Keepin' it Clean

We have a pre-occupation with scents going on over here. It started with shampoo. Every time we'd go to any store that sold shampoo (ANY store), we'd have to take the lids off each and every one of the "flavored" ones and give them a good long sniff. We'd stand in the aisles of Safeway, Bi-Mart, Target, Walgreens, you-name-it, and just smell, smell, smell. Having trouble deciding on just one "flavor" we'd often end up with two or three. Our shower is fully occupied by all the various shampoos in all their stages of use.

Now he's added liquid soap to the drill. We have cucumber in the bathroom, vanilla upstairs and shea butter in the kitchen. He's got me making soap runs after school so he can buy them for gifts. "Care, Grandma really, really needs some soap." Apparently, Grandma did. She sent him a thank you note in the mail a couple days after I dropped it off, so touched was she that he would think of her in such a sweet way, and remember that her favorite fragrance was lavender. He bought one for his other grandmother, too, as well as both his primary teachers.

On Sunday we dragged Nancy on our hamburgers/frozen yogurt/soap shopping run. "It's like the shampoo," she said, having been dragged on more than one shampoo sniffing expedition, as well. We also picked out treats for his teachers, Hot Tamales for one (because she loves cinnamon) and gum for the other, because he swears she loves gum.

Got home and were getting everything in his backpack to take to school the next day, and the Hot Tamales had gone all Don Wilson on us (for those of you that are unfamiliar with that phenomenon, it's when things simply vanish from our house, usually showing up in an obvious place, way, way later). We looked in the car. We looked in the take-your-own-reusable-save-the-earth-bag. We looked in my purse. That box was goners.

Rojo obsessed over the candy for the rest of the evening to the point where I finally said, "Get your shoes on, let's go get her a new box." I suggested we go to a closer, easier, more convenient store than the one where we'd originally gone, but that was not flying. I think he thought the Hot Tamales might still be sitting at the self-check, all those hours later, just waiting for us. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised they weren't.

Off we went back to the store. Grabbed a new box of Hot Tamales and were heading to the self-check again when he said, "Let's just go look at the soap really fast." While he was sniffing and debating whether or not we also needed raspberry in the mix, I texted Nancy. "Guess where I am and what I'm doing," I wrote, "smelling soap."

I wouldn't have it any other way.