Post #22

I can smell your BO from here

The Menopausal Incident Report · Filed Under: Escalated Without Authorization

Okay this is going to be a MAJOR rant. I warn you now; it’s a Soap-box Extra Deluxe version. Two years ago I’m sitting in my house, watching some revenge porn on TV a la Reacher (nobody does it better than a roided-up hunk with hammer fists), and I get a sniff of something. It’s not the usual house smells. Food or drink streaming in from outside (the neighbor’s like grilling meat like it’s going out of fashion). It wasn’t even me or Tatter Cloak, or the dogs letting of a stealthy fart or three. It was SOME other mysterious FUCKING odor. So there I am ears pricked up like the dogs (actually the dogs are so dopey they wouldn’t even budge if we had an intruder), I start sniffing (again, like a dog that KNOWS how to dog) and by now I’m not even interested in muscle-bound Reacher flexing his spectacular pecs (he has better tits than I do at this point). I follow my nose and then I get it. CigaFUCKINGrette smoke except there’s no one smoking inside or outside. It’s just clinging in the air taunting me.

I ask Tatter Cloak if he can smell it. Nope not a bit, while he admits his nose is fried from years of smoking (ironic I know) and he goes back to Reacher. Reluctantly I join him and put the smell out of my mind, it goes away and I don’t think about it again. UNTIL the next IRRITATING AS FUCK time it happens. Fast forward a year. I’m still smelling this GODDAM phantom smoke. I can’t blame the dogs, or the cat litter tray, or the overactive fart factory that is my gut. It’s the declining estrogen, well of FUCKING course it is and it’s a rare side effect and I had to get it didn’t I? I can’t win the lottery but I can win a shitty perimenopause symptom like the CRAPPIEST SUPERPOWER EVER!

So I start researching and ask my Sister Crones at our next meeting and LO and BEHOLD! Janice Crone said when she was pregnant she turned into a bloodhound and EVERYTHING made her feel sick. And off she’d go to throw up. She could smell things from streets away, the smell of bacon cooking would make her stomach lurch. The surge in estrogen and progesterone causes Hyperosmia or an acute hypersensitivity to smells that rewires the olfactory process. But I hear you cry, “in perimenopause and menopause hormones are tanking WTF with the smelling!” And you’d be DAMN right. BUT the thing to remember here is, the fluctuations in hormones and the ratios relative to each other. In my case I realized that when my estrogen levels drop I start smelling cigarette smoke. It’s not actually there and unlike pregnancy related olfactory overload, this is known as Phantosmia. This is made worse by the thinning mucosal membranes that appear with declining hormones, so everything just STINKS! LITERALLY.

So like some messed up Edgar Allen Poe mystery, I got to the bottom of the smoke. But I’d like to say it’s all over now, but I’d be FUCKING LYING, and lying isn’t this Crone’s style (in fact I like truth far too much). I can now smell SO many things, all of them UNPLEASANT. Go to a restaurant and I smell the cooking oil (I can identify the item too, burger fat, fries fat, onion rings etc I’m like some FUCKED up HPLC machine in a lab), walk past a woman in perfume (gag city), worse still teenage boy (jock strap and ‘jerking off’ sock), teenage girl (cheap makeup and desperation to be admired).

I smell chemicals from fumes, smoke from wildfires, changes in weather and the BO. OH NO NO NO! The smell of body odor is very offensive, in that ‘stinging the eyes and making them water,’ kind of way. So how do I deal with this? I might be The Crone but there are some places I don’t go, like telling a decent hard-working person they stink. I just can’t do it but I THINK it VERY loudly. And hope to FUCK my RBF (resting bitch face) offers some clues. Or I suddenly develop ESP and can tell them to wash their pits and tits and lady bits and to STOP masking the unholy stench with deodorant that smells like a public restroom. Or stinky balls – let’s face it, men can smell offensive too. I now call myself the Canary in the Coal Mine because the time I started smelling gas in my house, turned out the sewer drain had a crack in it!

So there you have it, my BIG STINKING RANT. I feel a tad guilty about the fact some people can’t help but smell, but my hormones are failing me right now and as the criminal said to the judge, “they made me do it.”

Prime Time Crone!