The Nose Always Knows

I have to laugh.

A good friend brought me by a goodie bag today. I wasn't home -- but when I did get home from errands, parking lots, crowds, and other such headaches -- an agreeable gift of Christmas cookies and bubble bath gel awaited me.



So here's the thing - one whiff of yummy cookies and I'm off to the races. ---I need you to know I didn't eat them all then and there---
But just in the case I might have eaten them all, and more -- the lovely people at Vanilla Rose Bubble Bath went to the trouble of putting on their label -

"This is not food. Do not eat."

Sadly, I feel quite sure it is for guys and gals exactly like myself, that such labels were created.




So is it just me?
Or do our noses do most of the thinking?



Like for instances,

Hubby put some pine needles from our Christmas tree on the dash of my car. You, know just a little Christmas-scent-fun, for while I'm driving around.

Little does he know (until now) ---that putting a bough of pine tree in my car has me reacting like dogs in Pavlov's famous experiment. ---They heard the bell and went for food.


I smell Christmas pine needles --- and head straight to the mall.


It doesn't matter that I was expecting to pick up kids, have a doctors appointment, or am needed in a charity soup line ---- I'm going Christmas shopping.

Then, once I've stepped out of my car at the mall . . ---I look like a chick just snapped out of a hypnotic trance.


Where am I? Why am I here?


Luckily before I can gain my senses completely, the aroma of mall Cinnabons, Starbucks hot chocolate, or expensive leather purses flows through the air, and I don't need a reason to be at the mall---
-- I just am.


Pine needles have cost my husband many a paycheck.




And speaking of hubby -- my husband smells his food before he eats it. It sounds harmless, I know.

But really it's not.



We could be in the finest restaurants ( um, yeah. okay. So? -- so just use your imagination, alright?!)

. . like I said, --- We could be in the finest restaurant, and Hubby still has to stick his face and nose into a fancy china plate of escargot, filet mignon, or truffle-sauced halibut before he can decide if the food is palatable or not. He looks like a nose-miner.


Now when he does this at home - I just try to ignore it, --you know, look the other way. I mean what can I do? He's an animal.


But with us at fancy restaurants (like, I said -- use your imagination!) ----it's embarrassing. Waiters look at me, -- like I can explain it. Heck!



I tell them he used to be blind, "before miraculous blind-correcting surgery . . . but he's still use to smelling everything before he eats it." (At this point in the story I pat his little hunched-over-smelling-head. He's so busy and so excited, he can't hear a word I'm saying . . )

"It used to be the only way he could tell a meal, from the dirty laundry," I say.

And then I smile politely.




And speaking of the dirty laundry.

A few years back I got what every woman wants. --- (No . . not a pair of these. No, not a day like that. . And no . . not a surgery like those!)


. . .---I got a front-loading washer.




Supposed to be wonderful, right? Well I got news for you. It stinks like-the-dickens when laundry is being done.



Something is going on when the machine tries to drain, I'm telling you. It smells like I've just washed the sickest, foulest, muck off our clothes like you wouldn't even believe.

The cat looks at us like, 'Oh yeah. ---And 'kitty-litters' a problem.'




Once I had hubby go in and try to figure things out. He took a disgusting glob of family crud out of some drain that, well, --I don't want to say this, but, ---- it could be used in enemy-biological-warfare, should word get out.
It was some putrid, reekin', stinkin' funk, I'll tell you.

I don't know what all it was for sure, -- but I don't ever want to see it again.


Hence I just keep washing away, now pretending I don't smell what surely is growing once more in that drain pipe.

Guests take a sniff and assume it is coming from the boy's bathroom. But---

"No, oh no," I laugh carefree'ly. "That's just our clean clothes!" I say, while trying to act sane.

Actually it really does throw them a bit. I mean, what do you say to a nut-lady like that, right?
--They say nothing.


What would solve this problem, you ask?
Well if you think Hubby's about to buy me another new washer before this one's put in four decades, --you're crazy.

And you know what? I bet he's holding out anyway for the day science is so advanced we don't even need clothes.



Funny, but I gotta imagine he's not the only dude holding out for that day to arrive . . . .