How could I forget

Also: our dying tree! The guy from the tree service just called to
say he had a cancellation today, so it's coming down this afternoon –
not next week as we had planned. It's as tall as a four-story
building and will leave a huge hole in our yard, an empty space where
for the last 35 years a beautiful tree has grown.

Some part of me wants to call the guy back and say WAIT! Not today.
Give me a little more time to get used to it, a chance to do
something to honor the tree before it comes down. But in a way I
guess I've been honoring it every day, anyway.

The last time I lost a tree I loved was in 1996, when the big redwood
in front of my house on the mountain had to come down. That was in
the summer, and I spent the whole day watching it happen. As the
branches were cut from top to bottom, then the massive trunk, in
eight-foot sections, it felt like a part of my life was being
dismembered, dismantled, dispersed. The house was never the same
after that; it had lost its guardian spirit. Over the next few months
every tender, fragrant, shade-adapted plant in the yard dried up and
burned in the heat. I dug them up and chipped them – they couldn't
have survived without the protection of that tree – and used them to
mulch new plants that thrive in sun.

Some of the tree's strength stayed with me, and the energy of that
transformation. By the end of that year I had made the decision to
leave my marriage. I never linked those two events before just this
moment but looking back on it now it seems so clear – it was like the
tree was doing what I was afraid to do, showing me how to accept the
inevitable, allowing itself to be taken apart, sacrificed for a
greater purpose. Not that it had any choice. A huge branch had blown
out of it the winter before, and the landlord was afraid another
storm might send the whole tree down on top of the house.

That tree was alive and well and wanted to live. This tree is already
dead. I will miss it anyway.

Next week we will rent the bobcat with the giant auger and drill
holes for 50 baby redwoods. New year, new life.

Like a tree in a field

I like this phrase, this image. It's come up several times lately, in various unrelated contexts, most recently in this poem by one of my favorite poets:

All that I serve will die, my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
– Wendell Berry

This image of a tree in a field feels real to me, and is reassuring when life starts moving a little too quickly – I look at the trees in my own field, the way they stand and accept and endure everything – weather, seasons, light and dark, noise, disease, celebration, everything.

A few years ago at a women's retreat I learned a meditation to calm and reground myself by working with trees. It's not mystical or profound: you just touch the tree, hold yourself to it with your whole body if you want, or just use your hands – and think of its roots going into the earth, and imagine yourself tapping into the energy of that connection – all the way to the center of the planet – and let the overwhelming emotions flow into that stream of energy and move through you, through the tree. For me, it's been amazingly comforting at times when I've felt close to losing it, and a source of pleasure and strength even when things are going well. If you think about it, there aren't many places you could find yourself where there are no trees at all to connect to – they live everywhere, even in the middle of huge cities, and they all live in the earth (I don't know how well this would work with potted plants).

I'm thinking of this right now because death has been on my mind again this week. My great-aunt is 101 years old today, and is also dying – she's been receiving hospice care for about a week already. Thinking of her and the life she's lived makes me feel so grateful to have had such a person in my life, and to know that soon she won't be here anymore is just ... kind of a strange feeling. The Jeeps, too, continues to ever so gradually fade a little more each day, sleeping most of the time now and having more trouble with all his bodily functions as time goes on. Then there are Mr. A's parents, who we saw on Christmas, and his sister, who just found out her breast cancer has come back just two years after a round of chemo and radiation for the first occurrence.

Getting back into yoga is one thing I'm doing to try to strengthen myself for what's ahead, and hopefully be able to be a source of comfort for Mr. A as well. It does feel good to be more connected to my own body, and I like being able to dedicate my practice to the people I'm thinking of every day, though I don't know if it really does anything for them ... for me, it seems to make me feel more accepting of things that are happening, and better able to maintain a helpful attitude and a positive perspective. Cleaning up after the Jeeps almost every day now, just as an example, is something I can't say I exactly enjoy doing – but on the other hand, it is only dog poop, and it's all washable, and really, at this time in his life what he needs more than anything is to be loved and petted and kept warm and safe and out of pain. And what I need, and will soon appreciate having given myself, is the comfort of knowing that I did everything I could to take the best possible care of him for as long as he's with us.

