Getting Skunked: Part Two



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In case you missed Getting Skunked, Part One, you can read it here.  That was more of a symbolic experience, but today's adventure was a bit different.

When I woke up this morning, one of the pups was barking like her butt was on fire and the whole house smelled like burnt rubber.  I immediately opened all the windows and cranked up the ceiling fans, even though it was 35 degrees outside.  No doubt about it, we’d been skunked!  The smell seemed to be coming up through the floor vents, giving me the idea that the varmints were under our home.

My husband woke up twenty minutes later complaining that he was cold, and then asked what was burning.  I was still running through the house trying to find “the source” of the skunk smell.  After a few minutes, I determined that it had already burned into my brain, and where it came from really didn’t matter.

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After almost gagging on my breakfast—skunk odor really keeps you from eating—I took a shower.  God knows why, because all the laundry I had washed and folded and left in the baskets last night now smelled like Pepe Le Pew.  I hoped for the best and excitedly left the house (who’d want to stay in there?) to go see a client who had hired me to do some collaborative writing and proofing.

No sooner had I settled in at my client’s office, when the odor popped back up.  A concerned gentleman stuck his head in the office where I was working and asked if I smelled skunk.  The client I was writing with responded by spraying the entire office with Febreeze, and then asked if I would like to spray my jacket.  Needless to say, no one sat next to me at lunch!

The day finally ended and I headed home, having no idea that the skunk odor would still be so strong that it would bowl me over at the door.  My husband has recently started working from home, and he said:  “Really, you get used to it.”  I firmly disagreed.

We headed out to feed farm animals and strategize about our skunk hunt.  Two small holes were found around the AC/Heating unit (in the back) and around where the septic lines are routed (oddly, in the front).  We plugged the hole in the back with chicken wire, hoping it will force the skunk(s) out the front.  (We didn’t want them to spray the dogs, who love to run around in the back yard.)

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My Facebook friends offered helpful advice (thank you Janice, Laurie, and Deb!) about getting rid of all things skunk, but so far nothing is making a substantial difference.  Tomorrow we will stalk the skunks at sunset and wait for them to come out of the remaining hole (great weekend, eh?), and then we will close the gap.  It’s quite a gamble, as we don’t know how many skunks there might be. 

We considered an exterminator, but a friend’s bill for the same issue was $1,800.00!  (Thanks, Crystal, for the warning...)

Guess we'll see if we can choke down some dinner while savoring skunk ambience.  Maybe we'll stay in the far end of the house, where the smell isn’t quite as strong.  May have to sleep in the guest room, too, as it smells slightly better than the master bedroom.

Or we could just go out searching for the only known predator of skunks-- the horned owl.  My luck, I’d get a direct hit of skunk spray while I’m out owl-hunting.  And the owls might eat my barn cats, who are busy eating barn mice.

p.s.  My husband just came back in after doing some skunk sleuthing.  He saw one enter the hole that we left open, and it’s an albino skunk!  We’ve only seen one of those before, in the barn of a farm we decided not to buy J.



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Have you ever been skunked?  I’d love to hear about it.  Please feel free to leave a comment.

Marianne M. Smith
Writer At The Ranch
Making You Look Brilliant One Word At A Time
http://writerattheranch.com
wordsmith@writerattheranch.com



Appreciating the Absurd

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Lately things haven’t been making much sense, so I suppose it is in self-defense that I have begun truly appreciating the absurd. 

 Merriam-Webster defines absurd this way:  “Ludicrous, ridiculous, meaningless.”  And secondly, “Having no rational or orderly relationship to human life.”  And I love the synonyms for it on thesaurus.com: “Bugged out, cracked, crazy.”

Embracing the wonderfully wacky seems to lessen the impact of things gone woefully wrong.  At least, that is how it works for me.

Sometimes I even seek out the wacky for comic relief, though the seeking out is not usually necessary.  In our current age, the wacky and absurd seem increasingly abundant.

Often when I see things that are totally absurd I find myself thinking, “Ummm….why?”  But there is no why.  “Why not?” might be a more appropriate question.

Why not have a giant chicken emerging from your El Camino?

Why not have Cadillacs sticking out of the dirt? 

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Why not put the world’s largest ear of corn above an otherwise ordinary structure? 

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Why not have your photo made next to King Kong?

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 Why not wave at the Giant Cowboy? 

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Of course, roadside attractions are meant to be absurd.  Then there are the gentle absurdities of everyday life:  a decision made by a close friend or relative that boggles your mind, a ruling made by the company you work for that defies any known logic or reasoning, a recipe that turns out nothing like the description, though you followed all directions to the letter, an especially aggravating neurotic behavior that your dog seems to have acquired out of thin air.  I could go on, but you get the picture...

It seems best just to shrug, smile, and appreciate that life is indeed strange.  And sometimes the stranger it is, the less you have to explain!

I’d love to hear about the latest absurdities in your life.  C’mon, it'll make me feel better!  Please feel free to leave a comment.

Marianne M. Smith
Writer At The Ranch
Making You Look Brilliant One Word At A Time
http://writerattheranch.com
wordsmith@writerattheranch.com

Conscious Complaining for Positive Living



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Think of this as Part Two of last week’s blog post on eliminating annoyances and having a better 2012. If you missed Part One, you can read it here.

