My 12 year old daughter attended an environmental camp over a month ago. She had to pack everything from t-shirts to a winter coat. Ohio weather is unpredictable. It’s not unusual to run your heat and your air conditioning in the same day.

My kid left, and came home, with So. Much. Stuff.

When she returned, her old backpack, which was used for daytime jaunts around the camp, was emptied and tossed to the bottom of the basement stairs. It wasn’t something that needed to be cleaned right away, because she rarely uses it. So, there it sat, on the floor, until I had room in the wash to throw it in. That was yesterday.

The quilt from her bed was the only companion to the backpack in the washer. I played it safe and cleaned them in hot water, given that her quilt is covered with the hair of our younger dog, who loves to snuggle…and shed…and the basement floor is covered with, who knows what.

When the timer went off, I went downstairs, lifted the washer lid and out wafted the most horrid smell my poor nose has ever come across. I pulled out the backpack and noticed that it was unzipped. Then I removed the quilt to find this sitting underneath.

People, that used to be a sandwich.

Apparently, the backpack wasn’t emptied OVER A MONTH AGO and this thing has been decomposing the entire time. All hail the generic zipper bag that kept the contents from oozing out and stinking up my house…until the washing machine got hold of it. Not until then, was the full power of stench released.

You know, all over what was supposed to be clean laundry.

Speaking of laundry…don’t forget to enter my giveaway from BlogHer and Bounce! You could win a Bounce Dryer Bar and a $50 Visa gift card!

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1. If you see that the wind has blown leaves over every square inch of your yard, it will rain before you have a chance to bag them.

2. When you go for a run and your Albuterol canister is empty, your asthma attack might seem a lot worse than normal.

3. Because it is.

4. Out of desperation, you might drink a beer to calm yourself down.

5. Well, half a beer. Then use the other half to make beer-can chicken on your grill!

6. You’re efficient like that.

7. When you’ve been on your feet, cleaning, making dinner and doing laundry for hours and you finally sit down with everything you need within reach (cell phone, home phone, laptop, steno pad, pen, glasses and books…see efficient statement, above) you might spill a cup of water on half of it.

8. When you’re 40, you will find hair growing out of places you never did before. Like your chin, and your neck and your ears.

9. You also might find that running three miles, three times a week for over a month, results in a three pound weight GAIN.

10. Which may make you want to burn the Halloween candy.

11. Right after you eat that Twix bar.

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She warms me.

She has been at my feet all day, occasionally lifting her head to look out the window and protect me from the ever present stream of people walking to the park. She lays still until a truck rolls onto our street and she begins to shiver with fear and I feel her trembling against my leg.

She didn’t used to be scared of anything, but age is crippling her body and mind. She shakes when we say her name, “Blue” because it may mean she needs to stand, which she can no longer do without two hands below her belly, pulling her lame back legs out from under her.

Once she stands, there is hesitation when she must move from the rug to the hardwood floor. She freezes at the edge of the carpet, setting one paw down on the solid surface with trepidation, then pulling it back to safety where there is fiber in which to lunge her claws and a soft landing for when she falls. She falls a lot these days.

Maybe if we lived someplace warm, where ice wasn’t looming like a slick, glassy artifice strategically placed between the safety of the front door and the soft snow in which she used to frolic; the simple stoop, a colossal divide. Last night, she had to be carried to the grass; even when the sky was clear and the earth was dry.

She has been here longer than the child who is about to be a teen. She is our constant. Through pain, sickness, death and tragedy she has been here at my feet.

Warming me.

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Although we live in the city, there isn’t a whole lot of diversity in my neighborhood. The Ohio State University isn’t far away and there is an array of color and culture there, but I don’t make a habit of letting my kids walk around Big Ten campuses. Maybe MAC, but not Big Ten.

So yesterday afternoon I carted the kids off to the International Festival. We ate Chinese food (but, only because I didn’t see the Mediterranean booth, no offense to the fried-rice), we watched Irish, Indian, African and Russian dancers and looked at art and crafts from around the world.

Then my daughter and I got henna tattoos.

I have always wanted a little, teeny-tiny tattoo and I’m pretty sure that henna is the gateway drug of body art. I love this design on the inside of my wrist.

Even if it does closely resemble my living room rug.

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