I know all this ... and I do try spend my time being grateful for life, rather than thinking about death. Sometimes though it does just seem to steal silently into the room and ask to be acknowledged. Last night I was getting everyone settled in for the night, Tater up on the bed under his little down sleeping bag and Jeeps on the floor with his new wool dog sweater and his special plaid fleece blanket, and as I was tucking him in he reached up and kissed me so sweetly on the cheek that I suddenly found myself weeping uncontrollably. For as long as I've known him he's been a beast, a wildman and a horrible curmudgeon, just as likely to bite your fingers as lick them and always more interested in Milkbones than in any kind of affection I've tried to give him ... and now, all of a sudden, he's turning into a snuggler, a sweetie pie, a dog that I actually love and am having a very hard time imagining Not being around anymore.

The thought of Tater not being around anymore – I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

I have been thinking though about why it hurts so much to think of people I love being gone. It doesn't feel exactly like being sad. It feels just very ... big. Too big. Like my heart can't contain it. I've been trying to study the physical sensations I feel when things happen that remind me ... it's sort of like burning, sort of like crushing and breaking. Heavy. Most of all I think it feels like movement – like something expanding inside my solar plexus. I get a sort of panicky feeling when it happens, sometimes. As if something inside me might be about to break.

Another thing: My mom has been having some alarming things happening with her blood pressure lately. With our family history of death from strokes, this is scary. It occurred to me tonight as I was talking with my sister about this that it's possible all my attention to various other people and dogs of late has been at least in part a way to distract myself from considering the possibility that there might be something serious going on with my mom. In fact, until tonight I had not considered that at all. If I thought of it at all, I told myself it was just a little blood pressure, that her doctor would make sure she's getting taken care of, that my brother (also a doctor, who lives only about a mile from my parents) would make sure everything that should happen does happen – basically, that she's going to be just fine.

Still, someday I will get a phone call.

I don't know if there's really anything I could be doing to get ready for that day, other than what I'm already doing. But there are two things I'm starting in January that I hope will help me get close enough to what scares me, that I'll be able to get more comfortable being there – close to it – since it's one of the only sure things in life, that someday pretty much everyone I know and love will either see me dead, or I'll see them dead. A cheery thought! As Wendell Berry says, "All that I serve will die." But is that really so horrible? Is it?

Anyway, the things I'm doing are 1) training to volunteer with hospice, and 2) joining a local women's choir that works with hospice and other caregivers and families, to sing at the bedsides of people who are dying. You can watch a little video about them here. Hospice training will be good when Mr. A's parents ... you know. I have an old friend who certified as a hospice chaplain last year and she's going to walk me through it. And the choir ... that's for service, too, but it's also practice for me. Singing is so powerful for me lately, and I want to sing with people, and to people. I want to learn how to sing out loud with other people without feeling startled at the sound of my own voice. I especially want to be able to sing with my father. My first rehearsal will be in two weeks.

The thing I have noticed, when things happen that I think I just can't bear, is that fighting, ignoring, resisting or resenting what's happening only makes it hurt even more. Sometimes, like in yoga, the thing to do is just to be still with it, let it sink in, stop trying to hard to "hold" yourself up and just let the weight of the situation support itself. If you can relax into it, yes, maybe it still hurts, but you find youself able somehow to maintain. And sometimes, once I've been able to stop struggling, I find if I can bring myself to look gently right into the heart of it, I'm able to stay – to re-enter and inhabit my own life. Which is all I really want to do with my life, anyway, when it comes right down to it. Just stay with it, whatever's happening.

P.S. On a lighter note – as requested, I will post the persimmon pudding recipe soon – just as soon as I find where I wrote it down! So stay tuned, and hold onto those persimmons.

Me, emerging

Tonight I was drying off after a shower and I saw something that gave me a bit of a shock – right there on the underside of my upper arm was the distinct outline of an actual muscle. I jumped on the scale and found out I'm finally back on track in the weight loss department, down about five pounds since the last time I weighed myself around Thanksgiving. I had decided not to put undue pressure on myself by obsessing about my weight over the holidays, so it's kind of a relief to know that I'm still doing okay.

After that I decided to try on the final remaining item of clothing I've been dragging around with me for more than 20 years now – specifically, a pair of army cargo cutoffs I wore to the park with a friend on my 20th birthday – and voila, I was actually able to squeeze into them. They were uncomfortably tight, and I still wouldn't be seen dead or alive in them in public, but the point here is, I was WEARING them. All the way zipped up, and all the way buttoned, and I could sit and stand and walk around and everything. Maybe by summer they'll be as loose and baggy and comfortable as they were way back then, and I'll wear them on a celebratory lap around the plaza for my 43rd birthday.

