It stinks

I have always had sensory sensitivity issues. I am extremely sensitive to smells of all kinds and can sniff a child's poopy diaper a mile away. I can smell rain hours before it comes. I cannot wear perfume (and pray that others near me don't douse themselves too much) and dread when my mother visits because she literally bathes in Estee Lauder. I get unscented laundry detergents, soaps and shampoos because it drives me crazy smelling it all day. Now, I also have issues with noises, food textures and light but they don't seem to come close to the smells. I cannot explain it.

When I was pregnant it was ten times worse. The smell of fast food forced me to drive out of my way to get to work so it wouldn't make me hurl. Since I watched other children when pregnant with Bugaboo, it was all I could do not to gag at the thought of a poopy diaper. And candles? FUGHETTABOUTIT! So that brings us to my pet peeve: My house smelling like food.

Normal people cook dinner and don't think about it. If I make meat it has to be grilled or in soup or stew. I don't make hamburgers inside and I nearly never broil something in the oven. If I make a chicken or a turkey I open windows and light tea lights to help mask the smell. My family freezes but too bad! If I go to bed or wake up smelling it, I am agitated.

This week Darling decided we were running low on his world-famous wings. I have forbidden him to do it in the house due to the oily wing smell that clings to every fiber of every curtain and carpet in the house. At least, I can smell it two days later! So what does he do? Warm it up inside and then put it out on the porch to cook them. Which is fine, except that EVERY time he went out to check them or bring some out the smell gushed in with the fall breeze. So the house stunk. And then he brings them in and puts the wing sauce on and lets them cool before bagging them for the freezer. So the house stunk like fried meat with pungent, acidic wing sauce. That night when it cooled he brought the fryer in and the house so then it smelled like Corn oil, pungent wings and fried meat. Then he decided he had to have a fire that night, so yup, you guessed it, smokey bacon smell with wing sauce and corn oil. And last night? Darling requested I make these little strip steaks, except it RAINED all day yesterday (poured, like, never let up for one second!) and I wasn't about to stand in the middle of Lake Erie in my yard in the pouring rain while Bugaboo sat in the waist-deep puddle and Shad Roe splashed around happily while I grilled those steaks. I opted to use the broiler on my oven for the FIRST time since I moved in over a year ago.

I woke up this morning to smokey-bacon-steak-grease-chicken-wing-corn-oil mixed with Warm Apple Pie Yankee Candle. I am about to lose my mind. The heat is off, there are windows open and the thermostat says 62 degrees. And I don't care. If I don't get rid of this smell I will get a headache. I can't even get a shower yet because my hair hurts from smelling this all day and night. (I know, woo-woo moment. Can't help it).

So, if my sense of smell is this extreme, is it any surprise that my kids have sensory issues?

Nope.

If smells bother me this much (and I am an adult with coping skills, supposedly) then I cannot even fathom how much Bug Boy's and Bugaboo's ears hurt from the slightest noise or how much Bugaboo's skin crawls from touching playdough, or how much he wants to HURL from seeing certain foods. If their senses react even a fraction of the way mine do when presented with these environmental stimuli it is no wonder that they behave the way they do when certain things are presented to them. As a result, I work harder to try to regulate them as much as possible and give them plenty of opportunity to be desensitized, if that is at all possible.

Oh, and to get back at Darling for making my house smelly? I will file my nails. He detests the sound, makes his blood run cold like fingers on a black board.

Just kidding. Sorta.