Please enjoy this complimentary video

I’ll make an effort to blog tomorrow.

One of the many bonuses of living on the west side is the wildlife. Since the west side is at the base of the foothills, we have lots of foxes, raccoons, skunks & the occasional deer walking up and down our street. It has always felt like a charmed life to be able to sit out on the porch and watch a skunk or fox walk past our front gate, look at us, and keep walking. Almost as if they say “Hey there, pleasant evening isn’t it?” and then they saunter off without a care in the world.

Everyone in our neighborhood feeds the squirrels and the birds, and the skunks and raccoons are more than happy to share. It’s almost a perfect system. A squirrel will sit at our squirrel feeder and eat the portion of corn that they eat, then drop the rest to the base of the tree and go to the next kernel. Meanwhile the birds will sift through the pile at the base of the tree and take whatever they need. Then once night falls, the skunks will climb over the fence and fill its cheeks with the corn at the base of the tree. It’s really a perfect system.

If there were a flaw in this system.. It would be that sometimes people have idiot dachshunds that don’t completely understand the ramifications of chasing after a skunk. And therein lays my story.

As you’ve read several times by now, Lynette and I have been engaging in a WONDERFUL life changing minimalization project. A side effect of this project has been a bit of a messy house. This last weekend Lynette’s family came out to visit, so we spent a lot of time getting rid of things, and when it came down to the final days we were finishing up on the cleaning.

It was 9.30pm, Thursday night, the house was 100% clean, and I was giddy with the prospect of going to bed early. I was just finishing the dishes and Lynette had just let the dogs out the back door to go to the bathroom. Over my shoulder I heard feverish barking, followed by Lynette yelling “Annabelle.. NO!….. “DANG IT!!” and then the wafting scent. If you’ve ever been at ground zero during a skunk attack you’ll know that it smells nothing like the skunk smell you’ve come to know and possibly love.

Driving through an area where a skunk has been hit or sprayed smells a little odd.. Almost like a gasoline quality but mixed with a certain je ne sais quoi. Being 15 feet from where a skunk just erupted has none of the same qualities. The only way I can describe it would be that if there were an Italian spice company that has a room where nothing but the same powerful italian spice has been processed for 1,000 years.. Being that close would be like standing in that room.

As soon as I started smelling that smell, I ran to the back door and closed it. We have a small pane of glass in our backdoor that allowed me to look out and talk to Lynette. It was raining at the moment and Lynette was standing there with a disgusted look on her face. Over her shoulder I could see Ginger and Maggie standing near Lynette, and Annabelle out in the yard sneezing up a storm.. seemingly covered in a white mucus-like substance. Sneezing turned to rolling around, which turned to throwing up, which turned to diarrhea. Annabelle’s entire body was effectively immobilized.

Lynette said “Annabelle’s barfing” and I responded “GOOD.. Stupid freaking dog!” I was mad.. The promise of a 9.30 bedtime was shot. So there Lynette and I stood. Her outside in the rain, me inside looking out. Now to a lot of you it may seem harsh.. Why wouldn’t I have lynette come in immediately?? This was our first skunking experience, and we needed to calm down and figure out the best course of action to take.

I knew that if we let our dogs run in on their own legs I’d have 3 dogs running directly into the living room and scooting across the couches, chairs and rugs trying to get the smell off. I knew that if they were carried in, that they’d stink the entire house up.. And so I told lynette my idea. “Go to the side of the house and hose down the dogs!” she looked at me in her loving way and said “Are you flipping kidding me!?! That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of! The skunk is probably up front, I’m not going to go around and get sprayed again!” At this point I didn’t know what to do. I knew that it would suck for her to spray down those dogs while she was barefoot and it was raining, but I also knew that bringing those dogs in with 100% of the smell on them would likely chase us out of our house for the weekend.. So using my kindest bargaining techniques I responded “I’m sure the skunks gone, and I’m not letting you in, so just DO IT!” (that’s right ladies.. He’s taken!)

