Well, I had quite an experience on my drive to work yesterday. I had passed through
the tunnel & was on the Norfolk side @about 5am when I saw, in my rear-view mirror, what appeared to be about 20 police
cars with lights blazing coming up the entrance ramp onto the Interstate. Before I could blink my eyes, HERE CAME THE
CAR I THINK THEY WERE CHASING, flying up behind me !!! I was SCREAMING on the inside but didn't even have time to make a sound.....the
car whipped around me & an almost endless stream of State Troopers flew by chasing it. It looked like at least 40
of them to me !! It was pitch black out, but blue lights were flashing everywhere. Finally another car &
I were able to pull off to the shoulder. When we thought that was all & got back on the road, here came about 10 more
!! It was like something out of a movie. I was shaking like a leaf.
When I came off the Interstate onto the road that leads to my office, there were more
police cars there !! I was really shaken up, realizing that I could have been hit or even killed, & how our lives can
change within a split second. Believe me, I did some praying & thanked God that I'm still here.
A co-worker who also drives from Hampton arrived @the office a few minutes after
me. She was BEHIND all the action & saw it unfolding in front of her. We were both shaking & telling everyone what
happened & it was the talk of the office. She heard on the radio that the fugitive driver ended up heading to Hampton,
hit a State Trooper's car in the tunnel & finally crashed near J.Clyde Morris Blvd. All I saw, & keep in mind
it was dark, is that it was a car, not an SUV, but a big car, not a compact, & it looked brown to me. We watched
the early news but there was nothing on there about it. I saw a small article on the internet but it didn't say any more than
the report on the radio.
I haven't had time to update my blog since last summer, but what happened this past
weekend HAS to be posted !!
We hadn't been up to our cabin in the mountains since November so we decided to take
a break & spend the weekend up there. Friday night & Saturday were very relaxing. We went hiking @Shenandoah &
ate dinner @a new pizza restaurant. We were having a really good time & a much-needed chance to relax.
In the middle of the night Saturday, our dog Sam woke Bill up & wanted to go outside.
When we're @our cabin, we just let him out the door because we're back in the woods......no traffic, no real close neighbors,
& Sam stays right by the house. So Bill let Sam out, fell back to sleep, & then let Sam in when he barked awhile later.
That's when the weekend turned into HELL. A terrible sickening smell spread throughout the house & Bill realized
that Sam had been sprayed by a SKUNK !! He rushed Sam back outside & then woke me up so we could both enjoy the horror
of it.
It was about 2am, near freezing outside, & we had no idea what to do. So I got
on the computer & started looking up skunk remedies. Problem was, we didn't have the necessary ingredients (not even tomato
juice) & there's no such thing as running to a 7-11 when you're up in the hollow in Syria, VA. Finally I read where someone
said they had poured Coke on their dog to neutralize the horrible chemicals in the skunk spray. So at 2 in the morning, Bill
went outside & started pouring cans of Coke on Sam. We had 1 pair of rubber gloves & Bill put them on & washed
Sam twice in Dawn dishwashing liquid while I hauled buckets of warm water outside to rinse him. After about an hour,
Sam still smelled terrible but we felt the oil of the skunk spray had been removed. We went back to sleep for a little while
& in the morning, Bill got a good fire going in the woodstove so we could open all the windows of the house until we left.
We packed the truck for the drive home & closed up the house with heavy hearts, not knowing if we'll ever be able
to breathe in there again.
But it gets worse......we stopped @Petsmart in Richmond on the way home to look for
some kind of skunk odor remover & while in the store, I realized that I smelled just like a skunk ! So did Bill
! Even though I had been very careful not to touch Sam throughout this ordeal & even though Bill put the clothes
& shoes he had been wearing that night in a trash bag, the smell had "attached" to us. We hurried & bought the "Skunk
Odor Eliminator" & got out of the store.
When we got home, we discovered that everything we had brought with us in the truck
now stunk like skunk. We threw away the shoes we had worn while bathing Sam & Bill threw away his clothes. Everything
else had to be washed. Every single item right down to our rings, to the pens in my purse, our checkbooks, our cameras, EVERYTHING
had to be cleaned with Fantastik or soaked in lemon juice or washed in the washing machine. We ran a "Prozone" air purifying
machine in the house for 48 straight hours. Bill stayed up late Sunday night doing laundry, washing things over
& over. I just couldn't take it & went to bed. Only I didn't have a pillow anymore. It had to be thrown away
because it had absorbed that horrible, sickening, burning skunk smell.
The next day was Monday & we had to go to work. I had showered, washed my hair, showered
again, was wearing clothes that hadn't been with us & new shoes but I could still smell skunk. I was sitting
@my desk at work almost in tears because I felt like I stunk & that people could smell skunk on me. But 3 friends "sniffed"
me & said I smelled fine, so I guess the smell is just embedded in our noses & our memories. Bill said he got
a terrible whiff of it when he was @work & realized it was his watchband !!
Sam has now been bathed numerous times in different skunk odor products & Bill
has trimmed some hair from Sam's face & ears, where the odor was the worst, but he still stinks something awful. Sam was
very depressed Sunday night after having so many baths & he was acting like he thought he had been "bad." It was really
sad. We were depressed too. But now Sam is starting to act like himself again & we're trying to get back to normal
too. We have a new rule: Sam has to be on a leash with one of us attached whenever he goes outside now. And no more
laughing at the B.O. episode of Seinfeld (if you've ever seen it) because it's a little too close to home.
P.S. Sam is our "baby" & is an inside dog & at no point did we make him sleep outside. Yes,
we are crazy.