I've had a nice solstice weekend overall. On Thursday I went to a solstice party and soup exchange. I brought my famous Spicy Mushroomy Chickeny Magical Healing Soup of Luv (Now with More Seaweed!)® to trade, and came home with a quart of tomato lentil. I also took note that homemade soups with strangely evokative, esoteric names are somehow much more popular as an item of white-elephant style exchange than those that arrive lukewarm and halfhearted in flabby cardboard containers from the soup bar at Whole Foods, even when the latter includes a small brown paper bag full of oyster crackers in cellllophane. (One "l" or two? When in doubt, add more!)

Friday after work I went to yoga and experienced a couple of firsts – first class taught by a man, and my first time being the only woman in class. Almost all the teachers around here are women, and most of the students too. At first I was a little discombobulated, thinking I had somehow stumbled into a guys-only class, but that was not the case. It just happened to be a very small class (five students), and none of the women who usually show up, showed up. It was different from other classes I've been going to in other ways, too – less "pretty" and new-agey (no chanting, for example), more basic and athletic. The teacher was easy-going and approachable, with a bit of a paunch, and seemed not at all embarrassed about not being able to do some of the poses as well as a couple of the students. Instead of the air of "sacred silence" that seems to permeate my usual classes, this class had laughter and questions and checking in with each other about "now WHAT was that last thing again?" I kind of liked it.

Yesterday, to celebrate the sun, we laid out a 30-foot circle of stones in the back of the property, which will eventually become a labyrinth for walking meditation. The land is so rocky we didn't even have to search for the rocks – just measured out the circle with a long tape measure and a can of street-marking paint, and then pulled the stones out of the ground and lined them up around the circle. Our hope is that next summer, when the Google satellite takes new pictures of the world from space, we will be able to see the labyrinth on the google maps photo. It could happen – in the current photo you can see our canvas patio umbrella, which is only about 8 feet across!

I spent some more time out there today digging up more rocks and making sure all the paint is covered (it will wash off by the end of winter anyway) and finger-pruning a nice little coyote bush that we left inside the circle. Tater stayed with me the whole time, stretched out on the ground next to me like a little black sphinx. At one point I took a break to sit on the ground and watch two ladybugs walking on some grass – studying the way their legs move, and did you know they can fold their legs flush into their bellies, so they are completely flat on the bottom? – and watching the sunlight fade out of the sky, and Tater got up from where he was sitting about a foot away and scootched over to reposition himself right flat up against the side of my leg, and sat there watching those bugs with me for upwards of 35 minutes. Completely content just to sit with me in the stillness, for as long as I wanted to sit there.

God, I love that dog.

Also today, I took Tater for a long walk in town, did a little last-minute Christmas shopping, started pruning the dead wood out of some of the bigger oak trees back in the field, and rode my bike down the mountain behind our house (after being dropped off not too near the top by Mr. A – since I was too scared to ride all the way down the steepest parts).

And finally, it occurred to me to Google that Cynthia I was writing about before – and there isn't much to be found about her online, except her dad's obituary which seems to indicate I mis-remembered some important things about her family life, and a mention of her in the "thank yous" of a ten-year-old newsletter from a Tibetan buddhist meditation center in my home town. So, um ... wow! I guess you just never know who's going to turn out to be a dharma sister. Somehow it makes me happy, beyond all reason, to know that about her.

As for Christmas, I'm about 99.9% ready. All I have left to do is wrap Mr. A's presents, which I will do while he's at work tomorrow, drop off presents for a couple of friends' kids, and make another persimmon pudding to take to his sister's house for the family thing on Tuesday. Other than that my only plans are to take every moment as slowly as I can, enjoy the silence, do at least two or three more good long walks through the beautiful gold-blue-and-green winter landscape, and possibly take a lovely hot bath in the moonlight on Christmas Eve. Because have you seen the moon lately? Christmas moon, solstice moon, beautiful yellow winter moon – it's been amazing.