While Lynette was spraying the dogs off on the side of the house, I was looking through our cabinets trying to find tomatoe paste. Lynette came back to the backdoor looking annoyed. I looked down towards her feet and saw 3 shivering soaked dogs. “Pick the dogs up so that they can’t run all over the place.” Lynette’s annoyance went up a level and she gave me an “I’m going to kill you in your sleep” look. I opened the door as Lynette (carrying three shivering wiener dogs) came flying through and into the bathroom. She put the dogs in the bathtub and jumped in with them. I brought in the one can of tomatoe paste I had been able to find. She started the shower up and began spreading tomatoe paste on herself and the dogs. (Annabelle had borne the brunt of the spray, but Maggie, Ginger & Lynette had gotten the fine mist)

While she showered with the dogs I ran to the local supermarket and picked up more tomato paste and “Summers Eve” which is a feminine wash that we had heard does very well with skunkings. SO 3 cans of tomatoe paste and a bottle of Summers eve later, the shower was done and the dogs were dry. It’s now 5 days after the fact and Lynette smells fine, Maggie & Ginger smell like tomato & Annabelle smells like tomato & Skunk (but only slightly on the latter).

Annabelle still sneezes occasionally and I could blow in her nose and probably clear out most of that, but I want her to have a good week to savor the flavor in the hopes that the next time she sees her little black and white friend, she’ll remember not to screw around.

So that’s the story of the skunk.

If you want to do what we’re doing.. The following is a bit of a “how to.”

Junk Email:

Most “junk” emails we receive have an “Unsubscribe or Opt Out” option on the bottom. For 2 months I’ve gone directly to the bottoms of these emails and unsubscribed us. I know that this entire process will probably continue until late October since a lot of companies say “Please allow 6-8 weeks for your request to be fully processed…” but I think we’re getting to the end of the email fight.

Junk “Snail mail:”

Junk mail continues to get delivered to our mailbox, but there also, the numbers have dwindled. The 6-8 week period is in progress on a lot of the credit card offers, but there are still others coming in. I found a nice piece of information hidden on the back of just such an offer today that I thought I’d pass on. If you would like to remove your name and/or your spouse’s name from the major credit agencies list (Experian, etc..) you can call

1-888-567-8688 OR you can go to www.optoutprescreen.com Of course there’ll be a 6-8 week period where you still get crap from everywhere, but I’m hoping that after that, things’ll die down greatly.

Aside from credit card offers, the other thorns in my side are the various offers I get from car dealerships, etc… These I’ve taken to opening the letter and writing “Please take me off of ALL future mailings and offers, I do not wish to be solicited” and then I put the slip back into the envelope backwards (so that my name doesn’t show in the address window of the envelope) and then I tape it shut and put “Return to sender” and then I put that in a mailbox in front of a grocery store or at work so that the mailman cannot simply leave it in my mailbox. (otherwise he/she would)

Bills:

We’ve called all of our companies that send us bills (Mortgage, Insurance, Cell phones, etc…) and we’ve asked all of them to put us onto a paperless system. All but 1 of them were able to comply. (the one who couldn’t was just too small of a company and didn’t have that as an option) In addition to receiving our bills via email, we’ve set up all but 2 of our bills to be automatically deducted from our bank account. So now instead of having to remember to call and pay each of our bills manually, we just have to remember that on such and such a day, we need to have “X” amount of money in our account.

So for those of you who enjoy receiving tons of mail and emails and stuff like that, this post is probably boring. Maybe there are some of you that are sympathizers with my cause, I hope you enjoyed it. =)

Now i’m off to Estes Park, Rocky Mountain National Park & Winter Park..

Savings = $98/year

Thanks to the computer skills of our friend Greg we have upgraded our software and backed up the site in order to start the transfer process. During the EXTREMELY difficult process, the masthead photo was lost. This is a blessing because now i might periodically change it.

Anyway, that’s what’s happening. AND now that we’re only paying $10 a year for this website.. we’ll definitely be keeping it around =)

NOT

For all intensive purposes.

~fin

It’s now 10.45 and i’m going to bed. Tomorrow nights project will be bringing storage items up and into the new closet so that the downstairs room that used to be storage can be turned into a sort of office for the business. This is all part of our minimization project and i think that this time we’re really going to go the distance. There will be no future minimization projects, for there shall be nothing left to minimize.

Ahhh..