So there I was in line at the drugstore yesterday buying ten giant bottles of hydrogen peroxide. The cashier was all, "Did you leave me any?"

"No," I said. When you see a sale on hydrogen peroxide, you snap that shit up.

The woman behind me in line said, "You got that e-mail, too!"

"What e-mail?" I said. It turns out there's some e-mail circulating about all the miraculous things you can do with hydrogen peroxide. She listed a few for me.

1. You can use it as mouthwash
2. Because it whitens your teeth
3. And it'll cure your gangrene
4. Just don't inject it intravenously

I told her I was going to clean my carpet with it. I wouldn't tell her the secret formula, however! Mostly because I couldn't remember it.

Anyway, it worked. Our house now smells like . . . nothing at all. It's kind of eerie.

You should have seen Jack with his butt hoisted up into the air, nose to the carpet, doing this little flinching yelp every time he found another spot of puppy pee.

"What are you laughing at," he said. Kind of threateningly.

He got his little cup of coffee beans to clear his nose and he showed me how you have to sniff around to find the edges of the spot, which you then circle with your turkey baster full of miraculousness. Then he sat down on the couch and watched the rest of All About Eve while I crawled around on the floor, sniffing.

"I have a headache," I said when I was done.

"It helps if you wash your face and use some mouthwash," he said.

And that's how we spent our Saturday afternoon.