I spent $88 at Pier One, and I still hate the smell of my house!

So ya, another lovely pregnancy moment people tend to gloss over is that fact that you can smell EVERYTHING. Deeply, excessively and to the point of dry heaving EVERYTHING. And whether it’s the once lovely and ever so yummy smell of freshly baked bread, or that stank asshole of the brewery smell of morning after’s beer bottles (not from me, from party goers to my house) it’s intolerable. Things you used to love, things you never noticed, things you think so innocuous they could never be considered to even have a smell, suddenly have you wishing you could shove corks up your nostrils. And even if I tried, I’d never get a cork up there – my nose holes are very small. So small, my husband can’t even get his pinky up there - and he’s tried.

For me, the problem started with the fact that we moved into a new house, that’s in fact 100 years old, and bought a bunch of nice to look at but cheap furniture, which has the unfortunate side effect of reeking like the plastic it’s made from.

Anyway, the most annoying part of this super nose syndrome is that, you’re the only one who’s got it. No one else is suffering the pains of stink gone wild, and you are once again forced to act the role of a crazy person. And it’s unfair because, you really can’t help it. This is how I ended up at Pier1 one warm Saturday afternoon, when I really should have been home getting ready for a friend’s wedding shower. See, it’s so strong that your need to deal with it usurps even the most critical of social appearances.

Shortly after dropping my dear husband off at work (see I also didn’t want him to know I’d gotten THIS crazy, so I had to sneak shop for the smelly sticks), I raced through hordes of downtown traffic to find reprieve in the form of overpriced home décor.

I hit pay dirt, I found mecca!  3 entire SHELVES dedicated to de-stinking my abode. Surely this is the doing of some crazy pregnant lady who runs the company.

I stood there for awhile, completely bewildered that there would be such an offering. I must have looked stunned because the nice 17 year old sales clerk bopped over to me, and cheerfully asked me if I had any questions. I thought for a moment, and realized that blabbing to this young girl who is bursting with energy and no desire to procreate, about the perils of pregnancy nose, and how I had to find just the right smell, one that would cover the hell I was living in but which would not induce my over active gag response, was probably inappropriate. So I decided to tell her I was just looking. Yup, that’s me, looking at the smelly sticks. I could have at least said smelling.

After what must have been a month, I’d smelled them all. And I suffered the new problem of liking the ones that cost a lot, more than the ones that cost slightly less than a lot. And of course, knowing that my income will soon be down to about 45% of my current intake (which isn’t that awesome to begin with) had me leaning towards the less expensive versions. Did I mention I calculated that 4 sets of said smelly sticks were what I required? At $18 each set, plus tax, it was an investment, but surely one that would solve all my life’s problems.

In some completely amnesic type moment, I settled on 2 smells – Citrus Cilantro for upstairs and Fresh Bamboo for the other. Why am I claiming amnesia on this? Well because what idiot, trying to stop bad smells from ruining her life would choose 2 different types to trap inside her house?

This idiot.

And I chose them for stupid reasons. I chose the Citrus Cilantro for my husband, because he likes both of those things. Never mind that it smells nothing like citrus or cilantro, and that regardless he was going to think I was a total crack pot no matter what. I bought them for him. Fresh bamboo was of course chosen on the premise that at some point I’d like to get the bathroom downstairs finished, painted bright white, with a crisp white shower curtain and a bamboo plant. So of course, I had to pick the bamboo scent for that room, even though I’m pretty sure last time I checked, bamboo didn’t smell of anything other than the stagnant tepid water it sits in.

I brought them home and for a few days, it was blissful. That stinky old house smell gave way to the refreshing scents, and I stopped having to breathe through the sleeve of my hooded sweater shirt.

This lasted 3 days until they reached maximum potency and I realized that the Citrus Cilantro was almost as overwhelming as is was stupid.

So now what. I’d spent about $90 on these stupid things and they didn’t do the trick? It was either a drastic attempt to murder my sense of smell by shoving a chopstick up there and trying to avoid a full frontal lobotomy, or I had to just suck it up. Neither of which satisfied the hormonal nut ruling my body.

I settled on a shifting of the smells, moving the fresher, lighter scented bamboo smelling one into the room we’re in 90% of the time, and put it far away from where my head goes. In the end it’s slightly better but $90 and……I still hate the smell of my house.