What's That Smell?!

It was abouuut 7…? Sometime after 6:30 a.m., for sure, but I can’t recall the exact time. The feeling of running late was in the air. We had packed my car (a.k.a the family "truck") for the long drive to Camarillo from the Los Angeles County area. We no longer own a sport utility vehicle, so, my car is used for all the messy trips. We, definitely, can't treat our other car like a “truck”, so, I’m glad we were headed to a baseball tournament and drove my car… Boy, was I ever relieved to have been in my car when we received our unexpected surprise within minutes of departing towards Ventura County…

My husband and I look at each other at the exact same moment, with the same awkward, deep inhaled expression as if asking each other without speaking the words, whaaat is that? We look at each other a second, a third, a fourth time and finally, with a nauseous expression, scrunched up nose and raised right brow, I ask “Do you smell skunk?!” “Yyyyea, that’s it. Thhhhaaat’s what I’m smelling, too!”, he replies with a very similar expression while looking around the car to see where the smell is coming from.

We all look outside, open our windows, take a deep breath in unison as if we had rehearsed it, looked at each other, turned back to look at our son, who had the same expression on his face, only much more enhanced than ours. After a few seconds of this, we smell and see that the coast is clear because the smell dissipated soon after we rolled down the windows.

 “Oh, shh… Who am I kidding, my husband’s vocabulary can be quite colorful. Actually, his reaction was more like “oooohh sh-t!”.  So… after making his colorful commentary upon seeing the time, we both said, “…it’s probably outside” and headed towards the freeway entrance, hoping the smell was behind us.

Nope. Not. At. All. The smell went from the lingering stench a skunk emits when startled or scared to a porter potty before a race. We were thinking up all the possibilities except the one inside our car. One of the ideas we imagined was a dead lizard. Yes! A dead lizard. I take credit for this one because it was a plausible thought. After all, there are many lizards in our neighborhood and there have been times when one has jammed inside our house or car. So, I thought, maybe, I had left a window open, a lizard jumped in, somehow breathed its last breaths in my car and had called it quits in there. Don’t laugh. It was a possibility. Unless, you’re laughing because you are thinking the obvious reason for the smell, then go right ahead because you have every right to be laughing. 

 

A few minutes in, like less than 2, and we were feeling more than nauseous, so, we finally did what we should have done as soon as we smelled that horrid smell-we checked our shoes. Nope, not me. Phew. Not my husband. Phew, again. Our son? Y-eeep. The smell was behind us, alright!

To be continued... in Part 2

***I’m pretty new to blogging, so, I might have a few “2 part” posts, but as soon as I get the hang of blogging, I promise to make them shorter. Well, I’m not sure I want to promise that in case there are some posts that need Rocky, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Bridget Jones, Toy Story, Men in Black, Spy Kids, Shrek, Tinker Bell, super hero movies sequels. Ha! I know. You get it. I’ll stop. Until next time. Same bat time, same bat channel. Haha