I debated for a couple hours whether to risk the utter mortification that will come with stripping away the facade of Park perfection and revealing the true horror of inhabiting my home right now. Then the professional eater dog came up to where I sat, chin resting on hands, elbows on knees, and she put her mouth within sniffing distance of my face. I released a burst of curse words and loud moaning, and immediately got up to toss both dogs out in the back yard, and I got over myself. It's time to get real.
First, a little backstory. I've always had an incredibly sensitive nose. It makes me a great cook, used to get me teased by my parents and brother when I was little, and once it actually saved my family's lives. The same kid who my dad swore could sniff out the McDonald's when we drove into Munich every time (I still get mad and humiliated when I think of that), woke in the wee hours of the morning in our hundred year old house in Oklahoma, smelling burning rubber. I came downstairs and flipped on the lights, to find a small bath mat had been kicked onto a lit floor furnace, and it had started to smolder. When I tell you I smell something, it's there. It just has to be found.
When we lived in California the last time, I swore there was something awful in our house. For weeks, I swore I could smell something that had gone bad, but the kitchen was clean, the catboxes were scooped often, and all the animals were accounted for. But where my computer was located, at a desk near the kitchen and the back door, kept smelling worse and worse. It started to give me headaches. It hurt the inside of my sinuses, and it made my eyes water. But no matter how much I complained, the response from the rest of the family was always, "No, Anne, just you." One day, my desperate searching turned up something. I had ignored the Little Playmate cooler that had been set just inside the kitchen, leading from the back door, for weeks. My house was generally tidy, but there were a few things lying around, and I just didn't think it was important to run it back to the garage. The closer I got to it, the more pungent the smell, and I gathered my courage and opened it. It literally knocked me to the floor. I picked myself back up and shut the thing, and yelled to the man and the kids, "I TOLD YOU THERE WAS SOMETHING BAD!" On a big grocery trip, more than a month earlier, someone (I'm guessing the man) slipped a bag holding ground beef into the cooler to get it home, and brought it inside. It was skipped when we put everything away. It was the worst, most violently astringent smell I've ever encountered. It was worse than a run of the mill dead animal body, which is bad enough. You never forget something that awful.
I mentioned a couple days ago that I'm building up an immunity to some smells, as I constantly clean up after Cricket on the floor. I still notice when she's left me a mess, but my gag reflex is greatly reduced. I have been noticing something building in the house, and I keep checking to make sure all of the plastic grocery bags of stinky paper towels and barely digested cat food have made it to the outside trash. I'm good on that score. I have been taking the regular trash out even when the bags aren't full, and today I scrubbed the can with the peroxide-based cleaner. I have been moving furniture, making sure there wasn't something under the couch or behind a chair that a cat dragged over and lost interest in. I put my face next to both drains in the sink and sniffed. I looked for a rotten potato or onion in the pantry. I got a coat hanger and tried to fish out anything that might be stuck under the stove. (The big kitty boy is thrilled at the six mousie toys that came out, covered in dust bunnies.) There is nothing in this house that I can find, but I can smell it. No amount of candles, incense, or Febreeze is killing the stink. I am on my last nerve here.
While I wrote, I heard a noise from the chimney, like a shift in temperatures made the metal in the flue expand or contract. I think I need to get a flashlight. I might be on to something. Stay tuned.
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