Right. So the first time I wrote about this (see bottom of this post for all that), I ended up not publishing it here but rather just threw it out there as a super long social media post and I’m glad I did because folks gave me some good feedback such as 1) this sounds like a sleepwalking issue and 2) I should get this product to combat the smell and potentially save our carpet: I agreed on both counts and ordered a bottle.

We also took measures to move some folks around in bedrooms hoping that might help the problem as well. This included strategically leaving the child we most suspected of the nocturnal-carpet-equals-urinal situation in the room with the already yucky carpe because, obviously, we didn’t want that problem spreading elsewhere. Literally.

Our bottle of spray arrived and I started using it on the floor each morning, not because there were new spots each day (hooray!) but because that’s how it works – you use it every 12-24 hours until it the smell is gone and they flat out tell you it might get worse before it gets better because, again, that’s how it works. I am still recovering from my stupid month-long cold but can smell OK and thought things were trending toward better this week until this morning when it definitely didn’t smell great when I went upstairs to spray. But nothing felt wet anywhere so I figured, well, OK – let’s just play the patience game by keeping calm and spraying on.

Decent strategy, right?

Yep, sure, that is until this evening when Ben went into the bedroom ACROSS THE HALL to adjust an alarm clock and STEPPED IN A FREAKING WET SPOT ON THE FLOOR.

So yeah. It didn’t smell worse because the spray wasn’t working, it smelled worse because the problem child we tagged and kept in the room with the old carpet WAS THE WRONG CHILD. And seriously, he has no recollection of it whatsoever and is horribly offended by our “accusations” and clearly ordering just one bottle of the spray wasn’t enough because this is far from done and for the love of God and all things holy, HOW DO WE MAKE THIS STOP?!

I’m sorry for all the shouty caps, but this is just too much. Life is hard enough with out a sleepwalking pee-er in your house.

ORIGINAL POST THAT DIDN’T END UP ON THE BLOG, JUST ON THE FACEBOOK:

An excerpt from Chapter 317 in my new parenting book/memoir with the working title, You Can’t Make This Shit Up*: For a while now, we’ve noticed an unpleasant odor upstairs. We attributed it to weird late summer/sort of fall weather when the air doesn’t know if it should run or not because is it hot (yes, way too often)? Is it cold (no, not really)? Is it stuffy (seems to be all the time)? But the funk just wouldn’t lift so we got to investigating (i.e. literally sticking our noses in places and sniffing deeply if also unwillingly) and found a spot in a bedroom that smelled. like. PISS.

EWWWWWWWW. And also:

WHO peed on the (carpeted!) floor? WHEN did they do it? WHERE did it all land? WHY didn’t they tell us? WHAT can we do about this? And, HOW does shit like this (OK, grateful it was just pee and not literal shit) happen?

Clearly I had so many questions but the real task was to clean it and try to make it better. We tried the carpet cleaning function on our vacuum and then two different types of spray cleaner and folks, I’m not sure we made a dent in the problem because I’m also not sure how damn old the problem is and that is FREAKING GROSS and doesn’t bode well for the carpet’s future, you know?

Also, it would appear that the problem is NOT done.

This morning I was up in that same bedroom looking for dress up clothes for the oldest for an upcoming spirit day at school and happened to step a literal foot in the same spot I spent days trying to clean. It was wet. WET. And yep, another hesitant sniff indicated that it wasn’t just a stray glass of water that got spilled.

But here’s the kicker. No one who sleeps in that room (and there is more than one) will fess up to said damp carpet. Other sniff tests in beds, because surely they crawled back into their bed and so it too should smell because I just cleaned their sheets yesterday, also gave no clarity.

So now, not only did I have to spend another 30 minutes this morning cleaning in vain (that carpet is gonna have to go; we know this, right?), I’m now left to wonder if maybe we have a random peeing ghost roaming the top floor of our house because, for the love of God, who is peeing on the carpet and how do we make it stop?! I can’t rip out or replace carpet if this is just going to continue. Someone, please, tell me how to course correct here!

(*yes, ending with a preposition drives this ENGL teacher nuts, but so does piss carpet, so, you know, let’s roll with it)