It was good.

VERY good.

You should go see it. Like everyone.

It was clean. Like family with young kids clean.

It was inspirational. I find it even more inspirational when a story is true. At the end, they showed family photos from the real people in the story. Stick around to see them in the credits.

I loved seeing a very FUNCTIONAL family take on adversity.

I loved the analogy of the main character and Ferdinand the Bull.

The movie was one of the best of 2009.

No time for blogging, but just got this in an email from a high-ranking friend in the Army. I thought it was a good read...I only read the real general's real writing.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/hawley.asp

Double Dog Skunking (edit at bottom)

Last night, our dogs got skunked. Again.

I think this was the fourth time in two months, but they’re all starting to blur together.

Midori, our old girl who has almost as much silver hair as black these days, took a direct hit under the chin. She came inside foaming at the mouth…a side-effect of skunk spray that I’m becoming intimately familiar with. Frodo’s eyes were bugging out from the intensity of the situation.

We’ve learned that you wash a dog who has been skunked with very warm water. It opens their pores and then you can wash out more of the spray. This reduces the residual effect of skunk scent coming out of their pores weeks after the actual skunking. For us, this means the dogs have to go through the living room and up the stairs to the bathroom with the large tub and the shower head on a long hose  that I once bought just for dog washing.

Specifically, what this means is stopping Frodo from rubbing on the back of the couch and preventing him from hiding under our bed, his safety zone. And for Midori, it means stopping her from jumping on the black chair in the living room where she loves to spend her time (the one piece of living room furniture the dogs are allowed on, and the chair in which I do the majority of my writing) and from going in her kennel, which is her safety zone, and soiling her bedding.

We were relatively successful at getting the dogs upstairs and into the bathroom. Midori spent some brief moments in the black chair and her kennel, so we sprayed down and washed the chair later and threw her bedding in the washing machine. No bigee.

Meanwhile, I was upstairs warming up the shower water. But first, the most important move, I tore off my jeans and top because no sane person wears clothes while de-skunking dogs. or You. Will. Not. Get. The. Smell. Out. With. One. Wash.  So I threw my clothes onto the bathroom counter, well up and away from the bath. It’s a large bathroom, perfect for kids if any of you wants to buy a home. It’s going on the market shortly because the military is transferring us. Yes, I interrupted this blog with a shameless sales pitch.

The dogs joined me in the bathroom thanks to Steve’s shepherding, and both flew into the tub. Yes. Both flew. No commands, no coaxing, no protests, no running to Steve asking him to save them from the mean lady.

Our dogs love water…Midori is an amazing swimmer and surfer, her dominant breed being Labrador. Frodo loves sprinklers and has come to enjoy swimming. Both let us wash them from the hose in the yard, but neither likes the bathtub. At all.

However, they hate getting skunked even worse. I usually wash the dogs one at a time, but they both flew in over the edge and into the tub in perfect synchronization. You would have thought they were dancing an athletic, choreographed routine. Both sat there, eyes begging for the washing to begin.

Then it hit me. OH EXPLATIVE! Yes, this good little Christian girl said it. With volume.

The one thing that works on skunk smell it VET SOLUTIONS brand shampoo. We were nearly out, the only place in town that sells it is our veterinarian, and I was procrastinating buying more until I needed to get Midori’s next refill of her arthritis meds. The vet closes at 6pm. It was 9pm. We had about one dog’s worth of shampoo left, but our friends’ dog got skunked a few nights earlier and they called to see if they could borrow our shampoo. Of course they could. We knew the misery of having the dogs stink overnight before you can solve the issue. I also sent the VET SOLUTIONS brand follow-up neutralizing spray with the friends. We had plenty of that and it’s wonderful if some of the scent still remains after the initial washing. It also helps when the smell comes out of their pores on a humid day weeks down the road. And it works on deodorizing furniture and rugs. And it smells good!

Steve called our friends but they didn't answer, so I ordered him to go to their house. It was 9pm, they might be morning people but they might still be up. I felt like I was making Steve live that scripture about the neighbor who woke people up in the middle of the night to borrow a loaf of bread. But these are good friends and they know skunkings happen at night.

Meanwhile, I washed the dogs with citrus scented people shampoo. It didn’t do as good of a job as the VET SOLUTIONS brand stuff, but it took more than an edge off.

Steve came back with the spray and some peroxide and baking soda. But I didn’t want to mess with that concoction…it works fairly well, but doesn’t hold a candle to the VET SOLUTIONS brand shampoo and I knew I’d be getting the shampoo the next day. However, I DID use up the entire bottle of VET SOLUTIONS brand spray. I used most of it on the dogs, but also sprayed the stairwell and the black chair.

Midori was skunked so hard that whenever I went to give my sad girl a hug, I’d wretch from nausea and my eyes would sting and water.

We slept with the windows open. The front ones…the back of the house had skunk scent thick in the air.

We lit candles until the last moment before bed. And I re-lit them in the morning while I got ready for work. They seriously help.

There are still pockets of smell in my house, but I know from experience that they’ll be gone in 2-3 days with proper airing and candle-ing.

I came to work today, constantly feeling like I smelled skunk. It made me feel a bit sick. I thought I must be crazy. I hoped I might be pregnant…you know, the whole sensitive-to-smell symptom. But it’s my last day of work and I decided to just ignore these imaginings and get productive at the office.

And then it hit me.

My jeans.

I’m wearing the jeans that were on the bathroom counter when I washed the dogs. They never touched the dogs, but PHEW it was pungent in there. They must have absorbed a ton of skunk fumes.

I ran to the office bathroom and smelled my jeans. Sure enough.

I’m walking around in skunked jeans.

No wonder my eyes smart and threaten to water. It’s giving me a bit of a headache. And it’s nauseating me.

I’m finding myself walking REALLY FAST from one place to another in the office in attempt to create a breeze that will take the scent away from my nose.

I’m finding myself thinking that I’d rather be in a home where they are cooking chitlins than being in my jeans. Anyone want to trade? If you know me and chitlins, that’s saying a lot!

I’ve apologized to my boss for the smell, but he says he doesn’t notice it.

I’m living for my lunch break when I will go home and change and put the offending denim in the wash!

Have you ever reeked at work? Do tell the story. I’m tired of laughing at myself. Let me laugh at you.

 Question: We just had new neighbors move in next door. They have a dog, a german shepherd mix. I'm thinking of bringing them a bottle of the shampoo and some home made cookies as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift. Will they think I'm insane? I just think it helps to be prepared.

EDIT: I went home on lunch and changed into a different pair of jeans and scarfed some leftovers and gave the dogs some love. Back at work, I still swear I smell skunk, though the odor has improved now that I have on clean jeans. Now it's only mildly nauseating and my nose it twinging but the headache is gone. I bet it's INSIDE my nose the same way it can cling to skin. Awful!

My poor dogs...if I'm suffering like this, imagine how they feel. Their sense of smell are exponentially stronger than humans'.

My boss told me a hilarious story from when he was in high school. His friend got skunked one night when they were out doing god-knows-what 50 miles out of town. It was 40 degrees outside, but they made the poor guy ride in the back of the pickup all the way home. The next morning, the guy went to school. Everywhere he went, the school REEKED. After about 30 minutes, the principal came and kicked him out of the building and told him not to come back until the stink was gone. LoL.