| Current mood: |  exhausted |
| Current music: | "Bring it Up (Live at the Apollo)" by James Brown |
Get the funk outta here
I must have had the spirits of George Clinton and the entire Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, Rick James, Cameo, Kool & the Gang, the Commodores (and for good measure Earth Wind and Fire, Curtis Mayfield, the Tower of Power, Outkast, and even Jamiroquai too) all trapped in my couch yesterday. For that was the funk I woke up to yesterday morning.
At first I thought it was the standard, mid-winter, no-fresh-air-in-the-house-for-3-months, stink of staleness, because I woke up on my couch from a 12-hour coma feeling about as pretty as anyone who sleeps that long usually does. I've been sleeping on the couch since Ryan left and I figured the couch and the house just needed to be aired out. Oddly enough, I had just changed the bedding on the couch (yes, I put sheets on my couch if I sleep on it) a couple of days before.
(Note: I am, by nature, a non-sweaty, non-stinky person. Due to some quirk of my biology, I do not produce oils and sweat at the same rate that most people do. I have to wait three days in between washing my hair or it turns to straw, I didn't even begin to need deodorant until I was almost out of high school, and I can wear the same pair of pants for a week and they'll still smell fresh. So having that smell in my couch, despite the fact that I usually shower before bed and thus am clean when I climb between the sheets confuzzled me a bit.)
So, first thing I do is strip the bedding (for the second time that week) and douse the whole couch with Febreeze. Let it air out. Nope, smell still there. Douse with yummy-smelling Lysol. Let it air out. Nope, still there. Okay, fine. On to the more serious plan.
I turn off the heat and then open every damn window in my house and then exit the premises for a while. I go out, buy a futon mattress that I can throw down on my tatami mats in the computer room and sleep in there instead, and run a couple more errands. I come back home, bundle up in some warm sweaters, and proceed to do housework for a whilie.
After about 3 hours of this, the temp in the house is hovering within a few degrees of freezing. Since I don't intend to blow up my pipes any time this winter, I shut the house back up and turn on the heat. I go to smell the couch and it seems fine. I sit on the couch and realize it is not fine. It still fucking smells.
I go on a sniffing rampage. Even though it's not a rotten smell (and I'm not a total slob), I check under the couch for a stray morsel of food or something. I smell the living room rug. I smell the heater to see if something died in there. I smell the kitchen. Nothing. I can't even smell the funk if I sniff the couch and the cushions up close, but when I sit down on the couch, there it is again. I'm pissed.
I finally take all the cushions off the couch, take the covers off the cushions, and then soak everything - cushions, cushion covers, and the now bare couch - with Febreeze. I spread all this stuff out around the living room to air out overnight. Throughout the night and into the morning, the couch, cushions and covers get repeated liberal dousings of both Febreeze and Lysol. Today I reassembled the couch. Sat down. No smell. Got up and did something else for a while. No smell. As of right now, I cautiously decree the smell to be gone.
I really think Rick James was trapped under my couch cushion.
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