Can you smell that?

If you ask Mr. D, he will almost invariably say "no."  His official position is that he can't smell anything.  So when you overhear him muttering this to the Yarn Bandit:

I can't stay mad at you, even though you reduce our environmental conditions to that of a hellhole.

...then you know you have a serious problem.  It's not like we don't clean up after the devilish urinator--we do--but he can be really sneaky, and it's hard to get it completely out.  Over time, and especially when it gets hot and humid, an above-and-beyond-the-call cleansing of the Hellhole is unavoidable.  And so, this morning, we rolled up the rugs, salvaged the salvageable rug pad and tossed the others, and took the rugs out to be professionally cleaned.  We will be back to the bare wood floors for three or four weeks.



Did you know that when you remove the rugs, you can see what the rugs were hiding, and sometimes mysteries are solved?  For example, why does Bunny's boudoir smell a little funny when the sun comes through the skylight at just the right angle?  Because Yarn Bandit has been  secretly whizzing up against the leg of her grandmother's cherry dresser, a fact which was hidden by the rug, but is now revealed by the discoloration of the floor underneath.  Little bastard.  I've been intending to take that dresser to a restorer for a year, and now I can add another reason.  But not until after we put a floor in the sunroom closet.

Next stop on the stank train is to get the ugly blue sofa cleaned.  I seriously considered just tossing it, but then I got my Visa bill.   The sofa smells like a dog's butt.  Make that two dog butts. We are going to rent a steam cleaner and steam that thing all to hell, along with the ottomans (ottomi?) that the Yarn Bandit has claimed  (the world is his toilet).  But lordy--not this weekend.  And not next weekend either, because my cousin has scheduled a most inconvenient wedding that (a) takes place where he is rather than where I am, thus necessitating travel on my part and (b) takes place during the world cup.  So probably the weekend after that.

Did someone mention the world cup?  Ummm yeah.  So the Azzurri screwed the pooch and revealed themselves to be exactly what we feared they were but fervently hoped they weren't.  Fingers are being pointed, rotten tomatoes are being thrown, international mockery is being borne.  They are out, last in their supposedly easy group.  Mr. D assures me that this is not my fault, that I did not doom them to ignominy by knitting them a scarf, but the scarf is packed away now for another day.  I am not happy, but the Juve-suck seems to have prepared me well for this, especially since the Azzurri-suck is pretty much EXACTLY THE SAME SUCK as the Juve-suck.

Which is to say..... Gigi is always injured; the fulbacks are ordinary at best; the defensive mid plays like a spaz; Grinny Brokedown is terrible and Gio has to cover which means Gio gets caught out of position; the mids can't keep possession; only a few players are even trying and they aren't necessarily the best ones; Idiot Il Mister is an idiot and ridiculously inflexible and insists on playing people out of position; there never seems to be a dead ball specialist on the pitch when you need him most; there is no creativity whatsoever in the three-quarter area so the mids cannot deliver the ball to the forwards; and the forwards' finishing is so bad that if you told them they could never shag again if they miss their next shot, it wouldn't much help.

The only difference really is no Amauri on the Azzurri, and no ADP either. 

And what of Les Bleues?  Everyone knew before the cup started that they were in deep doo-doo and might implode from their personal problems, so it wasn't much of a surprise when that happened.  But it sure does suck to be in the same boat as them, and no one --NO ONE--not even the most pessimistic Azzurri-hater--thought they would finish at the bottom of the group--BELOW NEW ZEALAND for chrissakes. 

And the Yanks?  They are playing well and delivering some exciting football.  If only ESPN would stop hyping them so egregiously and let them do their jobs.....

I have finished the knitting part of the Reclamation Cardi.  Nothing but side seams, sewing on buttons, and weaving in ends left to do, but it is detail work that I do best without my glasses, so it's not good football work.

And finally, what the hell is going on with my eyebrows?  They have always been brown, but now there are a few blonde ones.  They are blonde, I tell you.  There's no such thing as grey eyebrows unless you're an archduke of some sort, a retired English colonel from the imperialist era, or a member of the Politburo, and Dirtbunny is not any of those things.