It stinks!

Today’s rant is about something less political, not at all philosophical, something far more literal. It stinks in my house. A couple of days ago I got creative in the kitchen and was very pleased with the results. I made pan seared sea scallops in a maple orange marinade. They came out amazing and everybody loved the meal. The downside is that the stench from cooking seafood in the house is still with us as we speak.

The first thing I did was to light a couple of candles to convert the stench to a tolerable odor. I thought the smell was gone, but yesterday I was up in our storage area over the garage-this is an almost airtight remote area of the house. I was in there for a while gathering items to donate to Big Brother Big Sister. After about ½ hour I emerged out of the air lock that is our storage area, and darn it, that seafoody smell assailed me yet again!
I was really surprised to smell it again. I thought it was gone. In reality, what had probably happened was that my olfactory glands had just gotten used to it and not noticed it anymore. That happens to us when we wear perfume. We spray or dab it on and a few hours later, we think the scent is gone, so we reapply. In reality, the scent is not gone, it is just that our olfactory glands have gotten fatigued so we wake them up with yet more of the scent and in the process we offend other people.

Well, this fishy smell is offending me! I opened up windows yesterday. I was not able to open many because we had the house painted in the late fall, and some of the windows are still painted shut. So I opened all windows that would open. And I had fans blowing. At last, the scent is gone I thought. I turned on the self cleaning feature of my oven last night and that gives off a burnt ashes kind of smell, not lovely, but not fish!!
This morning, I woke up and didn’t notice any odors anymore. I left the house briefly and didn’t notice any smell when I came back. Apparently I was not gone long enough.

I was at the mall all morning and returned about 2 o’clock to be assaulted by a combination of fish-and burnt ashes!! This really is a blight! It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry’s car has the smell from a restaurant doggie bag that was left under the seat of the car. Jerry is not aware of the doggie bag, but the smell keeps getting worse and worse so he has his car detailed, washed, etc and nothing can get the smell out. He even leaves the keys in it for a thief to steal and the thief enters the car and promptly exits the car, unable to cope with the smell! I need to open my windows!

One other stinky thing happened in this 24 hour period. I had mentioned Big Brother Big Sister…and donations. I usually donate clothing to them but opted to add some linens, curtains and decorative pillows that no longer go with my décor. I had a large box, 3 trash bags full of clothing and linens and one comforter bag that had my old comforter and 3 pairs of curtains. I just got a new set and wanted to donate the nice older set to someone. I put the old set into the new bag. It really looked nice and I felt good that someone was going to get a nice set. In the midst of all of the smell-o-rama at my house, I looked at my donation pile this morning as it sat at the end of my driveway waiting for BBBS to pick it up. Apparently some DUMP PICKER (my terminology for one who goes driving around in a pickup truck ahead of the BBBS truck and STEALS donations that look promising and then turns around and sells them) had swiped my old comforter set. That means they had to have come between 9PM last night (when I put the pile of donations items out) and 7 AM this morning. How pathetic. If I knew that that person really needed a comforter set, I wouldn’t feel so mad about it, but I know these people, I have seen them tooling around with pick up truck beds full of ill gotten loot. They are literally stealing from the needy and let me tell you, I think that stinks worse than my scallop-y smelling house!!