A little more info

I just re-read my last post and realized it sounds kind of like I'm wanting to avoid this new person for the same reasons I avoided Cynthia. In a way, it's true – I want to avoid her because I feel uncomfortable around her – but it isn't because she's awkward and unpopular, because she isn't. This new person is someone I started out highly inclined to like, until I spent enough time with her to start seeing some ways in which she is, or at least appears to me to be, not quite honest or trustworthy, not to mention manipulative and possibly even (dare I say) Machiavellian ....

So the question I'm pondering is not how to relate to the unpopular among us, because I think I've already more or less mastered that. It's more, how to be appropriately civil and sociable, and not draw undue attention to my negative feelings about a person, while still protecting myself from what I perceive to be that person's subtle aggression and possible predatory tendencies, and also at the same time not pissing off the as-yet-un-clued-in people in authority who reportedly (if the person is to be believed) think this person is not only the cat's meow, but also its pajamas.

I myself remain to be convinced. Believe it or not, in this instance I would love to be proven wrong – I would much rather make a new friend than have it confirmed that I really do need to be constantly on alert when this person is around.

Am I sounding intriguing and mysterious enough for ya yet? I really don't mean to be dramatic ... it is interesting to me, though, to see myself reacting in this situation. It's been awhile since I've had to spend much time around anyone who really makes me uncomfortable. I don't like it, but it's turning out to be useful, in a way.

Yoga for Cynthia

Lots going on this week. First, a quick trip to Las Vegas for a press check. The main thing to say about that is just that the hotel was great, there were no major glitches at the press, I got out of there three hours ahead of schedule, and I saw several very interesting people at the airport. These included a 30-something Elvis lookalike with the biggest black sideburns I've ever seen, hustling down the terminal with his wife and four young children in tow; a very tall, long-legged dude all pimped out in a sparkling golden do-rag, a very furry long black coat and glittery bedazzled black satin jeans; and a woman of at least 60 years of age, wearing a lacy black mohair mesh sweater cut so low in front that I could see her fancy black lace bra in its entirety – and even a tiny bit of skin below the bra. Would that I should have such body-confidence at that advanced age!

The stink is off the dog – meaning, the skunk bath worked. You can still smell it a little if you press your nose right up to his face, but if you don't like the smell of skunk – just don't do that. The other dog continues to perform the daily routine I've taken to calling "poopin' 'n' walkin'," by which I mean he can no longer stoop to poop. With the condition of his hips, it's all he can do just to get up and walk, so that's what he does. I took him to the vet for another cortisone shot yesterday and found out something I hadn't known before: he's not fifteen years old. He's almost eighteen years old. When we arrived at the office, the nurse brought out his chart, which I had not seen before, and it shows that the first time he was seen, in 1990, he was between one and two years old. So ... wow! As Mr. A is always saying, he's an ancient animal. Now I believe it, and am cutting him even more slack than I already was when it comes to activities like sharking up dog treats, turning over garbage, and yes, even poopin' 'n' walkin'.

Last night I went to a three-hour restorative yoga class. I hadn't done restorative before, and I wasn't expecting much of a workout from it – mainly, I was thinking of it as what my yoga teacher friend M. calls "furniture yoga," and looking forward to an easy, relaxing evening of lying draped over bolsters and rolled up blankets with my eyes closed. Well, it was that, but it was also a lot more – I was surprised at how much stretch I got out of even the easiest poses, just by holding them for what seemed like forever.

The class also included guided meditation, self-massage and aromatherapy, and somehow when I first sat down on the mat, I suddenly started remembering this girl who used to go to the same summer camp I went to as a kid. Her name was Cynthia, and she was sort of an outcast – oversized, awkward, unfashionable and socially inept. I remembered how when she plunged into the lake to complete her swimming test, she bobbed to the surface howling from the cold, with a big green goo running down her nose. It took two people to haul her out of the water and onto the dock, where she sat all bunched over and breathing hard in her baggy yellow old-fashioned knitted bathing suit while one of the counselors tried to get her to wipe her nose. I was horrified that anyone could be so utterly uncool. Later that night she accidentally dropped her flashlight into a pit toilet, and made such a fuss insisting that it had to be retrieved that soon everyone at camp knew it was in there. All night long girls filed in and out of the outhouse to look in at "the glow from below ...."

