Grown Up Horror Story

If you are particularly queasy and your stomach turns easily, you may want to consider skipping this post. If your constitution can stomach something a little more than truly revolting, go ahead and read on. But if you get to the picture at the bottom (of course there is photographic evidence!) and throw up a little bit in your mouth, I wash my hands of any blame. You were adequately warned.

So, I left a funny little anecdote out of my weekend update post this week. Mostly because I am trying my best to pretend it didn't happen. Unfortunately, the problem has decide to not just disappear as I had hoped it would… Here's what happened.

We rarely drive my car anymore, since we live so close to work and carpooling together is kind of nice in the morning. It gives us a few minutes each to sip coffee and talk about things. And Ben would rather drive his car, since my car is a Jetta and he can't quite fit in it without his head touching the roof. Anyways, I had to be at work early on Wednesday, so Ben ended up driving my car. It did not take long for him to let me know that, in his humble opinion, my car smelt like "dog anus". While I wasn't particularly thrilled with his description, it was hard to argue with it once I smelled the car for myself. Being better versed in horrible smells, it didn't take me long to realize that it smelled more like milk gone terrible bad, as opposed to the back end of a canine. The only thing I could think of was that I had spilled coffee several weeks ago and maybe, finally, the cream in it had gone bad? I scrubbed the carpet where it had spilled and Febreez-ed the car, hoping that was the cure.

It wasn't. Over the next few days, for whatever reason or another, I was driving my car and the smell was getting to the point where I started to feel sick after mere minutes in the car. Cold, crisp fall air or not, the windows were all the way down and there was still not enough fresh air. I could not understand how a little bit of cream in coffee could smell so horrifyingly ghastly. I almost started to worry there was a dead animal hidden somewhere in the Jetta. I cannot emphasize enough the stomach-turning stench.

It was on Saturday, while running errands with the windows completely down and my thoughts turning to how expensive a very thorough car detailing would cost, that I discovered that the smell originated not from the spilled coffee and not, thank God, from a dead animal. I had just finished my grocery shopping and was opening my trunk to put the goods inside when the smell hit me like a cast iron pan to the face.

And then I saw it, a gallon of milk, purchased by my best estimate about 3 weeks ago, tipped on its side, a little less than half full. I can't really begin to describe the contents. It was yellow and watery, with fat white chunks suspended in the liquid. There was a horrifying green puddle where the contents were leaking out. And the stench, dear lord, the stench could have killed. I honestly thought about leaving my car there and just cutting my loses.

This picture still turns my stomach

But I didn't. I pulled up my big girl panties, held my breathe and gingerly grabbed the gallon with just my thumb and fore finger. It had a sell by date of 10/6. Saturday was 10/11. I set it on the ground and, obviously, took photographic evidence of the calamity. I texted Ben. I immediately threw out the travesty in the grocery store garbage can (like I was bringing that thing home).

Obviously the first thing I did was text my husband

I drove home (making sure to bring inside the newly purchased gallon of milk), left the trunk and garage open and sprayed at least half a can of Lysol on the suspicious green, white and black dot the milk had left behind. I prayed that it would sort-of take care of itself and go away. Or at least the smell would, and at that point I could properly address the issue. It has now been 4 days, and several Lysol applications, later and no such luck. It still smells (although it has been downgraded from "the stench of death", to simply "smells like a prostitutes dumpster") and the dot is still there. As much as I want to pretend we don't have a child-sized footprint worth of mold growing in the trunk of my car, I think the allowable time frame for ignoring a problem in hopes that it will go away has past. And just when I had put my big girl panties away…

P.S - If I never return, please know that it is 96% likely that I died from mold infestation. And please don't put that on my gravestone.