Recently, I read a phenomenal book on achieving emotional balance:  The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying To Tell You by Karla McLaren.

McLaren maintains that you can’t be positive without honoring the negative, which is an intriguing concept.





In fact, her feeling is that “a lack of permission to complain can cause unresolving, repetitive mood states like worry, depression, and apathy.”  She says that ignoring the negative can drain our energy, if we’re not careful.

I’ve been immersing myself in positivism lately, but there are days when that seems trite and shallow because I really don’t feel that way.  And now I have “permission” to complain?  Gotta love that!

McLaren suggests trying out a technique she calls Conscious Complaining.  Find a very private place where no one can hear you and close the door.  She explains how it works:  “When you’ve found your perfect complaining site, let yourself go, and give a voice to your dejected, hopeless, sarcastic, nasty, bratty self.  Bring dark humor out of the shadows and really whine and swear about the frustrations, stupidities, impossibilities, and absurdities of your situation.  Complain for as long as you like…and when you run out of things to say, thank whatever you’ve been whining or yelling at.”

After focusing for so long on being positive, I found the idea of Conscious Complaining to be a little confusing at first.  But after giving it a go and ranting for awhile, I reached a state of contented peace, and then began to feel quite positive again.

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When I initially tried this technique I have to admit that I felt quite foolish, but elation soon followed.  Can’t tell you how marvelous it felt to get everything off my chest without the risk of hurting anyone!

I highly recommend that you give this technique your best shot, if it appeals to you.  But be sure you are totally alone.  (Nothing like ranting about your spouse or roommate while they are standing right outside the door listening in...)  If that kind of privacy is hard to come by, you could try journaling your complaints and then tearing up the list.  But I find that voicing them is much more freeing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not fond of whiners.  And generally I consider myself to be an insanely positive person.  But by Consciously Complaining you can let go of unconscious complaining, which is the big offender.

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If you can let go of your complaints by consciously naming them and ranting about them, you are clearing the path for a more positive life experience.

I’d love to hear about your experience after you try this technique, be it good, bad, or ugly.  Go ahead; find some privacy, close the door, and rant!

Marianne M. Smith
Writer At The Ranch
Making You Look Brilliant One Word At A Time
http://writerattheranch.com
wordsmith@writerattheranch.com

Kicking the Toaster: Getting Rid of Annoyances for a Better 2012

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It’s a brand new year, and I’m trying hard to think about things in a new way.  Recently I read a blog post by a fellow writer (and for the life of me I can’t find it to credit him/her here) about getting rid of your ten most aggravating everyday annoyances.  The idea was that if you could get the top energy drainers out of your life, you could be more focused and productive.

When I read that, I was staring at mounds of paperwork on my desk, and some too small toast.  Our spiffy four slot toaster had recently bitten the dust, and I just hadn’t gotten around to replacing it.  I thought I was doing well when I found a replacement toaster in my old “office stuff” box, and I promptly placed it on the kitchen counter and felt self-satisfied.

Toast is a sacred morning ritual for me.  Problem was, the replacement toaster was a two slotter, and it also had really small slots.  I had to buy smaller bread, and then toast one end at a time.  This took longer, and also resulted in toast that was way too brown for my taste.  The whole process was exceptionally aggravating to me.  And generally, it all happened before coffee.

This experience provoked me to thoughtfully examine my top ten list of annoyances.  I’m right in the middle of eliminating most of them.  Some require money, but most just require a little creative thinking.  That original blog post I read suggested you take some time and come up with every single everyday annoyance that you can think of and write them down, and then focus on your top ten.  I didn’t think I had that many until I started my list.



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I have fixed my top two (kicked my toaster to the curb and convinced my husband to fix a stuck barn door that I struggled with every day), and I’m working on my third, which is that my pens never have any ink  when I come up with a brilliant idea (frustrating dilemma for a writer).  Thinking of taking notes on a tablet instead, or using pencils in the meantime.  Have added a decent pencil sharpener to my store list.

Sitting here at my desk writing this while enjoying perfectly large and brown toast, I have to tell you that I think there is something to this.  If your chief annoyances are a lack of money or extremely aggravating people in your life,  getting them off your list may be a little harder.  (And no, I don’t recommend homicide J.)  But if you are creative and determined, I think you will find interesting ways to adjust your life.  The result is better quality of life and more pleasure, and who couldn’t use that?

Annoyances drain our energy, distract us from our primary work, and sometimes bring with them negative energy and spiraling emotions.

Sometimes the annoyances that get under our skin the most tell us a little bit about who we are.  I ran across a great blog post by Stacy Claflin that goes into that a little further, in case you’re interested.  Another great post by Pilar Gerasimo delves into the zen of tolerations and why we still need to remove annoyances.

Happy New Year, everyone!  Hope you’ll take a moment to work on your personal list of annoyances.  I promise you it will be an interesting experience.  And if you take action, it might just really change your experience of 2012.

Please feel free to comment about your own take with annoyances.

Marianne M. Smith
Writer At The Ranch
Making You Look Brilliant One Word At A Time
http://writerattheranch.com
wordsmith@writerattheranch.com