This is why women burn candles.

The past week I have had a mystery smell in my house.
A bad mystery smell.

It seemed to be stronger in the kitchen area.
I was hoping for a rotten potato.
That is the quickest fix to the "What the (gag) heck is that (gag) smell?!"
Not a potato.
Still really rank in the kitchen.

This led me down my well-worn trail of mental darkness...
What if it was a dead customer??!!

Let me backtrack for those of you new to the blog.

Me=Deathly afraid of rodents.

My husband and my sons try to keep me out of the loop when it comes down to the mouse population in the house.
When they set traps now, they talk in code.
"Hey, did you check the *mailbox* for *customers*?
(wink, wink)
I know deep down what they are referring to, but I choose to take the conversation at face value.

Lalalalala...fluffy white clouds in my world....

So back to my mystery smell.
I was almost thinking it was a customer somewhere, rotting away, and was slightly afraid to find it, and yet really, really anxious to GET RID OF THE PUTRID SMELL emulating from the center of the house.

I mean, what if someone dropped in?

What would they think?
Admit it.
We all know someone that has a weird smelling house.
And it leaves you to wonder if they can't smell it?
How can they stand it?
Is it Pets? Garlic? Socks?
What?
And really, it is asking a lot out of that tiny bowl of decorative potpourri...

What if someone thought my house smelled like this all the time?

I did what any self-respecting homemaker would do in such a grim state of smell-searching panic.

I lit a scented candle.

I was reminded of the Week of the Bad Mystery Smell by my husband.

It was when the twins were potty training.
The house perpetually smelled like a stinky diaper.

I swear, I was anal about taking those things out to the trash, and yet the smell still seemed to linger.

It was a few days later when we discovered one of the twins had done their business, taken the offending diaper off, and promptly stuffed the package down the heater vent.

The combined force of the air, and the heat redistributed that lovely aroma allllll over the house.

For a week.

No candle can compete with that.

I knew we were past the diaper days.
Still this horrid smell remained.

It doesn't help that I have an acute sense of smell.
This was the only skill I retained from all of my pregnancies.
Gone is the voluptuous chest!
Gone is the aversion to carbs!
But my sniffer!
Yep. Still highly sensitive.

I can smell a fart behind a closed door and down two flights of stairs.
Once I was in the kitchen, and could smell the "fruits" from one of the boys from the family room.
"Who WAS IT!!!!" I snarled.
"No way!" the offender replied in awe and disbelief.
And I swear, bet money was exchanged between the boy and his dad.
Yep.
I have skeelz.

This smell.
It was making me crazy!

Finally, I found it.

A package of frozen vegetables that got put away in the pantry instead of the freezer. Yesssss!

I was one happy...um, customer.

Down for the Count

It started with Brendan.
He went on a scout camp-out and was up the next night puking.
I slept through it all.

Hooray for having kids that can hit the toilet on their own!
I figured that he just ate a lot of junk on the camp-out.

Then the next day was fast Sunday.
We all fasted, and Jayden excused himself from the dinner table to go retch.
Again, I figured he was just overly hungry from fasting.

The next day, Shianne started ralphing.

It was only then that I figured it out.
"Hey, we have the flu, here."

I got it yesterday.
It was rotten.
I finally needed to eat something, and the only thing that sounded good was a banana shake.
I hate bananas.
Maybe I just needed the potassium?
It tasted pretty dang good.

And today, Jayden is fevered up again.

I want to clear the house out, and have it quarantined.
Lysol everything.
Sigh.

I guess it is going around.
Several schools in Utah have completely closed.

Other news:

Shayne came home last week and informed me that he wanted to work on a project for the reflections contest.
He wanted to enter in the Photography category.
He asked to borrow my point and shoot camera.
The theme for this years' reflections contest is "Beauty is..."
I forgot about him for a while, and he came back into the house, partly frozen, holding the camera.
"I think I got some good ones." he said, "Can we go look?"

So we go upstairs to upload the photos he took.
I was curious, because it was pitch-black outside, and I had no idea where he was going with this.
Here is what he got:


I was floored!
He took the pictures through his telescope!
And I was even more floored to learn he shot them on manual.
I DON'T EVEN SHOOT ON MANUAL.
He said, "I just kept trying all the buttons, and the one that worked the best was the "M" button, on 4.5 and 1/1000."

Huh.

He picked his favorite pictures and mounted them on black poster board and put:
"Beauty is...something you can't touch, only see."

I am not sure how two morons like Sam and I have managed to raise this kid.

Random Ponderings

1- Why does gravy never re-heat in the microwave?
2- Why do gray hairs always stand straight up on your head like little bug antennas?
3- Why can I never find any of the 151 pairs of nail clippers in this house when I need them?
4- Why are nail clippers referred to as a "pair" of nail clippers?
5- Why do none of the pens in this house work? I have to resort to jotting down important information in crayons. It makes me feel super professional.
6- Why is it that anything with scrambled eggs on it (plate, cup, pan) never come clean in my dishwasher? Eggs? What the crap?
7- How is it that extra-super super glue has a questionable bond, yet cocoa pebbles can form a permanent molecular attachment to the grout in my floor tile?
8- How does my kitchen faucet get so gunky? What is that gunk? (probably salmonella)
9- Why can't I get off my butt and get my house clean? :)

Silence.

For the past couple of days I have had no voice.
I am not sick. (Unless someone wants to bring me sympathy dinner. Or cookies.)
I have no other symptoms of being sick.
Just no voice.

I honestly think that this is something my children have been praying for, and clear evidence that they have more clout than I with The Big Guy upstairs.

You see...I can't holler at them for anything.
I have to try to get their attention by snapping my fingers.
I am not a good snapper.
I have never been able to whistle either.
I have resorted to flapping my arms in front of them as they watch TV.
Sadly, I barely register a response.
They are used to the crazy, and think that the flapping is a new stage in that rodeo.

I could call them, I suppose, using my cell phone to call the home phone, but
A- they would never answer it, and
B- if they did answer (by some small miracle), they would be met with silence on the other end of the line--from their mute mother.

They seem to find the dinner table okay when the food is ready, without me calling for them.

I am worried that I won't get my voice back.
Sam said it is that time of year...
The time of year when he has maybe or maybe not seen mice in the general vicinity.
He has to tread very carefully around this subject, since I am not hormonally stable enough to survive a possible rodent sighting.
And imagine!
Imagine if I saw one...
and I
Couldn't.
Even.
SCREAM??