SNIFF!

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We were married about a year and our first-born was taking a lot of our attention away from the humdrum of life in a small apartment. TLW (The Little Woman) had her hands full with the newborn caring, cleaning and cooking, and while I tried to help I still had to mount a train every morning and go off to work in Manhattan, so was gone most of the day.

One day we were sitting in our cramped dining area, and I smelled something.

At first I didn’t think much of it, the odor seemed feint and almost distant. I mentioned it to TLW and she said she was starting to notice it too. Sunday turned to Monday and Tuesday was soon in play, and as the days progressed so did the odor. TLW did everything she could to first identify the smell, and find where it was coming from.

Having a problem with mice as it was, we figured there was a dead one somewhere who was rotting away, but no, nothing was found. Into the basement I went to check out maybe if it was coming form down there, but no, it smelled clear and I couldn’t detect the odor. Where was this odor coming from? Maybe the house was haunted? Having read about haunting and foul odors that accompany it if you believe that sort of stuff, maybe a ghost was living with us?

In every abode we lived in, TLW had a junk drawer, a place where she put little odds and ends that she didn’t want to toss out, like a pair of shoelaces, or screws or a flashlight. One of us decided to go into the drawer, which was in one of the kitchen cabinets and get something or put something away, and there in the drawer was our source of mystery.

While cleaning up from dinner on the previous Sunday, being distracted by my daughter, she inadvertently put a chunk of mozzarella cheese in the drawer, instead of the refrigerator.

The moral of this story is: Don’t do that!