Adventures in America's Dairy Land Part 1 of 2

My visit home was refreshing and relaxing. I got some of my issues solved and allowed my mom to dote on me. Wisconsin was surprisingly enjoyable this time around. However no trip home is without the requisite "adventure." Ok so not really an adventure per se, but more like "weird shit happening to Mary while she happens to be visiting home."

So we have a big ol' deep freezer. It lives in the laundry room. Inside my mother stored a ham, a turkey, various meat products and other frozen sundries. Somehow, someway the freezer was turned off on Tuesday last. No one knows how it happened. The whole family didn't notice its idle state untill Wednesday when a suspicious, rancid smell permeated the entire house. I was minding my own business in the den, trying to watch Gilmore Girls when I smelled it. I thought something in the garbage had gone bad. Soon I was summoned to the laundry room by dearestr Mumsie. There the smell was especially heinous. There, I finally figured out what could possibly produce a stentch such as that: spoiled meat. I have personally never experienced the distinct smell that is spoiled meat and I'm not proud to say that now I know and can identify such a scent. Mother and I removed all the defrosted items from the freezer and sealed them in garbage bags. Everything was placed back inside the freezer to await the arrivial of my father. What to do? There was melted freezer ice mixed with meat water. It couldn't be bailed out easily. Would Dad have the magic solution? Alas, no he didn't. We ended up proping the freezer up on one end with a pile of books. And guess who got to bail out the nasty water? I did! I thought I might die with my head stuck down in nose-offending depths. But I survived and lived to tell the tale. Sadly, it doesn't end there. The next day, the stench had not faded any. I was forced yet again to plunge into the icy depths of the freezer, this time armed with a lemony-cleaner to try and fight the stentch. The cleaner mixed with the meat smell was so strong that I choked and felt the back of my throat burning. But again, I cheated death. The lemon stuff didn't help too much. We finally ended up leaving the freezer door open and avoiding the laundry room. So the moral of the story is: don't unplug your deep freezer. Duh.

And tomorrow: the story of the tree.