Games

Sometimes my dad likes to play this game called "Now, Where did I put that?!?" I think it's fun, he gets really frustrated. The game is played with things he uses maybe once or twice in a day, but doesn't need all day. This means he has time to really forget where he put the object. These things include, but are not limited to: keys, glasses, various tools, and articles he prints out to read later. The game begins when he walks into the house from wherever he has been, setting things down as he walks around the house. Note: his track around the house is completely random. This adds a nice difficulty level because things are rarely in the same place twice. Once he decides he needs something and the search begins (there is usually a time crunch here) it only takes about two minutes before I get involved. He never directly asks me to get involved, I just figure that the yelling is an invitation. Most of the time, the misplaced object is found within five minutes or so and we all get on with that we had been doing previously. However, on ocassion, I find myself looking for things he didn't know he misplaced.

This week, the basement started to smell really bad. At first, I thought it was maybe the lake or the sewer...I couldn't figure out where exactly the smell was coming from either and since there are pipes all over the basement, I just figured it would go away soon enough. I closed all of the doors to rooms where pipes are contained, lit some candles and turned on some fans and it disguised the smell well enough. The next morning, the basement still smelled but it wasn't worse. Thinking it was stagnating water from when the sprinklers broke this summer, Dad said he thought he knew where it was and he would take care of it. Getting home that night, the basement smelled like rotting death. No kidding, the worst smell I have ever smelled. Vomit inducing rotting death. I narrowed it down to the food storage room. The smell was coming from the center of the room, not by the water pipes. This obviously confused me because there was nothing visible to make this horible death smell, which means, getting down and moving things around. Maybe it was a rotting potato. Maybe something really was dead. In my movings, I picked up a plastic grocery bag which contained two bags of chips. Weird, the bag was heavy. What do you think was at the bottom of that bag? Chicken. Chicken that now smelled like rotting death. 

I guess I can put that one in the win column...I should have figured. He has played the game with perishables in the past, I just catch them before they have time to infuse all of the food in the storage room with the death rot stink.