…sometimes, life is pretty stinky.
      Like when you have a few hundred bucks of frozen meat in a chest freezer and there is a really brief power outage and then two weeks later, you can’t figure out what that weird smell is and you start to panic that the dog brought in some dead creature and so you go crazy looking for it and you notice that the freezer’s green AND red lights are on and that can’t be right and you lift that lid with your heart full of dread and your nose pinched so hard you’re pretty sure you bruised some vesicles and OH DEAR GOD!
      …at least it wasn’t a rotting varmint.

* * *
      That was a post on my Facebook page tonight.
      It was inspired by… you guessed it, real life.
      You see, for a week or so now, Mark and I have noticed this weird smell. At first, I thought it was just from this overcooked burger meat in a cast iron pan. Now, before you think I’m a total slob, the burgers were cooked at like 3 am the night before, and then the following day was game day so I figured, it’ll be okay – I’ll wash it after the game tonight or tomorrow when I get up. Sunday is good for doing annoying dishes.
      …but then I scrubbed the cast iron and it was lovely and the odor remained.
      So we went on with the world, assuming maybe it was from the trash bin which would be emptied on Tuesday anyway.
      Tuesday came, Tuesday went. It took the garbage out to the curb with it, but that freaking fracking smell kept wafting up.
      We had a lot of clutter on the kitchen table. I won’t lie – it is a pretty slobbish habit. Still, it didn’t really smell like we had lost an apple beneath the rubble and that that was rotting (yes, I know from experience, okay? I am a terrible housekeeper!). The week was pretty busy and so here it is, Friday afternoon, and the smell is stronger and worse. Way worse. When you get a whiff of it, your stomach roils and you know, you just know – That Ain’t Right.
      So what to do?
      Clean and search.
      The table revealed no nasties, though Mark did find his extra reading glasses AND I found the super cute cameo brooch I bought after Christmas for a future cosplay idea.
      Still, the smell was lurking around the pantry/freezer area. I worried about two possibilities at first.

1. That something (squirrel, likely, or mouse) had gotten into the walls, got stuck in that pantry/closet under the stairs, and died. Which would be a bitch to get to, a bitch to clean up, and would probably ruin all the nice U-Haul boxes we saved from our last move.
2. Or, worse, that Venna (sweet, sweet puppy that she is) had found one of Emy’s rodent/varmint kills and brought it in. To play with or as a present for her masters, who knows? But… the smell reminded me of the time our cat, Bonnie, did that when I was a teen…

      *sniff, sniff*
      “…no, it isn’t coming from the pantry.”
      “Thank God. Then where?”
      And our eyes met over the table and he leaned toward the chest freezer reluctantly.
      *sniff*
      “…oh God!”
      *wretch*
      “No! It can’t be,” I said, shocked and disgusted (and more than a little annoyed that I hadn’t thought of it before). “I checked the light – its still running!”
      *lifts the lid, pauses while looking down, drops the lid and backs away*
      “Yeah, that’s it. Not even cold inside.”
      So yeah, we wheeled the thing outside (can’t just put the meat in bags and in the trash – there are too many dogs/cats/varmints around. So we’ll keep it in the freezer until Tuesday night, bag it up and take it to the curb then, and then have to bleach the EFF out of the freezer.
      All those steaks…
      *sob*
      At least we know the smell wasn’t just my bad housekeeping. And P.S., the red light is a bad thing. Duh.

Note: Image is “Chest Freezer-Out of Stock” by (Walmart.com)