I SWEAR Pittsburgh is messing with us.

We try to go to sleep!

Until I smell...OH GOD. It is one of the worst, most putrid  stank-nasty odors I have ever encountered. It practically knocks me over. "Did you do that?" I shout at the DNB as I plug my nose. "It's horrible!"

"It was like 2 minutes ago!" the DNB replies.

I wait half a minute then tentatively sniff the air. "How is it WORSE?" I try to screech, but the air is so thick I can barely catch my breath.

"I even did a test fart!" he yells after me as I head downstairs.

The smells seems to have settled down to the living room as well. THIS is why you don't get married, I tell myself. Because one day you will suffocate on fart, and all the women will be sad at your funeral and all the men will act sad but really they'll just be waiting till after the burial to high-five the DNB because DUDE, that thing must've been EPIC.

I flounce down on the sofa. I can hear the DNB upstairs moving around. Finally he comes marching down the stairs. "Ok, I sniffed around a lot, and I swear that smell is not me."

I roll my eyes. The smell seems to be getting worse in the living room. The DNB disappears into the basement for probably 30 seconds. Then he comes bounding back up.

"There is SEWAGE bubbling up THROUGH THE BASEMENT DRAIN," he announces, looking at me pointedly. He should be upset, and probably on the phone with our landlord, but instead he's completely triumphant. "Vindication is mine!!"

"Wow, are you serious?  Fair enough, I apologize for accusing you," I reply.

"The world needs to know how wrong you were," the DNB tells me, as he turns off the A/C to try to contain the smell in the basement.

"You didn't even realize it wasn't you for like ten minutes!"  But maybe he's right.  

Which is how I've come to be writing this post while in my 5th hour of waiting for the city water & sewer workers, on a 90 degree day, with the A/C off, in a house that smells like poo.

I really think we're Minnesotans.

You may have noticed that Pittsburgh hasn't been treating us very well. Like, if I were dating Pittsburgh, I totally would have ended things this week. It's not me, it's you, because you suck.

We've been living in a temporary house, which lacks, I don't know, all my stuff but especially my cute fall boots. This week, our "sure thing" permanent housing option fell through after the landlord decided she didn't want to move out of her house. A week before she was supposed to move.

So it's not a little exciting to me that I'm about to travel back to the Great White North for business. It's too bad the DNB can't go with me; he's been pretty upset with this fair city as well, mostly because IT'S HIS FAULT WE'RE HERE.

"Do you want me to bring you anything from Minnesota?" I ask graciously.

"I don't know," he replies sadly. "Maybe just some... hope?"

PA, we already know you hate us. Enough already.

We go to a Labor Day festival!

Or, we try to.

It's in a town about an hour away, so I get the address from the festival website and off we go.

"Are we going to be the only ones there?" the DNB says as we approach the festival grounds.

"Definitely not," I reply confidently. "I read an article that said yesterday's attendance was 20,000."

"Ok, because we're at the right address right now. And there's no festival."

I pull over. "Crap."

I look up the festival website on my phone. And realize that the address at the top of the page - the one I used - is the address of the county parks department, which is SPONSORING the festival. Which is in a completely different town. Let me draw you a picture.

We're not about to give up now, so we figure out a new correct address and continue driving. When we arrive at the right place, we know it's the right place because there are cars for miles in both directions. After we enter the park where the festival is being held, the DNB gets antsy with the traffic.

"Let's just park in that parking lot," he suggests, in what later I realize is the WORST IDEA EVER. "We can just walk up to wherever the festival is."

Let it me known that my consent was UNINFORMED. I park, and we start walking. It quickly becomes apparent that the whole thing would have been a much better idea HAD THE DNB EVER BEEN THERE BEFORE. Then he might have known that not only was our parking spot NOWHERE NEAR THE FESTIVAL, but the parking lot was at the bottom of a small mountain. The festival, of course, had to be at the top.

Our path pretty much becomes the Trail of Tears.

We finally, finally get to the top. It takes about 2 minutes to figure out that no way is this festival worth ANY of what we had been through to get there. First, I apparently missed the fact that the festival is called the "Laborers United Celebration" not because it's Labor Day, necessarily, but because it's a Union event. This is not, you might say, our "scene."

We walk by the main stage, where a Teamster/Union/Organized Person is telling the assembled crowd that "America is the only country with a middle class." The DNB and I glance at each other. "What about Canada?" I whisper. "They copy everything."

[Turns out, my good buddy Wikipedia tells me that "In February 2009, The Economist announced that over half the world's population now belongs to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries."]

Past the main stage, we find the "craft" portion. One enterprising woman has a whole booth of shadeless lamps she's made by shoving lamp sticks through stuffed animals. Look! It's a teddy bear lamp! And here's Mickey Mouse with a cord coming out of his butt!

There's also what appears to be a giant yard sale going on in one corner. If you need 10,000 VHS tapes, mismatched coffee cups, or baby clothes (one bag for $1.00), this place has got you covered.

"Yeah, I think I'm ready to leave," I tell the DNB.

"It's too bad we spent less time actually here than we did getting here," he says sadly as we begin our trek back down the mountain.