Can't you smell that smell?

So recently, the office in our apartment (which is really more like an overgrown screened balcony) has taken on, shall we say, a horrendously unpleasant odor. Now, I don't mean to insult the office by suggesting it smelled like our neighbors were cooking again, because this was quite a different smell. Nor did we think we had somehow left a diaper in there (we closed up shop during the winter and don't go in there often).

No, this smelled distinctly like some kind of animal, such as a mouse, had crawled into a corner somewhere and quietly shuffled off this mortal coil.

Upon further investigation, it turned out to be merely the smell of damp old carpet, due to a leak somewhere in the wall. After even further investigation, however, it turns out I was partially right (one can generally assume that I'm always at least partially right). When moving everything away from the wall where the rain was leaking in, I discovered what can only be described as a mouse that is not alive:

How long this poor bastard lay there decomposing, I'm not sure, but I don't envy the condition or stench of his surroundings. Of course, he's clearly been dead, or possibly undead, for decades or longer, so I doubt he noticed much.

A wake was held between 1pm and 1:01pm on Friday, May 1, at My Office Funeral Home. The deceased was then laid to rest in Toy Chest Memorial Cemetary.

The Stinkpire Strikes Back

Posting about my neighbors' cooking habits in January seems to have kept the dogs of stench at bay for much of the last couple months. Unfortunately, I seem to have either done something to stockpile some bad karma, or the neighbors have company coming over...

They've been cooking up a storm all morning, such that I couldn't even concentrate to post about it until things cleared up some now. It was truly a debilitating funk, a stronger version of the one I'd almost forgotten after becoming so familiar with it through the fall.

I can only imagine it's similar to broccoli with its awful smell/delightful taste (with cheese) ratio. Otherwise, it is clear the neighbors must not only hate me, but themselves as well... unless, and this thought just occurred to me, their cooking-odor bomb is like a hurricane, in which the eye is quite pleasant, and in fact the only safe place to be, assuming you can move with the storm.

Regardless of their motivations or personal experience, this morning they took it to 11 by burning some or all of the meal, and let me tell you, tear gas has nothing on what was flowing into every open orifice of our apartment. I'm gagging at the mere memory, which even the aforementioned dog food factory can't quite muster at this point, even though it sees the cooking smell's recency and raises it with pervasiveness and familiarity.

Anyway, I'm just counting my blessings that the burning caused an overload even for them, and they apparently stopped the presses and aired out their apartment-- it is the silver lining to the vicious, stinky storm cloud the kids and I wrestled with this morning. I'm hoping my deliberately positive outlook, combined with posting about the subject again, will buy us another stench-bullet cease-fire for a couple of months.

Now that's home cooking

This morning, I thought that M- had created something unholy in her diaper, as she is wont to do. It was something I hadn't smelled before, though, so I was confused, since we hadn't fed her anything unusual the previous day. And the random things she eats off the floor (we're not the best housekeepers) don't usually add up to enough to affect herrrrrrrrr... output. By the way, yes, we do try to stop her from eating off the floor. Except of course when I've put pieces of cereal on the floor in a trail leading her wherever it is I need her to go.

But I digress...

Anyway, upon further review, the smell did not seem to be emanating from the baby's direction. Rather, it seemed to be emanating from the walls, floors, appliances, and my eye sockets.

I had faint, unbidden recollections of the dog food factory we used to live near, which I do understand does not sound all that unpleasant to anyone who has never lived near a dog food factory. Just trust me on this one when I tell you I was quickly looking to find the source of the smell and smother the life out of it.

It slowly dawned on me that it really was seeping through the floor and walls, and pouring in from under the front door, as our downstairs neighbors were "cooking" again. Generally, we are treated to (literally) stomach-turning waves of powerful East Asian spices, which is at least understandable compared to this smell, though in the past the smells have been so powerful we have literally been driven out of our home for an evening or longer. In answer to the inevitable "what on Earth are they cooking?" question, we have received such items as Styrofoam coolers labeled "Frozen Whole Cooked Octopus" amongst their voluminous garbage piled on our shared porch, as well as right next to our THREE ENORMOUS GARBAGE CANS. Sorry about that... sounds like this might be a few separate posts.

Anyway, this smelled nothing like food, and I cannot imagine what it was. But the weirdest part was that this was the morning, so either it was a very elaborate breakfast/brunch (no waffles and cereal for them!), or just the awful-est phase of an even more intricate dinner, because the smell faded by mid-afternoon. The world will never know what it was, of course, because we almost never even see our neighbors, much less speak with them. On a side note, all interactions we have had with the one representative we do see have been appropriately polite and friendly thus far.

Screamingly loud, predictably off-key karaoke sessions at all hours don't count as "interactions", right?