foul mood and odor

Drat.  Friday night and I'm home alone.  Looks like next door neighbor is an even bigger curmudgeon than I am, though;  I can tell he or she is home because of some cooking odors wafting down the hallway.

That's right, I have never met my neighbor.  He or she is generally an unintrusive, neutral presence.  No loud music or subwoofed bass shaking my walls, no raucous parties and constant stream of sloppy guests, no illegal prostitution enterprise operating under cover of some deliberately vague "import/export business."  As far as I can tell.

But tonight, I'm already in a bad mood, and now I've noticed there is a bad smell to go along with it.  I have no idea what my neighbor is cooking, but judging by the terrible odor I wouldn't be surprised it if turned out to be fecal matter.

I hate cooking smells with a passion, even when it is vegetables and not apparent human waste that are being cooked.  The kitchen in my house growing up was always swimming with curious odors -- odd combinations of animal parts, heavy oils and strange spices -- and I hated it.  Now I go through Febreze or other "odor-eliminating" sprays in my own kitchen the way Ryan Seacrest probably goes through lube. 

I hate emerging from a restaurant with my clothes saturated with food smells so that people I run into hours later can still guess my entree.  Curry?  Mongolian or, worse, Korean BBQ?  Bless.  And since I have really long hair that is damaged by aggressive coloring over the years, I'm convinced that my strands are more porous than the average person's, and therefore absorb and hold smells longer.

Curiously, even though I am very put off by odors, I have never been particularly sensitive to or discerning about pleasant scents.  I've worn the same perfume for the last nine years because I can't find a new one.  Whenever I test drive a brand that smells yummy on someone else, I somehow end up redolent with olives, latex, or other equally unappealing scents.

The last time I ventured into Sephora I enthusiastically coated all the available surface area on my wrists and forearms with different perfumes, then wandered aimlessly around the store for fifteen minutes waiting for the "top notes" to settle.  Unfortunately afterward I couldn't tell the differences among any of the scents.  Nor could I remember which perfume I had sprayed where on my appendages, rendering the whole experiment worthless on multiple levels.

So in an effort to look like less of a no-talent assclown I spent a further half hour fumbling with about two dozen tester paper strips coated in new scents, periodically heaving Kate Moss-grade sniffs at a pot of coffee beans to "reset my sense of smell."  Finally I left in shame with my hands totally covered in paper cuts and totally devoid of purchases.

I so wish my olfactory dullness would kick in right about now.  Think whatever my neighbor is cooking is starting to burn.  Serves him or her right.