Things are getting a little hairy around the apartment these days. Of course I’m referring to more than me with my shirt off. HA! Oh man, I should be shot for that one. Anyway…
Lately, there’s been a non-stop parade of strange odors. There always were quite a few strange smells around the place (hence our purchase of scented candles for our onecommunity), but lately it’s just been getting ridiculous. In the pantry, about two weeks ago, there was this overwhelming smell of burning. Seriously, it was like hobos were lighting campfires underneath the cereal, next to the potatoes. I half expected someone to offer me a roasted can of Bush’s baked beans when I went in for some coffee.
The unappealing scent of burning was gradually overcome by a smell that can only be characterized as rancid bacon. Maybe not quite rancid, but bordering on that. It’s kind of like the olfactory equivalent of listening to the punk band, Rancid. It’s not completely unbearable; it just catches you off guard and makes you ask the question, “Who would do something like this?”
All of these petty smells were completely blown out of the water by what awaited us when we got back from Thanksgiving vacation. It was an overwhelming smell that seemed localized around the sink. No joke, it smelled like someone broke into our apartment and slipped some poo into our sink. It took a couple days, but tonight, Greg and I discovered the cause of the smell. It’s sort of like in Greek mythology: there was this monster, Echidna, who was the mother of all the famous Greek monsters like the hydra and whatnot. Well what we found sitting next to the sink was sort of like the Echidna of smell in our apartment: a cup with chunks of eggbeaters that had been sitting for a ridiculously long time and that had birthed a pantheon of evil smell minions.
How could this happen, you ask? Well, I cook eggbeaters in cups. I try to economize on dishes by using the same cup over and over (washing in between, of course). Well, somehow this cup got set aside and I just forgot about it among the mass of dishes in our apartment. Since we didn’t have onecommunities last week, the kitchen didn’t get cleaned and it sat there, and sat there, and sat there.
Greg found it tonight, and much like a committee on nuclear waste disposal, we debated on how best to get rid of it. After a few seconds, it was decided that we would dump it in TJ’s toilet. He wasn’t home and it seemed like the best thing to do. Upon pouring the wretched sludge in the john, a Pandora’s box of death wafted out of the cup. I had my nose plugged, but Greg lurched out of the room, gagging. I thought he was going to projectile vomit onto TJ’s mirror. I flushed the toilet…three times, but the smell lingered. I started to panic because it smelled like turd in there and TJ would be home any minute. Taking a dump in TJ’s bathroom is the direst offense that can be committed in our apartment; I didn’t want to be accused of that. I turned on the fan, flushed again, and hoped for the best.
It all turned out ok, but I can’t get over the sneaking suspicion that some of those bits of egg were alive and perhaps even becoming sentient. Could I have destroyed an egg-based civilization? I’ll never know and it will haunt me to my grave.
