What a busy week these last seven days have been. On Saturday we worked the food trailer for Ecoasis from mid afternoon to evening: Snark made the gyros and falafel wraps and I took the orders and the cash. We caught the last hour of music for the Blues Fest; it seemed to be a shorter lineup this year and ended around 8pm--pretty early.

Sunday we drove to Tucson to visit Snark's papa, grandma, and aunt and uncle. Papa Snark was in town for Grandma's bday. We left Bisbee in the morning. We were hit with a wall of heat in Tucson when we got out of the car. At Mardie and Rick's, we ate some good food (pasta, salad, garlic bread, deviled eggs, cookies, brownies, and homemade ice cream); played Jenga (I lost 2 out of 3 times); chatted, told stories; and got back to Bisbee around 9pm.

A couple of hours later, our curious Veggie Dog got sprayed in the face by a skunk. The smell of a freshly sprayed dog encourages the most immediate sensation of needing to retch. It's a horrifying, infiltrating smell. Note to dog owners who haven't had this experience before: We learned that the first solution is NOT to wash your dog to get the smell out, which is exactly what we did. If all sense has not been knocked out of you by the urgently nauseating stank, try to pat the skunk oil out of your dog's fur with paper towels or rags that you're willing to discard, somehow locating where your dog got sprayed. Hot water and oil do not mix; it just makes it worse! Apparently, the solution to use is hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap (proportions easy to find on the Internet). Unfortunately, we were out of baking soda and the h.peroxide we had in the cupboard was expired; it was 11pm, so we couldn't go buy any until the morning. We attempted bathing her in tomato juice, although we read that it really only masks the smell (and, let me tell you, masking the smell seemed like a perfectly reasonable goal to have that late at night). Other general "masking" options that we used: burning incense--one stick after another in every room, lit candles, making cinnamon sugar toast in the toaster oven, and boiling water and cinnamon and cloves on the stove all day. Snark gave V-Dog about five baths in less than 24 hours, and today the rank smell has eased into the background of our lives.

V-Dog after her walk with the h. peroxide/baking soda solution on her.

Getting the solution washed off her body (fifth bath of the day).

Baking soda drying on her fur.

The night of being skunked.