There was an old lady

So, I'm up too late tonight. I should be in bed right now in fact but I'm not because I'm getting ready to go winter quasi-camping tomorrow...almost today now. This has led to multiple late nights because I got it in my head last Saturday that I was going to build my very own winter camping sled to haul my gear around. (also known as a pulk.)

So I spent the afternoon running around gathering materials, charging up my drill battery and then stayed up really late putting it all together. Why is this interesting you may ask? Because you see, I have a lot of things to do on Sunday and often I get ready for some of those things on Saturday. I go to church meetings really early and then I just end up staying there pretty much all day. My kids are also a little morning sensitive so I try and have everything prepared as to make as little noise as possible on Sunday morning. Usually my preperations include things like showering, shaving, setting out my clothing, preparing the agendas for the meetings etc.

Well, I basically forgot about all those things last Saturday. Didn't shave. Didn't shower. Nothing. No big deal right? who can't go a day without showering now and then? Sure I had spent the morning helping a friend move a bunch of stuff but I didn't sweat that much. Well, it didn't matter because it didn't even occur to me until Sunday morning that I hadn't showered for the last 48 hours.

So here is where it got interesting. On Sunday I ran home right before church to help Marie with the kids because she needed to be there so I decided on the fly to protect myself against the forces of smelliness by putting on a little cologne. I don't really wear cologne that often so the bottle I found I think was left over from high school. It was some fake Eternity I got at rite-aid when I was 14 or so but it seemed like it would do the trick. My memory was that because it was the fake stuff it didn't last very long (HA - some Eternity) so I needed to put on a little extra and I laid it on thick and ran off to church.

Well, a member of the stake presidency happened to be visiting this week and decided he wanted to sit next to me which I didn't mind at all but after a few minutes I started to wonder if he minded and was trying to think of a way out of there. Have you ever sat next to an old lady with too much perfume on and had a hard time breathing? You know, you start with the coughing and then you need to go search for fresh air? I'm afraid I may be that old lady. I noticed the little coughs starting just after he sat down and then it occurred to me. Oh, no. Can I smell my self? Is it that strong? Shoot. It is that strong. The small coughing continued. Not the hacking, I clearly have a cold, kind of coughing. It was a lot more like the, I'm choking and can't quite get enough oxygen king of coughing. After about twenty minutes or so of not listening to anything that was being said in the meeting and trying to scoot myself as far the other direction in the chair as possible a cough drop was produced and that seemed to bring his breathing back to normal. I also noticed his eyes watering a few times but he tends to do that in meetings so I'm not sure if that was caused by my smell or not. I don't think I'm going to claim credit mostly because I hope it wasn't me.