Skunk and Roll

On Tuesday, baby Samuel learned to roll over and pre-adolescent puppy Frank learned what a skunk smells like.

I know, the skunk trumps the baby roll in shock value, which turns out to be true even for me, the Momma, from the moment I smelled something akin to burning plastic and began checking all the radiator heaters. 

Justin comes home from work a few minutes later... What’s that smell?  In his male, focused way, he begins checking everything in the house with an on/off switch, or anything that could spontaneously combust.  He finds a plastic trash can close to a heater and concludes this must be the culprit.  We convince ourselves the smell is getting fainter, though it’s no secret that we grow accustomed to scents over time.
Mandee comes over for dinner, as she does every night, a half hour later.  Y’all, Frank smells like a skunk.

We should have known something was up.  Frank, the puppy who makes himself known by jumping up on us and begging for our attention, sits on the far side of the porch, head down, destitute.  He knows something in the world is not right tonight, and he’s the object of it.

And we realize there’s no burning plastic there is just a dog in nature.  Without a moment’s hesitation, Justin seeks help, from Google... dog sprayed by skunk.

And, Google responds.  Bathe with hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, dish detergent.

If the dog gets wet, the smell will get stronger.  Great, because not only did we just read that we have to give him an extreme bath, but it’s raining outside... so we close him in our mud room.

We keep reading...  Don’t let the dog in the house.  The smell will permeate, saturate.

Justin throws on his swimming trunks in the freezing mid-winter 20 degree evening and wrestles with the skunk smell that is his dog, taking a water hose to him.

Mandee, who literally always smells better than roses and who has a dozen different sprays and scents for her house, not to mention, incense, essential oil burners and candles, says without exaggeration, Gag people, I don’t know if I can stand the smell. 

I remind her of our friend Angie who is not a fan of coffee.  She claims that Starbucks smells like skunk.  I deduce that it may not be a stretch for us to imagine the skunk smelling like Starbucks, as we are coffee-lovers in the truest form.

Two days later, and two dog baths, three candles, a can of deodorizer, and a few loads of laundry later, the smell has nearly subsided, and Frank is back to being proud he’s a puppy and announcing his presence by jumping for attention.  Everything returns to our pseudo sense of normal, at least in the puppy world.

Not so with the baby’s first roll.  The next day after Samuel rolled over for the first time, he rolled over a dozen times.  Now, we lay him down and he flips and flips.  Just two days ago, he would lie immobile on his back in his rainforest and look at the lights and play with the hanging birds and mirrors and twirly things and laugh and jabber, entertained.  Consequently, we would have a few minutes here to eat a meal and a few minutes there to switch the laundry or clean up the kitchen.

And now, overnight, he is on the move.  And our pseudo sense of normal has changed for good, for the good.

Sometimes there’s a difference between what gets our attention and what we pay attention to.   Neither is intrinsically good or bad.  But sometimes it’s the lesser thing that causes the greater shift.

And at the risk of sounding like I'm shamelessly plugging our own music, though I prefer to think of it as  how we keep living the music...
Either way, once again, in my head, I hear the lyric from tremble,
The subtlest change can start so far away.  A bird flutters her wings and sends a breeze across the plain.