Do I stink?

I mentioned in a previous post how I really want to have a house that smells good. Well, right now our house is for sale and the other day we had a brokers’ open house. (No need to worry. We don’t NEED to sell our house, but we’ve lived in it for two years now and so we’re (well, more like I) anxious to sell it and build another one.) So anyway, the house was all spic ‘n’ span and I had lit candles and everything, and I was on my way out to the garage when our realtor and a couple of others got here. They might have been totally taken by the spicy aroma in the air except that I opened the garage door. I tried to squeeze myself and Janey out the door without opening it more than a crack, but it was too late. The stench from the garage came trespassing in. I don’t know why the heck our garbage was so dang rank this week, but it was, and I can’t help but think the realtors got a whiff. Dang it! After all my hard work… But anyway, that scenario got me thinking about stinking, and thinking about stinking brought to mind:

The girls in my family are exceptionally cool–all except for the fact that we sweat. No, no. Not the normal kind of sweating, like the kind that happens after you’ve run a few miles, or the kind that happens when you haven’t showered in days. The kind that drenches your armpits any time you leave the comfort of your room and your sweats. Oh, my heavens. It has been such a curse my whole life. At one point,my mom even took me to the doctor and I got a prescription for a special deodorant/antiperspirant. I think it was called Certain Dry. You had to take a shower RIGHT before you went to bed, dry thoroughly, and then apply it immediately. And it actually did help significantly if you followed those directions exactly. However, if you let yourself get distracted and say, brush your teeth before applying the deodorant, you were screwed. Not only would your armpits start sweating, but they would start itching like the dickens, too. No joke. So what did I do about it? Well, I survived the best I could–I stuck pantie liners in the armpits of my dresses when I went to dances or was giving a talk or something; I’d run into the bathroom at school and wipe my pits out with toilet paper; I’d wear multiple shirts; I’d wear colors that didn’t change color as badly when they were wet….and I just tried to keep my arms down at my sides as much as possible. Like that isn’t totally weird. So my whole life I’ve just had to fumble along trying not to be drenched in sweat. But it’s getting better as time goes by–is it possible to wear out your sweat glands? I was even able to sing Once There Was A Snowman today in church without worrying about lifting my arms. (By the way, did you know that it is deodorant mixed with sweat (not just sweat alone) that makes those nasty stains on the armpits of your white shirts? So if you don’t wear deodorant, you’ll never get stains there. Don’t worry. I don’t go without deodorant very often. But sometimes, when I’ve just showered and I’ll be wearing a nice white shirt to go out for a few hours, I’ll skip on the deodorant and just wear perfume in order to keep the shirt looking good. I can only get away with it now that my pits are drying up.)

And constant sweating might be the biggest problem related to stinking I’ve ever had except that in college I had a bigger one.
Sarah and I were running errands one day and we were sitting in the car when she said to me, “Ann, you have the worst breath I have ever smelled. It smells like something is rotting in your stomach!” Yeah, THAT hurt. But it didn’t hurt because it wounded my pride, it hurt because I was then horrified that I had just kissed Johnny earlier that day and I was going to be seeing him again later that night (despite being broken up. Oh, brother.) So anyway, I cupped my hands around my mouth and blew into them in an effort to smell my breath for myself, but it was to no avail. I couldn’t smell a thing. I trusted my sister, though, and took her word for it as we left in a frantic to get me some help. We bought gum, mouth wash–you name it, and we went home and gave my mouth a good deep cleaning, but it just didn’t do the job. So finally I decided to call my uncle (who is a doctor) and describe my symptoms to him. He told me that I most likely had a sinus infection–which would have been fine except that you can only kick an infection with antibiotics and time was of the essence. Anyway…to make a long story a little bit shorter–I did go on my date that night, and as unseemly as it is, I did still get a little fooshnickens (remember that work, Meg?). Come to think of it, it is quite remarkable that it wasn’t my breath that day that finally broke us up for good–we all know what it’s like to kiss someone with bad breath. And I did end up having a sinus infection. Turns out that my sinus infection was also the reason behind the loss of hearing in my right (or maybe my left) ear that I had been experiencing. And that experience taught me a couple of important life lessons: 1) the cupping-your-hands-around-your-mouth-to-check-for-bad-breath trick does NOT work and 2) just because a boy kisses you does not mean you are not totally repulsive.
So despite the fact that I obviously no longer have a sinus infection, I still have a lingering paranoia that I could have bad breath at any time without knowing it.

Enough about stink, though. Camp turned five! Yes, this is the season for birthdays in our family. He is really becoming a neat boy and I’ve been so excited to see him grow to share some of my passions–as of late: grilled chicken sandwiches, oreo blizzards, and decorating for holidays. And unlike for Danin, I did have a little party for him. I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull one off without Becky being here. She’s the one who always makes the really cool cake that Camp loves. I stretched myself to my creative limits, though, and made an oreo ice cream cake which I stuck spiders to. We bobbed for apples in the bathtub, played musical chairs and used toilet paper to wrap each other up like mummies. And the boys seemed to have fun, so that’s cool.
Jane is as darling as ever except for the occasional “You are TUPID!” And oh, man. There is nothing that warms my heart more than experimenting with mascara on my daughter and being so pleased that she got Brian’s eyelash genes and not mine.
Danin is still pretty bald, but there is evidence of some beautiful reddish hair. And she’s so enjoyable.
Brian is still keeping himself busy and he has been losing weight. I’ve been really impressed because he has been eating really healthily for a month or so and he is really looking and feeling great. He and I went to the stake ball last night with another couple from our ward. It was titled Arabian Nights and I assumed we were supposed to dress up. Brian’s always told me, though, that ‘when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me’, and I guess he was right. We were the only ones dressed up–as Arabs, no less. Someone asked us if we were going to be in a skit. Ummm, nope. Oh, well. It felt good to live a little.