Phantom Smells

The fact is, I can't be sure I wasn't exaggerating about this whole Mark Bittman business. Don't get me wrong--it definitely smelled bad. Our clothes smell. But I can still smell it lingering in the air three days and lots of yummy cooking later and that seems a trifle unlikely.

I can also smell the traces of Maud's vomit, hidden beneath the burning. Maud threw up last week, having decided to forgo her canned kitten food in favor of grody Indian corn. Smart cat, that one. And I scrubbed and resolved and febreezed the hell out of those spots--it was a lot of vomit--and couldn't smell it if I put my nose right up to it, but if I entered the hallway from another part of the house, I could smell it again.

But see, here's the problem: I can't be certain my cleaning sucks that badly, because I smell stuff that doesn't exist all the time. And worse, sometimes things just smell weird to me. For a while there, all coffee smelled like shoyu (soy sauce to those who don't know), and for a period of two weeks last year, Jersey City smelled like sperm.

These smell issues have led to not a few pregnancy paranoias, let me tell you.

Guy, on the other hand, claims to have no sense of smell. This is a lie. He just can't smell when I put on the expensive perfume. He can smell a bakery from a mile away, and a Pizza Hut from a state away.

And so--I am unresolved. I don't feel I owe Mark Bittman an apology as that recipe was still retarded and did stink up my house, but I do think I must place a small disclaimer, and say that while it is not my intention to exaggerate, I may have inadvertently done so, as both Guy and I are olfactorily challenged.