When I got home from camp my dad heard me telling one of my brothers or sisters about this embarrassing, unusal person, and he stopped me and said, "Let me tell you a few things you probably don't know about that girl." And then he told me how she really was socially inept, even more than I could have realized. She was growing up in a poor little shack in the middle of nowhere way back in the woods with her weird, mean dad and her weird, terrified grandmother, and she didn't really have any friends to speak of, and except for going to school and church wasn't really even allowed to leave the house. I realized that even though I hadn't made fun of her at camp, or done anything specifically to hurt her or exclude her, I hadn't done anything to help her feel welcome or supported, either. I felt uncomfortable around her, so I just kept my distance.

Mr. A likes to remind me that it is not my responsibility to fix every troubled person who crosses my path, that what most people need more than anything is simply to be accepted as they are, and allowed to Be .... Well, maybe so. But when Cynthia's face came to mind during that class, I decided to dedicate the evening's practice to her. In my mind, I sat down next to her on the dock and gave her a blanket to wrap up in. Then I invited her to lie down in the sun and get warm, and I told her I would sit by her until she felt safe and comfortable. And then I did the class.

The thing is, I could have done something for her at that camp. Even just making a space for her at the breakfast table, or standing with her in line – any little thing would have been better than what I did, which was to do nothing. And I think the reason I thought of her in that class last night is because there's a new person in my life right now that I'm really struggling to accept, and I'm finding myself once again wanting nothing more than just to turn away and ignore this person until she gets the message, and stops trying so hard to be my new best friend. Avoiding her altogether isn't an option, unfortunately, but even if it were – that isn't really the way I want to deal with a fellow human, even one I don't like or trust.

What is the way to be in relationship to a person I'm uncomfortable with? What would my best self do? Not to try to "fix" the situation, but just to be able to hold my heart open within it? These are some of the questions I held in mind as I sat there on the dock in the warm sunshine next to Cynthia, listening to her breath and feeling my own, feeling my heart beat in my chest as the waves moved on the water.

Also this week, I made a persimmon pudding as a surprise for Mr. A. It's the first one I've ever done and it turned out beautifully.

Wild child

My intermitent Herzog-fest continues this week with a very exclusive screening (attended only by me and my own two wild children, silent and skunk-scented) of the 1975 film "Jeder Für Sich und Gott Gegen Alle" – "Every Man For Himself and God Against All" – or, as it's known in America, "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser."

I first saw this film in about 1984, when it was shown as part of BYU's astonishingly fabulous international cinema program. It was my first exposure to Herzog, and I still remember a scene near the beginning that made an enormous impression on me, an image of a field of rye rippling and waving in the wind under an overcast sky. And of course the story of Hauser himself was and still is fascinating – this completely feral, utterly unsocialized guy who was found wandering the streets of a German town in 1828, after having spent the first 17 or so years of his life locked in a dim cell no bigger than a twin-size bed, with no windows or furniture and never any contact whatsoever with anything outside his room. Like, NOTHING. It's hard to imagine anyone being that isolated, but his story is well-documented.

Looking for more information about him, I came across this Web site dedicated to the phenomenon of feral children. The stories are heartbreaking and strange, and fall into several categories – raised by animals, confined children, isolated children, hoaxes, etc. Wow! I had no idea this was such a common experience. The "confined" stories are sad, but not so surprising – these are kids who were kept chained to beds, locked in closets, etc. – familiar because this kind of abuse does show up on the news every once in awhile. "Isolated" children are kids who were either lost during some kind of social unrest, or abandoned, or escaped abusive situations, and lived alone outdoors for awhile. "Raised by animals" is the category I'm most interested in – these kids spent their youngest years living with and living as animals – dogs, wolves, monkeys, even sheep and cows. Krazy!

The upshot of it all is that Mowgli and Tarzan notwithstanding, kids who are not socialized by other humans in early childhood do NOT grow up to be pure-hearted, high-minded, Noble Ideal Humans unspoiled by the evils of society. They just end up permanently deformed in almost every way that counts – physically (most are severely malnourished), mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. This idea that you can take someone who's undergone that kind of experience and "love" them into health, or "teach" them to be normal, functioning humans – apparently, that's not how it works. I knew a little bit about this from studying language acquisition, but I guess I hadn't realized how completely and permanently a person could be messed up by things that happen (or don't happen) when they're very small.

