The First Hour

The smell is ... not so bad. Cloying, quite musty, and just a hint sweet, like week-old jack-o-lantern. At first, it hung around the kitchen, focused on the pot of boiling months-dead turtles. Then it began to creep out into the living room. Now it is in the study. Gradually, it becomes stronger by breaths, creeping so slowly as to be unnoticeably ever-more-present.

Perhaps this needs explaining.

I have three turtle shells in my apartment now, from my parent's ranch. These turtles have been dead for an unknown-to-me-but-incredibly-long time, and they are dried up, thoroughly dessicated. I want the shells, clean of nasty, leathery turtle corpse. I'd like to use them as odd props around the place.

So in an effort to clean the dang things, I've put them to a rolling bubble on the stove top. And they reek. Sometimes, you wish your mother had been utterly wrong about things, you know? Like now, about what it would smell like trying this. She was right. None of the neighbors have complained or anything, and I doubt they will. I plan to take them off and scrub by hand in about two hours. From my experience making stock from chicken bones, that's the kind of time it'll take to really strip these shells down.

No. I do not plan to consume any of this "stock". That would probably kill me, aside from the taste.

All told, I'd rather be boiling cabbage, or burning garlic.

Dear, dear Festus (the cat i'm taking from ann marie next week) is going to the vet Wednesday. Ann Marie will starve him the night before, and then she and I will lock him up too early in the morning to take him far out of his comfort zone, where they'll poke him with needles, cram a thermometer up his ass, stick an IV in him, chop off some his favorite bits, and imprison him for the night. We figured all at once was the way to do so many unpleasant but entirely necessary things. Then next Sunday or so he'll come to live with me. I'm probably going to try for Monday next, instead of the Sunday, just so the paperwork can be done then instead of the day or days before.

I've decided. If Charlotte begins to complain about the kitchen, I'll take them off early. So far, she hasn't done this, though she's certainly been wrinkling her nose. Poor dear.

Well ta all.

Love and Peace (and whoa bear, what's the stench?)