Whenever I go too long without writing I feel pressure to show back up here with some delicate yet introspective essay about all the fascinating adventures in love and life I have embarked upon since last we spoke. I should have paragraphs to spew about all the insights about myself and the universe around me that have emerged from hours of introspection. I should at least be able to conjure up an anecdote or two about my newly minted two (2!) year old wackadoo.
I should be able to do all of those things but in reality my brain has basically fallen to goo because all I have been doing in the last two months is shopping. Shopping for Juliet’s birthday, for Thanksgiving dinner, for Christmas, Christmas, and then more Christmas.
We need a break, Shopping. I basically hate you. Please stop calling.
After I was finished shopping I started baking which turned out to be an infuriating exercise in trying to figure out why my too-hot oven was underbaking all of my cookies.
Once I was done baking, however unsuccessfully, I began eating and that has taken up a lot of my time since.
I could at least inform you, I suppose, of the various ways I intend to make this year a more fulfilling, interesting, and joyous year for my little household than last year. I could even share with you my theory that 2012 will be better simply because it is a prettier number than 2011, that bastard. Even numbers are very balancing, I find (that’s basically my whole theory right there so, um, moving on…).
We cannot talk about these things, for two reasons. One, I started my new year by leaving my car keys three hours away at my parents’ house (a fact I did not realize until I was getting ready to leave for work on January 3) and my mom sent my sister home with our only cell phone charger so I spent a good portion of the inaugural week of this year housebound, incommunicado, and stewing about it. Therefore, my new year starts tomorrow.
Second, and more importantly: Something stinks around here.
Musty yet pungent. Subtly intrusive. Stank.
A few days after Christmas I was, as usual, huddled under a blanket staring blankly at House Hunters International when the aroma first wafted by. I hate to say it but I thought it was coming from the blanket. I have spent the last three years annoying anyone who would listen with my complaints about the lack of throw blankets in my house. In what I suspect was a coordinated effort to shut me up, Doug, my mother, and my mother-in-law each bought me a throw this year for Christmas. You may think that three is too many. You may be an idiot.
I suspected Doug’s blanket because it is different (Book. Cover. Judged. Shameful.). It is fleece on one side, faux-sheepskin on the other, the perfect size and weight to huddle under by a drafty window. Still, as my nostrils started to fill, and quiver, I remembered that the tag said it was a “sherpa” throw, a word that sent my crazy brain straight to scenes of smelly goats and alpacas who may not have necessarily been skinned for my blanket, but could have been wandering around during its creation, yes?
No one else seemed to notice the smell, though, and I have been a little nose-sensitive lately, so I figured The Smell would dissipate with time and subsequent napping.
It did not.
The Smell was not always around but occasionally I would walk into the living room and it would pop out and punch me right in the nose. I could not pinpoint its source, though. I gave the blanket a thorough sniffing and found it innocent. Sorry, buddy! I went full-on bloodhound on every fabric in my living room and while my furniture does smell vaguely of Pocket, it does not smell like The Smell.
Then, one day, I was at work, speaking with my manager when a familiar curl of odor reached me. Oh my god. The Smell is me! I am The Smell! What is happening to me? Obviously whatever chemical that regulates body odor has gone haywire! Horrified, I ran to the bathroom and spent a good ten minutes smelling my clothes.
It was not me. I gave myself permission to live, after all. This just deepened my confusion, an easy feat, I admit. But if The Smell was not me, was not my blanket, why was it at work as well?
This went on for days. The Smell would come and go, filling the room just when I thought I was rid of it. Finally, I had enough and set about tracking it down.
I have a toddler, I have a dog, I have a husband, I have a hawk (not really, but it lives in our tree and drops some serious bombs). I have a lot of candidates for stank, is what I’m saying. I cleaned out the diaper bag, I checked around for any accidents Pocket may have left behind even though she has not had one in over three years. Nothing!
The Smell appeared to live mainly in our living room, close to our front door so I planted myself there and picked up every object for a full smelldown.
I cannot adequately describe the combination of despair, disgust, and dismay that descended upon me as I realized that The Smell was coming from, living in, and wrapped around, my purse. My purse! My beloved Christmas gift that I asked for last year and visited occasionally at Macy’s until Santa took pity on my sorry self.
I had not used it too much during the holidays. I usually just throw my wallet and phone in the diaper bag if Juliet is with me so I had not considered it a prime suspect in The Smell investigations.
With a heavy heart I started to empty it out onto the dining room table, each item stinking worse than the one before as it emerged.The Smell was filling the room, but the source of it remained a mystery. My wallet and phone, my TicTacs and ChapStick all came out with nothing visible on them. As I reached the bottom, though, the pens and loose change that make up the Island of Lost Toys in the universe of my purse started to show signs of contamination. Then, I spotted it–The Smear.
It was orange-brown and fully enmeshed in the lining of my purse. It did not smell like literal crap but it was pretty rank. It covered almost everything in the bottom of the purse so I think it may have once been a liquidy something but it was a dry, dusty consistency when I found it. Still, wetting it as I washed the lining did not make it disintegrate as I had hoped. It was not chocolate or any other food substance I can imagine.
A close inspection of my work badge revealed a smudge of the sludge inside it, shedding a little light on that particular debacle. Similar clumps of The Smear were later found on Juliet’s sparkly Christmas shoes I had in my purse since she discarded them about ten minutes into Christmas Eve. The closer I looked, the more I found. It just kept spiraling until I just had to walk away and the contents of my purse have been languishing on my dining room table ever since. I can’t even look at them.
I have spent the last week thinking of little else but the source of The Smell. What is it? How did it get there? What gross item did I place in my purse and then forget about to the point where it could wreak such havoc? Am I that nasty? Am I any amount of nasty, actually? Did someone else, some vindictive skunk enthusiast, put it in there? Do we have squirrels? Or voles? Or I don’t know…moles?
My purse, unlike most of my other possessions has very little exposure to the elements. It goes to and from work and that’s about it. A human person, I really think, had to have placed some offending item inside.
I wish I had a happy conclusion to this tale but I have so far been unable to evict The Smell. I have wiped out my purse, scrubbed it, and even coated it in Method Cinnamon Stick hand soap in an effort to evict The Smell. Nothing is working. I find the price of Febreze to be in direct conflict with my personal finance ambitions so that’s out.
Every time I think that enough time has passed, I take a whiff and The Smell is there, mocking me, now with a cinnamony after-aroma.
I do not know how to proceed. I cannot get a new purse when the one I have is structurally sound plus still quite adorable and yet I cannot tote The Smell around with me wherever I go. I am trapped. And it is no way to live, friends. No way at all.
Please. Please help me.
