Cruise vlog teaser trailer and bonus post-vacation disaster

My dad picked me up at the airport last night, after my flight home from Ft. Lauderdale and the Writing Excuses Retreat cruise to the eastern Caribbean. “I think a mouse died in the wall while you were gone,” he said offhandedly. “There’s a smell.”

Yes, there was a smell. If you’ve ever had a mouse die in your wall before, or if you’ve ever stumbled across a corpse of any kind, you know what that smell is like. When I stepped into my bedroom, the stench went from disgusting to truly horrific. If it was a dead animal, it was a lot bigger than a mouse. I decided I would sleep elsewhere, so I held my breath and ducked into the room to grab my pajamas. Two steps into the room, my foot squished in the rug.

Oh crap, the cat peed on the rug, I thought to myself. Squish. Wow, the cat peed a lot. Squish. …This isn’t cat pee.

At some point while I was away, the hot water heater sprung a leak. I don’t know how many gallons of hot water drained through the wall and into my bedroom, but it was enough to completely saturate the rug, the bed, the wall, a pile of old comics, some photo albums, a bottom drawer full of clothes, and god knows what else. I’m not sure yet how much is salvageable, but the wall-to-wall carpet definitely has to go. You do not understand how bad it smells in there. That’s what happens when you add hot water to a hundred square feet of carpeting and then let it sit several days.

Now there’s going to be a mess of insurance adjusters, water heater mechanics and flood recovery people swarming the house in the next three days before I have to race out to western Massachusetts for my brother’s wedding this weekend. Yay for post-vacation surprises!

So: my WXR16 cruise post is going to take a bit longer than expected. I have a lot to talk about and many pictures to show you, but until then all you get is this stupid vlog trailer I made on the plane. Oh god, I laugh so hard every time I watch this. iMovie has the best trailer templates. I was tempted by the Bollywood and Teen Movie themes, but in the end I had to go with Horror.

Embedding isn’t working, so click it to go straight to the Instagram page.

Enjoy, and I’ll talk to you once things settle down.