - what is this with Sweden and Denmark already? The Scandinavians are minimalists. Clean bare floors should not be smelly. Wait and see.
Maybe Karina’s right. It could be that Norman is feeling pissed off (ooh, a pun I could not resist).
7. Vikki | June 26th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
I have tried Nature’s Miracle and found it less than miraculous. The threshold of our front entrance smells like pee…has smelled like pee for 10 years (in the spring and humidity of course) and we poured an entire bottle of Nature’s Miracle on it…more than once.
I hate the smell of pee and recently smelled it in our bathroom. I couldn’t figure it out because our son is a sitter not a stander (at least when I’ve witnessed him in the bathroom). Then, one day, I heard running water and walked in on him standing to pee…standing ON TOP of the toilet seat, pee splashing everywhere. There’s no miracle solution for that.
8. Charlie | June 26th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Kinda makes you wonder how they came up with the word pee?
Is it the sound you make? If so…..Number 2 would be called….ohmythatstinks.
sorry. kinda.
9. TJM | June 26th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
NYC taxi drivers also pee into 12 oz Poland Spring water bottles and leave them on the curb. Nasty.
10. Staci | June 26th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Hang on. I have a Magic 8 Ball here on my desk at work (long story). I asked it if the pee smell would go away, and it said to “ask again later”. So I asked again and, well, you probably don’t want to hear what it had to say.
But then it totally failed me once before when it said my kid would be potty trained in a week. That was in March. She’s currently back in diapers. Again.
11. ozma | June 26th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Wow. I thought it was just my house (apartment) that had the stink. Let us all come out of the closet about our stinky houses.
The shame, the shame. It’s hard to bear alone.
I don’t know whether anyone has mentioned this but febreeze for autos is kind of a miracle. It is unnatural and not of this world, no doubt but sometimes when you are desperate you turn to the dark side.
I don’t think it works on ghost pee but it’s worth a shot.
12. mamatulip | June 26th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Blech. I feel for you; a stray cat sprayed the back porch of my childhood home when I was like, 10, and the smell never left.
Sorry. That’s not very encouraging.
(Um…I’m nominating a post of yours for a Perfect Post award. I wanted to email you about it and send you the code for the PP button, should you want to stick it up on your blog, but I couldn’t find an addy for you. So. If you’d like the code, feel free to email me. I’m going to blog about it on Friday.)
13. ChristyD | June 26th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
LMAO. You are brilliant. I’m not laughing at your plight, however, just your gifted interpretation of it. Good luck with the “eau de Hamster Malade.”
14. geogirl | June 26th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head Jenn. Just spread cedar chips all over your house. They’ll soak up the bad smell and give you that much touted “natural freshness”.
So, desperation wears a tube top. Who knew?
15. Another Jen | June 26th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
The idea of hundreds of those little tree-shaped scented things for your car will always and forever make me think of the movie Seven.
In other news, I dreamed about your cranberry storm door the other night. Weird, I know. Perhaps it’s a sign that I stalk a website too much when I begin to dream about things I read in it.
16. VenturaMom | June 26th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
NORMAN! Stop that right now, mister!
17. Elizabeth | June 26th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
When we bought our house last Spring, we had no idea that once humid August came, our whole house would smell like a very old, very incontinent dog. We started pulling up carpet only to find that the original hardwood floors were black with dog pee. Our solution was to buy laminate flooring that looks like hardwood but is practically stain-resistant. If you were wondering, that is.
18. mama o' matrices | June 26th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
Oooh, the pee smell. Our hallway had that, and it disappeared after we gutted the bathroom. (hm) Then reappeared a month later. Turns out my eldest tends to get distracted at the sound of a voice, an interesting crashing noise, turns towards the sound and…yup. He hits the mouldings out in the hallway. Okay, so the bathroom is tiny. Still, it’s pretty good distance on that arc - or so my husband informs me.
Our solution was vinegar mixed with peppermint oil, plus baking soda. Combine and awe small children with the instant foam. But I don’t think it works on deep down stinks. Surface smells, though, it is splendid for.
19. Deb | June 26th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
OK, I didn’t have time to read all the comments but another reccomend…..
Bio Kleen makes a product called BAC OUT….truly amazing. We had cats who peed everywhere while we were moving so we had a huge bag of smelly clothes that sat marinating…..a soak in bac out a nd tra la!! fabulousness!
We use it for all potty accidents ……
I used to manage apts and sometimes smells get into wood and cement and have to be specially treated….I would try the bac out before anything else….we tried natures miracle too with limited success.
20. Rina | June 26th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Handy Home Man here did the same thing to our old apartment - do you remember the one with the fuzzy leopard/tiger wallpaper in the hallway?
He recommends after you pull the carpet and take out all the staples, wash the entire floor down with a 50 % bleach, 50 % water solution, then coat the hell out of it (probably three coats) with a durable urethane.
You probably want to send the children and dogs away for about three days while the urethane oozes it’s poisonous gasses . . . .
21. Heather | June 26th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
I say you should make flooring out of the little car pine air freshener trees. That way it’s all piney-fresh, I’m pretty sure it’d be fairly cheap per square foot as flooring goes, and, if there are more accidents, they’re absorbent and can be quickly replaced with more little trees and you’re good to go again!
22. margalit | June 27th, 2006 at 12:51 am
Um… the bad news is, just picking up the carpeting isn’t gonna get the pee smell out. Once pee has gone into the wooden floor boards, it stays there. When the wood expands, it starts to stink again. The ONLY way to get all the pee stench out is to remove the floor. Like down to the subfloor, and maybe even that if it was a big dog.
My house… more like cat litter. No matter how many times a day I empty the box, it always smells. Even with the free Febreeze fan air freshener. I’ve pulled up the floor…twice. The floorboards need to come up. So I’m right there with you, sister!
23. moxiemomma | June 27th, 2006 at 8:36 am
oh! oh! oh! back here! *waves frantically* hey! my hubs had a similarly terribly odor in his car of all things and he used this gonzo odor eliminator (got it at christmas tree shops for $1.69!!) and it worked. it really really worked! on the label it says it eliminates odors caused by *pets* *skunks* (because one assumes skunks are not pets, but who knows) *sneakers* (right there next to skunk), and finally *diapers*! says it can be sprayed right on fabric and rugs.
24. kt flynnie | June 27th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
mmm yummy :-p
25. jbeeky | June 27th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
We bought our house in San Diego from a crazy cat lady that was moving after Haz Mat came in to take away her 90 cats. Yes. We have the existing hardwood floors thoughout the house and stripped the hell out of them and put several layers of polyurethane. No smell except for really rainy days when you open our hall closet. That and we bought in San Diego 7 years ago so we are thinking of selling and just buying New Hampshire outright and kicking out all cats. Leave free or die, free of cat pee that is……
26. kt flynnie | June 28th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
that reminds me i need to change my hamsters palace and lovely wood shavings
27. Brenda | July 1st, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Are you going to recarpet? Or refinishing the wood floor?
If you’re going to recarpet, and you don’t want to do a new subfloor, paint the floor. HONEST! And cheap. Just go get some off the wall strange returned latex color from your local hardware store and paint the whole floor. THE WHOLE FLOOR, not just the spot. (experience from owning rentals….) Good luck…once a pet marks a spot.. they just seem to keep returning to the same spot!
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