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Saturday, February 17, 2007

Spring Cleaning (take one)

For the past, oh, I don't know, two months or so, I have been complaining to Andrew about a smell in our kitchen. For about a week I would not even enter the kitchen. Andrew would bring me cereal in the morning and make my lunch for me. When we came home from work he would make dinner and then do the dishes because I just couldn't stand to be in there.

He chalked it up to my "pregnancy nose." He chalks just about anything up to "pregnancy" something or other. Pregnancy brain, pregnancy mood, pregnancy hair, pregnancy fingernails, pregnancy eyeballs, pregnancy feet...anything I complain about he blames on the baby. Poor little thing. The nose thing though is actually kind of my sister Kelli's doing. The first thing she asked me when we announced our pregnancy was if my sense of smell had sharpened.

Apparently it has...and the smell in the kitchen was too much for me. Eventually Andrew got sick and tired of doing everything for me.

"Honey, I'm thirsty...will you get me some water?"
"Honey, it would be really great to have some ketchup with this..."
"Honey, will you pretty, pretty please make me a snack in the wee hours of the morning when I wake up starving and you don't? Please...oh, come on..."

So, a while ago, he did a thorough cleaning of the kitchen. He even used wood polish on the cabinets. When he was done, everything smelled of wood polish for a while (orange scent!) so I could venture into the kitchen again...but that only lasted for so long.

About a week ago, I started complaining about the smell again. But since Andrew thought I was crazy and no one else seemed to be able to smell it, I just chalked it up to "pregnancy nose" and decided not to be a wimp about it anymore.

*****

Yesterday, though, I realized what that horrible smell was.

On Wednesday, Andrew and I decorated cupcakes in order to take them over to the ladies we home teach. Unfortunately, it was too late by the time we got around to that and decided that a post-Valentine's Day treat is better than no Valentine's Day treat at all...so we went to bed. I left Andrew in the kitchen to clean up (as I am still prone to do because I really can't stand to be in there...it almost makes me gag).

Andrew cleaned up, and put the cupcakes in the fridge but didn't cover them up.

When we got home from work the next day (that would be yesterday), I checked the cupcakes. They were kind of dried out...so they weren't really suitable to deliver as gifts. I started to decorate some fresher ones so that we could take those over, and while doing this popped one of the dry, crusty ones into my mouth.

Mistake!

I ran into the living room with the half-chewed cupcake still in my mouth, "Mhis mamse mike muh smwew!" I kind of sprayed some cupcakes out on that last "s."

"What?" Andrew, rightly, asked (speaking with your mouth full is rather rude).

I ran back into the kitchen and spat the cupcake out.

"This tastes like the smell!" I hollered back, "It tastes like the fridge. Try one!"

Andrew tried one. He had the same reaction I did, only he didn't try to communicate before spitting it out. (Why people do that, I'll never know... "Hey, this is truly disgusting. Try one!" "Yeah, okay! Pass them over!")

The smell that had been haunting me was, as Andrew calls it, "the traditional 'old fridge' smell."

I went over to the fridge right away and started rooting around. I found an orange in a grocery bag that had...well...just too gross. I promptly emptied it, and the cupcakes, and a few other fruits that were past their prime into the garbage can and put it outside.

*****

Today after we were done with all our errands, we cleaned the fridge! Sadly, that is about as exciting as my life gets--but I have never been so excited to clean a fridge! I think that the smell is really going away...

All our food on the counter (including the Martinelli we forgot to drink for V-day)
Andrew scrubbed the shelves and drawers...
While I scrubbed down the interior (what team work!)
Oh, how it sparkles
And then we put all of our food back in
So, now you all know exactly what we eat: yogurt, pickles, eggs, milk, apples, jam, cheese, tortilla shells and potatoes. That's pretty much all we have in our fridge.

You also know what we no longer have in our fridge: rotten oranges, cupcakes tasting of "old fridge," and a putrid smell.

6 comments:

  1. Man, our fridge was smelling pretty bad too and I couldn't figure out what it was. I pulled everything out and dumped any suspicious foods. I even smelled the kimchi my mom gave me, but that wasn't it. So I told my mom about it and she came over. She opened the fridge, took one smell, and said that it was the kimchi. I said impossible, but she insisted and we took it out and finished it off that night. To my amazement the fridge smell started to go away. But now...I smell a linger...

    I think guys just can't smell when things just don't smell right. Or, if they do, they don't say anything and hope that it goes away. Either way, it is good that we women are equiped with a very keen sense of smell.

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  2. Well nancy, my microwave may or may not be clean but my fridge is!!!! SICK! LOL
    You did a great job though, looks pretty nice and wow! Andrew even helped, if I could get Billy to help clean out fridge drawers, my training would almost be complete!

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  3. Oh, our fridge was fairly clean--except for that orange.

    Remember the time when you found a moldy package of hamburger in your microwave? What I don't understand is: how can one go for so long without opening the microwave?

    I still haven't figured that one out.

    Isn't your microwave about due for a cleaning job? We need to come up sometime to do that. :)

    (I'm my sister's quasi-official microwave cleaner).

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  4. I think the lack of male smelling ability has some evolutionary benefits...mainly they don't keel over and die when they smell their own work out clothes. Outside of Jordan Jason is a pretty clean guy, he bathes every day, wears clean clothes, uses degree but I swear if I didn't wash our clothes at least twice a week our whole house would reak of man. There is some study that has come out that says the smell of man sweat acts as an aphrodisiac on women but I refuse to believe it. I need to see the stats on that one! Pregnancy is the worst though with the whole smell thing. I swear I could smell the stinky diaper in our ward before the kids even went. GROSS!

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  5. well Nancy.... actually yes our microwave does need to be cleaned
    and I don't remember the moldy hamburger in the microwave... don't know how that could have happened because we do actually use our microwave everyday I'm sure. Hmmmmmmm.

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  6. Just FYI, we took a vote last night at dinner...Mom, Josie and Patrick all remember the moldy hamburger story...

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