We all woke up too early, and smiles came only reluctantly. By mid-morning C&D complained and whined upstairs while I worried about an odor that burned the insides of my nostrils as I rushed back and forth through the hallway. I held my nose over the diaper pail, the bathroom rug, the shoe rack, the bathroom vents, and couldn’t identify the source of the odor, or even its kind. I just knew it smelled bad.

I imagined a dead rodent in the wall, cat pee in my sheets, a new type of black mold around my pipes, or a dead cat outside my bedroom window.

In the middle of the whining, the crying, and the sniffing, the doorbell rang. My spirits lifted. If I would get a package, then I would feel cheerful at least for a little while.

I opened the door. It wasn’t the UPS man. It wasn’t Hector, the USPS man. It was better . . . it was Madison. And she was carrying food and a smile.

She fed us bagels and lox and pastries, and we ate as if we hadn’t eaten breakfast. After all, with all the whining, had we actually enjoyed it? Then she decided she wanted to teach C&D to dance. While the threesome played music from my CD collection and danced, David so ecstatic that he actually let himself fall to the floor like an overcome brother at a revivial, I decided to take an escape and find the source of the smell. Armed with a blacklight, I sniffed my way into the bedroom and began shining the light on the walls, the sheets, and the floors.

Nothing. Matt came home early. He knew he needed to rescue me to go to Dr. Lopez’ office, but after I left a desperate message on his machine at work that morning, he came home even earlier. He began creeping around the bedroom with me. At my request he lifted a mattress, half-expecting to see a fossilizing cat-turd on our baby-blue carpet. Instead we smelled–and saw–a stack of warped, wet cardboard.

Several days before he had spilled water in bed. Since I had the mattress covered with a fleece blanket, most of the water rolled down the mattress . . . and onto a cardboard box protecting another bed for C&D. Matt yanked out the cardboard and I ran upstairs to find C&D still dancing with Madison.

We ordered out lunch.  Madison went home after eating lunch and teaching C&D that soba noodles were called “worms.” I left for the doctor’s office, which wasn’t running late, and came home in time for a quick rest before the evening began.

Bad day turned good, don’t you think?