What's on your (PHOTO) Friday Menu, RNYers?

Vaccinate your spawn, LOVE it!!!!!

Vaccinate your spawn, lol! Love it!

Thirteen would be cool...or Martha Jones Dunning the galaxy with captain jack and david tennant!

Oh wow, Martha Jones, the good ol' days.

I'd want to be Tea Leoni's character simply because she gets to snuggle up to Tim Daly. Purrrrrrrr. I love my husband but....

I posted the same meme! Haha

Happy Fri-yay everybody!

One more day until vacation!

I've told everybody that I was going to Massachusetts for vacation but that is only partly true. I am going to Massachusetts for a portion of the week and spending a portion of the week, at home, on a stay-cation.

My last stay-cation went poorly. Perhaps, I am dwelling too much on the negative aspects though, I guess you guys can be the judge.

Ordinarily, I don't take stay-cations because if my staff and clients know that I am at home they will call all day long and I just end up working from home. But, a few years ago, I had some slow time at work with the coming end of the fiscal year and decided to spend a week at home working on a home improvement project.

The first day of the project went well, me and Marilyn worked calmly together and made good progress on the demolition aspect of the job. It was inordinately hot for September but that didn't really matter because we have central air and a whole house fan. After dinner, we went to bed. Somewhere, deep in the middle of the night, we both woke up gagging from the smell of a skunk. We turned off the whole house fan, closed the windows, wrapped our heads in blankets and managed to fall asleep for a few more hours.

The next day, we continued the project. The yard was still kind of smelly and Marilyn seemed distracted but I didn't think too much of it. In the afternoon we broke off work and went to an end of summer festival in a neighboring town. We got home fairly early and I went into the family room to watch TV. Marilyn came up from the basement and said to me:

"there is a poop in the basement window well"

non-plussed, I said "OK"

"I think its from the skunk"

still not understanding, I said "Is the skunk in the window well"

"No, I think it went into the pipe"

Finally starting to grasp the magnitude of this problem, I asked "Where does the pipe lead?"

Yes, where does the pipe lead? Six feet down, narrowing from six to four inches, and then both left and right at 90 degree angle. Then enveloping the entire house and connecting to our two sump pumps which are, wait for this, inside our house.

Apparently the skunk had been chased by a predatory animal and fallen into the window well. When he realized that he couldn't climb up the sheer steel face of the well, he decided to enjoy a bowel movement and then climb down into the pipe

Let us pause to reflect on how I am now situated. Its Labor day weekend, 95 degrees out and we have a direct PVC line from an angry, trapped skunk into our partially finished basement. Portions of the house now have a gagging, chemical smell. Tears are being shed. Calls are being made to our home insurers. Mortgage balances remaining are being researched. Marilyn's productivity on the improvement project flagged. Even Kelly may not be able to find a silver lining here.

The next day featured calls to animal control, (who told us to call a plumber), calls to plumbers (who were at their Lake Houses enjoying the long weekend), traipses around the house to see which rooms smelled to which degree, and as much time spent outside working as was physically possible. My youngest sat mysteriously half way between the window well and the sump pump playing video games, seemingly impervious to the smell.

Nights were spent in a stifling skunk sauna. Neither the air, nor the whole house fan could be turned on for fear of spreading the smell throughout the entire house. We lay on each side of the bed trying desperately not to touch each other and waiting for a breeze to bring some air into the room. On Tuesday, the plumber did come out and we entered the next phase of the staycation.

A video line was run into the pipe which confirmed that we did, in fact have a dead skunk in the French Drain. Several options were presented, the first of which was a root removal tool, and the most extreme of which was hiring a backhoe to dig six feet down and remove the portion of the pipe containing the skunk. As an added bonus, the backhoe option would likely require destroying the driveway and landscaping of my neighbor's brand new house. My neighbor's family is tremendously nice, but by occupation, he is a litigation partner at a downtown law firm.

The root removal tool was not successful, but did in fact, raise our hopes that it had been so. Unfortunately, as later video work showed, it only moved the skunk into a different part of the pipe. Many days, dollars, and tears were spent wondering whether the root removal plan worked.

Finally, on the Wednesday after I returned to work we resolved that it was time to bite the bullet and get the excavator guy in. One last Hail Mary was tried. Two septic trucks were brought to our house. One truck connected to the drainpipe that the skunk crawled into and began to suction. The other connected to the next window well and began shooting clean water into the pipe. Between the pushing and pulling, the skunk was finally extricated. I passed out 100's to the workers like Pac Man Jones at the Doll House. The driver knocked on the door and asked Marilyn if she wanted to see the rodent. She declined.

The next few weeks were a blur of bleach, vinegar, whole room de-ionizers and smell tests. By Thanksgiving, I was comfortable that the skunky smell had gone away.

QOTD: Magnum PI, as long as all the shooting missed me as well.

Breakfast: Sausage

Snack: Protein bar

Lunch: Naf Naf Grill

Snack: Jerky

Dinner: We have to eat the lamb tonight.

Likely I will post tomorrow morning.

Have a great day, all!

hahaha you are the best story teller! I'm sorry about your last staycation...but what are the odds you can beat that debacle this time?

also, I am obsessed with magnum PI! I named my last cat Magnum.

• You are right, I'm struggling to find the silver lining for sure. I hope this stay-cation is MUCH better!!

If anybody could, it would be you, Kelly.