Poop in Central Square

Oh, man! Last night, Matt and I were at one of the Bank of America ATMs in Central Square around 9:30 PM and, like my previous entry about the subway, we were overwhelmed by the unmistakable smell of poop. WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO US? :-(

Poop on the New York Subway

The day after Christmas, I went with my dad, cousins, and Matt to The Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. We took the subway in from Queens, enjoyed a lovely pizza lunch, and spent the afternoon looking at all of the fantastic exhibits. (My favorite were the dinosaur bones…I remember that from going there on field trips!)

After transferring to the N train to get back to Queens, we were excited to find a mostly empty subway car during rush hour. And then, we were overwhelmed by a very, very foul smell. We then came to a horrible realization why the subway car was mostly empty: that smell was poop. At first I thought someone had just farted, but then the smell never went away and it was apparent that the stench was poop.

At that point, we had to decide what to do. Our choices were as follows:

1) Exit the subway car and get on one of the cramped ones.
2) Stay in the spacious, but stinky subway car and watch peoples’ reactions as they boarded.

My cousins enthusiastically opted for number 2. (No pun intended) It was like something out of “Candid Camera”…people walking in and exiting immediately, people wrapping their scarves around their noses and mouths, and taking out tissues to breathe through them.

I pulled my turtleneck over my nose and mouth and watched the horrified subway-riders. I laughed so heartily that my sides ached for hours afterwards.

Sour milk

I think one of the worst physical sensations is accidentally drinking sour milk. I poured myself a nice bowl of Puffins cereal with 2% milk that the sell-by date isn’t until later this week. I’m a little stuffed up, so I couldn’t smell anything sour. I took a big spoonful of cereal and milk and….BLEAH!!!! Terrible!!! I lost my appetite and didn’t eat anything again until 1 PM!!!

A traumatic experience at Dunkies

Check this out from Universal Hub…

Some guy confused his coffee with mine at Dunkin’ Donuts this morning. In order to make sure he got the right one, he took a sip out of mine, and said, oops, wrong one. Then he took his and left.

YUCK.

Meow meow meow meow…

I was just watching this on YouTube:

And this user said:

I eat meow mix constantly put like 3 cans in a bowl put it in the microwave for like 1 30 seconds. take it out and put ketchup and mustard on it.Sooooooooooooooooooooooo good. OMG! I love it. And you can dip chips in it.

Oh, yuck!!!!

That Darn Cat

I had a lovely cantaloupe sitting in the fruit bowl on my kitchen table. I bought it on Tuesday and it seemed to be approaching prime ripeness on Thursday night and I prepared to enjoy it on Friday.

Then, yesterday morning, I went into the kitchen and saw this awful green looking cat vomit next to the fruit bowl. And then I saw a bunch of big bites taken directly out of the cantaloupe. THAT CAT!!!!!!!! He ate the skin/rind (whatever you call it for cantaloupe) and ate a good portion of the cantaloupe.

Moo!

I spent most of my life growing up in Central New Jersey. We lived in Dayton, NJ for seven years. Back in the mid-eighties, Dayton was primarily farmland. Currently, it’s your average suburb, but back then, there were lots and lots of farms. In fact, we didn’t even have a supermarket. We had to travel to get to one, or go to Butler’s General Store. (Now Butler’s is a fancy schmancy restaurant/banquet hall)

Prior to this, we lived in Brooklyn. We were city folk, and living in Dayton felt like we were in “Green Acres.” It felt really rural.

Of course, being surrounded by farms meant that, at the time, Dayton smelled like farms. Namely, Dayton smelled like cow manure. I remember many hot, sticky summers…playing outside, and smelling cow manure.

They say the sense of smell is strongly tied to memory. This must be true, because now, whenever I get the slightest whiff of cow manure, I feel transported back to the summers of my childhood.

Today, I was feeling a little anxious and stressed out, so I took a long walk around the neighborhood. I passed by a house and noticed a very familiar smell. They must have been doing some gardening! Ahhh, cow manure. For a moment, I felt like all of my troubles were evaporating. I was five years old again, playing outside, and life’s biggest inconvenience was that I knew I was going to have to go in to eat dinner soon. Ahhh, cow manure.

Then I had a reality check: “Um, hello, you’re standing in front of someone’s house finding inner peace from the smell of bovine fecal matter. Time to keep walking!”

Funny Captcha

Today I was getting ready to download the two newest episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generaction (it promised to be drama-filled and I just couldn’t wait until they aired in the US!) from MegaUpload.

They have a CAPTCHA (you know, one of the things that looks like this: )

Anyway, when I went to download Degrassi, the CAPTCHA for one of the episodes was: “POO.” I was amused.

A few months ago, my dad got one that said “URINE.”

Eric Carle Museum

On Saturday, I took a day trip to Western Mass. It was a lot of fun. Amherst is really cute, Sylvester’s makes a mean brunch, and there’s an Eric Carle Museum! Yes, Eric Carle. One of my favorite children’s book illustrators.

The museum store was really cool. I bought all sorts of things, including super cool holiday presents for friends and family so I’m not going to list them all here and spoil the surprise. :-) But I did buy two prints for my house.

The only downside was that the bathroom and store smelled like one giant Diaper Genie. In fact, while we were in the store, I saw a little boy sitting on the floor, face twisted, contorted, and very red…his dad asked him, “Son, are you pooping?” The little boy nodded. It didn’t help the already putrid odor.

I just need to find a Dr. Suess museum (although there does seem to be a Dr. Suess sculpture garden in Springfield, MA!) and an Ezra Jack Keats museum and my life will be complete!

Ew! A mouse!

Our house smelled funny last night. Not just funny…but BAD. FOUL. We couldn’t figure out what it was…so Matt moved the couch and there was a DEAD MOUSE there. It was grotesque. While I was having a little freak out session in the hallway, Matt was cleaning behind the couch. He moved the subwoofer and there was a ton of mouse poop. So, he pulled the carpet up and underneath the carpet was a DEAD AND DECAYING MOUSE.

I hate mice. Well, when I see photos of them they’re cute and they’re cute in cartoons…but man, the idea of them in our house is just REALLY unsettling. Especially when they’re UNDER OUR COUCH DEAD.

I was sick to my stomach and even as I write this, I can hardly contain my grimaces. Just a year ago, I had an equally disgusting encounter with a dead bird.

Matt cleaned the carpet (while I continued my panic attack in the hallway) and bleached under the rug.

Now Matt thinks our cat, Levon, is a bad cat because he didn’t catch the mice.

We think that the mice might be coming up from the basement so we let Levon down there to see if he could catch more. Now I’m worried constantly worried that I might come home and find dead mice in the kitchen that Levon caught and proudly put on display. My old cat Choo-choo used to do that a lot. Our house was on a field where we first lived in New Jersey, so we got field mice. As soon as we got Choo-choo, though, those mice scrammed!!

Anyway, after we finished cleaning and airing out the downstairs, it was about 1 o’clock in the morning. I was exhausted, grossed out, and annoyed. Matt decided to use that to his benefit and play a trick on me, as he so often does. There was a piece of my hair stuck on something in the couch (and mind you, my hair is very coarse and nearly down to my waist, so one piece of my hair is pretty substantial) and Matt pulled it out and said, “EWW! MOUSE TAIL!” I let out a blood curdling scream (hopefully our neighbors were not awoken by them) and ran away, arms flailing about. Matt felt bad and gave me a hug. Overall, it was a very eventful evening. I think we need to buy mouse traps. Add mice to my list of animal phobias…dead mice are the WORST.