I like to believe that people really can change at any time of life – not that the effects of intense experiences would just magically "wear off" after awhile, but that no matter what's happened or how bad it is, things can always get better. Maybe not as good as you would like, but better than they are right now. I like to believe that people can learn, that what we do makes a difference, that it's worth the effort to try to help each other. I know from my own experience that change is possible – look at all the changes I've made just in the last six months!

But sometimes I wonder. Maybe I've only been able to do that because I've had advantages that not everybody has. I'm healthy, smart, materially secure compared to a lot of people in the world ... plus, I was taught that I could change, and encouraged to be always learning and growing. What if I'd been taught that I couldn't? What are the basic requirements for people to be able to learn? How can we help people who seem stuck in the past, stuck in their pain? Are some people really beyond help?

I just can't believe that that's true. I think everybody can be helped. Maybe those feral children can't learn to speak or walk or reflect on their own lives – maybe their lives will never have any "meaning" to them – but they can be protected, fed, taken care of.

Or is it better sometimes just to leave things alone? Sometimes, I guess it is. I remember once trying to save a wounded bird, and watching it die anyway, and realizing that my attempt to help had only stressed it out and prolonged its suffering. What if it wasn't a bird, but a boy wandering down a road, awe-struck and amazed, unable to speak, utterly innocent and alone – what would you do? Is handing troubled people over to the "authorities" the only way we know how to help each other anymore?

The stink

I spent a miserable night last night counting out the worst migraine I've had in years – throb by throb by throb. I took so many different pills trying to make it stop, that I finally had to give up and just live with it, for fear I might poison myself, or be unable to drive myself to the emergency room if I did poison myself, or maybe my head would actually explode and leak brain matter all over my lovely new pillow, and nobody would find me until Mr. A got home from his business trip tomorrow night.

Eventually the Imitrex seemed to kick in, or I just got so exhausted I couldn't stay awake any longer ... and next thing I knew I was waking up, headache-free but with a strange sense of something still not quite right ... a strange smell. Unpleasant. Kind of like burning plastic.

Since I'd fallen asleep in kind of a fog, with my head propped up on a plastic bag of ice, my first thought was that the bag might've fallen off the bed and landed up against the heater (nevermind that the heater was not on). But no, there it was on the floor, totally intact and still full of cold water. Then I thought maybe it was an electrical fire. Maybe the mice were back, and had finally chewed through the plastic coating on the wires. I checked the kitchen, the garage, the attic – no fire.

Then as I was wandering back into my room through the living room I noticed a movement back in the corner behind the couch. It was Tater, cowering and ashamed, and as I approached him I realized that he was the source of the smell – not him exactly, but the skunk he had gone mano a mano with sometime earlier that morning.

Ugh. I had been so out of it with the migraine that I didn't smell it until the odor had permeated the entire house. By the time I found him I was already running late for work, so all I could do was lock both dogs in the back yard with the dog door closed and plan to run home at lunch to give him a bath and try to deal with the smell in the house.

When I got to work everyone could tell immediately what had happened – I totally reeked of it. So I wasn't too surprised when my boss offered to let me take the afternoon off for de-stinking. I got my work done and left, and spent the next six hours opening windows, turning on fans, washing the dog, walking the dog (to help him get dry), washing clothes, washing towels, burning incense, and finally giving him a fancy fall haircut in hopes of getting rid of at least some of the fur that seems to be totally saturated with this unbearable odor. Then I soaked him for a second time in Nature's Miracle Skunk Odor Remover, which I hope will do its magic in time for him to sleep inside tonight. If he has to sleep in the garage, it will be the first time in the entire nine years of his life that he hasn't slept inside the house at night.

Mostly, I've been kind of shaking my head and laughing. What else is there to do? It's a terrible smell, but still – it's just a smell. I can't tell anymore if it's faded at all or not; my nostrils feel singed and my eyes are still watering, but that could just be from handling all the contaminated towels and chemicals.

Now I'm off to look for the hair dryer, in hopes he will smell a little less after he's dry. About the house I'm less sure what to do. Is there some kind of anti-stink bomb you can set off that will permeate the whole house, like those flea bombs? Because I don't know how else I could reach everywhere the smell is; it's EVERYWHERE. I will need to do more research.

See how they fly

My great friend Jason sent me a link to this video of the exact phenomenon I was describing the other day – birds (which Rozanne correctly identified as starlings) flying. Check it out here.