The smell in the living room

*Sniff, sniff* I could smell something in the living room, something bad.  It smelled like fish.  Off fish, fermenting in the living room.  The smell was atrocious, like a slimy wet dead fish crawled over to my nose and started smacking me with its rotting tail.

“It smells like off fish in here.  Can you smell it?  It’s disgusting!  Why does it smell like that?!?!”  I babbled to Aaron.

*Sniff, sniff* “I don’t smell anything.”

“Are you serious??????  How can you not smell that?”  Well, I do have an incredibly good sense of smell.   I can tell if a neighbour is smoking a cigarette even when I’m inside the house with the windows shut.

We ate dinner.  I could still smell the fish.

“Seriously, you don’t smell that?”

“I guess I can now, a little bit”  Aaron said.

“Ok, tomorrow when Hannah is asleep, I’m going to use my hound-dog nose and find the source of that smell.”

“Why wait, let’s do it now.”

Aaron moved the lounge.  He laughed.

“What?  You found the remote didn’t you?”  We’ve been looking for the remote for months.  We did look behind the couch, but it wasn’t there.  It must have been caught in the hide-a-bed and then fallen out the back later.  I knew we should have opened up the couch to look for it (but we were being lazy).

I vacuumed behind the couch while it was out.  No smell causing source there.

I got down on my hands and knees again, sniffing the ground as I went.  The smell seemed to be coming from near the couch, but not the couch itself.  I touched the carpet as I sniffed, maybe there was some sticky hard to see thing causing the ruckus.  Plus the brown carpet seems to camouflage anything and everything.  Then I vacuumed.

Something little caught my eye.  “I think this is it,” I said after taking a whiff.  It appeared to be a tiny piece of salmon that was now hard, that had fallen off someones dinner plate (probably Aaron’s, it was on his side of the couch.  That’s surprising though, considering I’m the sloppy one who is always spilling things).

I threw it away and vacuumed the area.

Ugh, the smell was still there!

The next day (yesterday), I vacuumed the whole house, taking extra care in the living room, moving anything and everything to vacuum underneath.  The room still smelled. Yuck.

I went to the shops and bought one of those oil things in a bottle with the sticks coming out to freshen up the room, vanilla scented.  Ok, to cover up the still un-found fish smell.  I tried to smell it in the shops, but it was all sealed up.

When I opened it, I took a whiff.  Ugh.  It certainly didn’t smell like vanilla.  It was more like cheap, imitation, sickly sweet cinnamon.  Not even a hint of vanilla.  Oh well, I put it out anyway.  couldn’t  be worse than the fish smell.

Except now the room smells like off fish and cheap, imitation, sickly sweet cinnamon.  And I still can’t find the source of the smell.  Humph.  Maybe if we wait long enough, it will go away on its own.  That or it will get worse and take over the house.  I’m hoping for the former.

Smells like Christmas

I was going to blog about this

Some of Aaron’s relatives came over for Christmas breakfast and presents this morning.  I was going to blog about eating waffles with stewed strawberries, real maple syrup, and ice cream, plus cheesy eggs and bacon and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, opening a million presents, and not actually cooking the turkey I bought because it was 33 degrees (91.4 F) and we really didn’t want the oven on all day in that heat, but then something happened.  Something so funny that I had to blog about it instead.  Something I had to change someones name for in order to be given permission to actually blog about it.  I’m just going to refer to the relative in this story as “Alex” because without changing the spelling, Alex can be a girls, or a boys name.  Plus, the person in this story doesn’t want to be named due to possible death by embarrassment.

“I think Hannah’s nappy bucket needs changing.”  Alex said to Grandma.  I put Hannah’s dirty nappies in a small, sealed, garbage bag lined bucket, changing it when it gets full (which is pretty much every day, as I said, it’s small).  “It’s really smelly.”

Grandma opened the poo bucket, tied the garbage bag shut, and took it to the bin outside.  She re-lined the bucket and put the lid back on.

“It still smells, we really need to find out what that smell is.”  Alex said, as he/she sniffed around the house.

I went in Hannah’s room.  No smell in there.  I could definitely smell something in the hall area.  “It smells like sewerage or something.”  I said to Grandma.

Grandma went outside, sniffing as she walked.  “There’s nothing out here.”

She went out the back, fearing that maybe, just maybe, the pipes were leaking and  poo was coming up through the ground.  “Nothing out here.”

“Hannah, time to brush your teeth.”

“No!”  No is her favorite answer to everything.

“Too bad, come on.”  I picked her up and headed to the bathroom.

As we neared the door, the smell assaulted our nostrils.  “Grandma, I found the source of the smell!”  Aaron checked the toilet to see if someone had left a nasty surprise by accident.  Nothing there, only the smell.

“Who’s been in the bathroom?”  Grandma asked.  “Never mind, that’s not important, it doesn’t matter, it just matters that we found the smell.”  It was lingering.  Too bad the fan doesn’t work.

“But I smelled something before I used the bathroom.”  Alex said

“Yeah, but you’ve been farting all day.”  I told him/her.

“No I haven’t.”

“Um…yes you have, we heard you.  Plus, Grandma said the smell was really strong in your room, she just felt bad and didn’t want to tell you.”

“Oh.  Oh yeah, I did too.  Oh, sorry, I guess it was me.”

Maybe it was all the chocolate, cheese, cookies, cinnamon rolls, and eggs.  Whatever it was, it was bad.

 

What’s that smell?

I’d been smelling it all day.  There was no mistaking it.  It was poop.  It was following me around.  Was it Hannah?  I checked her bottom.  Nope, no poop there.  Was she just farting?  Maybe, she does fart long, loud and often.  I checked my shoe.  It didn’t smell like dog poop, but maybe I’d stepped on a wayward nugget.  You never know….  No poop there.

We went out in the car.  The poop was following me!  Hannah wasn’t cranky, she didn’t seem to have a stomach ache with noxious gas emissions.  I know it seems a little crazy, but I checked under the seats.  Nothing.  Well, ok, not nothing, our car is very messy (mainly due to a) I can’t be bothered to clean it, b) I don’t have time to clean it, and c) I’m kind of scared of what I’ll find in there), but there was no poop there.

We went to the grocery store.  The poop followed us.  I was going crazier with every step. WHERE WAS IT COMING FROM!?!?!?!?!

We went to the register to pay for our purchases.  I opened my purse.  Oh snap, there it was.  The little blue tied up bag was staring right at me as I unzipped my purse.  In the little blue tied up bag was a nappy.  A poopy nappy.  All of you non-Mommies, I can hear all of your horrified gasps from here.  Why would I have a poopy nappy in my purse?  Oh my goodness, why would I have a POOPY nappy in my purse?  WHO puts a poopy nappy in their purse?!  Next time you are in the middle of, well, anywhere without a bin, and you have to change a poopy nappy, and have nowhere to put it, then you’ll understand.  This is the exact reason that some clever person invented the little scented poop sacks (ok, nappy sacks).  Roll up nappy, put in bag, tie up, put where you can.  Only, you’re not supposed to forget that you put it there like I often do.  Sure, I could litter, but I don’t condone littering, and I’m pretty sure that some other mother doesn’t want their unsuspecting child to excitedly run up to the colourful poopy bag, pick it up, and frolic about.  So yeah, I put poop in my purse.  Deal with it.

Ok, so these ones aren't blue like mine, but you get the idea