What is that SMELL??

So Tuesday was Jerry's official last day on campus.  After putting the girls on the bus and Avery down for nap (I took a short one too ;) I began cleaning.  I don't mean surface cleaning.  I mean the kind of cleaning that I haven't had the time or energy to do in, well, lets just say, a LONG time.  It was gorgeous so the windows were open and it just felt clean.  I somehow even managed to prepare what I thought was a nice dinner.  It was at the point that I was thinking, hmmm maybe I CAN do this, that Jerry got home from school.  Unfortunately he was not as excited as I was about my productive day, as his first words were, "Man it really stinks in here!"  I have to say I was a little upset and the terror from last week crept back into my brain.  I couldn't smell a thing and I had been cleaning all day, so what could he be smelling?  Jerry suggested we take the girls for a walk and play at the park, which we did and then we came home and had dinner.  After dinner we went out for some free Rita's Italian ice.  After all he has to butter them up with all the goodies before he leaves them with mean ole mommy. ;)  We came home and crashed, never to think of the smell again.

Well, that is until the next morning.  Headed to the laundry room in the basement with the dirty clothes I opened the basement door and was slammed in the face with a HORRIBLE, HORRENDOUS smell!!  I can only guess it was what Jerry smelled yesterday.  It was beyond description and for an ICU nurse, well that's BAD!  My neighbor Dan, the maintenance man Ed, no one had words for it.  It literally smelled like a dead carcass.  So Jerry and I began tearing up the playroom to try and find the smell.  A smell that has the ability to come and go.  After two days of this on and off again odor I finally figured out it was the deep freezer.  I say I because Jerry has since escaped the smell by moving to Alabama.  Not inside the freezer but outside, the backside and it was BAD.  I called Sears and the earliest a repairman could come out was Saturday afternoon.  UGGG.  It got so bad on Friday that you could smell it outside the apartment but then Friday night it was gone again.  I have to say it got so bad that I was tempted to have my neighbor put it outside.  But today we finally have resolution.  Darrell the repairman took one whiff of the not so bad today smell and said it's rotten food.  Unfortunately I wish it were that easy.  The inside of the freezer was odor free and food free.  Sooooo, the problem is that during our 8 days without power, (who could forget all that fun) something with blood thawed just enough to get down the drain and into a catch basin that can neither be replaced or removed for cleaning and the reason the smell was on again, off again was because each time the freezer was cooling and the motor was running it was heating the catch basin of bloody residue.  (This I guess is how any liquid is cleared, it evaporates. It's been quite the educational experience.) I speak of the smell as was not because it is completely gone, but because it is so much better, that I can actually breathe down there.  Because now when the motor on the freezer runs I can smell a faint odor, but mostly I smell the bleach that he had me pour down the spout.  Hears to hoping it works 100% because if not my nearly new freezer will be going to the dumpster.  The smell was that BAD and I'm not moving it with me to Alabama!!