I stink

This has been a long, hard day, and after I post this, I’m going to bed.

Before I do though, I wanted to let you know that I stink.

No, literally. I smell bad.

For those of you who know me, or have known me for long and in person, you may be aware that I’m not particularly diligent about showering. In previous years, I typically showered about once a week. Luckily, most of the time, I don’t smell bad. People who find out about my infrequent showering after knowing me for months or years are often in disbelief, and I believe it is because if they do not shower daily or more, they stink. I have never had that problem.

It normally takes weeks and weeks of wearing the same unwashed garments while doing things that induce sweat that I eventually build up an odor. I have been using unscented baking soda deodorants for years. They don’t add that awful perfume scent, they absorb any natural odors, and (since they are also an antiperspirant) they reduce underarm sweat overall. Arm and Hammer has been the only company producing such a product. Recently, I went to buy more Arm and Hammer Baking Soda Deodorant, and I found when I got it home that it no longer contains baking soda. They call it “Arm and Hammer Baking Soda Deodorant” and every one I’ve ever bought has contained baking soda before (yes, I checked every one, every time)… and to top it off, the store I went to did not carry unscented… I bought the least powerful scent, “Cool Blast”.

So, it’s been working okay, but I’m prone to blame my current situation on the inadequate properties of my current deodorant. What’s the point of buying “Arm and Hammer Baking Soda Deodorant” over other brands if it doesn’t have any fucking baking soda in it? Fuck.

Anyway, regardless, I woke up this morning at 6, as I have been becoming used to lately, and got myself dressed and checked my emails and read my online comics and had breakfast and watched last night’s Daily Show…. and then I began “rearranging” my room. If you have never seen my furniture, you do not understand the weight of this endeavor. I do a lot of heavy lifting around here. For the last couple of months it has not been uncommon for me to lift over a ton of things in a day and carry them someplace else and set them down again. (Sometimes things I’d just moved days or hours before.) Today, I moved more.

When I started out, I popped in the first Harry Potter movie, and had I not been interrupted until I was ready for the stove (more on that in a moment), I would have worked through that and fully through the second Harry Potter movie. I went fully through Boogie Nights this evening, getting things into place after the stove was in place. And I’m still not done. What do you think I should run while I finish?

The reason I’ve had to move all my things around (I’ll give you a list of things later) is because it suddenly got cold on Saturday. Highs and lows dropped around 20 degrees, literally overnight. And the stove I had been using last winter, which was removed this summer, simply was not up to the job. We bought a new (used) wood stove at the local thrift shop cheaply and today we installed it. On the other side of the room from where the old one was.

When I figured out how to arrange my furniture when I moved here in February, it was all built around this immovable stove, from which minimum distances must be kept. The new stove is now sitting where the front of my TV had been, just a few hours ago. I have spent the last couple of days (since I learned we would be venting the stove through a different wall) trying to figure out a workable configuration, and I spent all day today implementing it. By myself.

The first, and most major task, was to move the bed. It is a big, hardwood frame, California King sized, with a tall, heavy head and a tall, heavy foot. In fact, when dissembled it takes two grown men to move the foot alone, and two very strong (or three normal) grown men to move the head by itself. Instead of a traditional matress, I invested in a Sleep Comfort adjustable matress… which means that when I want to move my bed I can’t just slide the matress off and heave the foundation off; it’s 40 minutes deflation and breakdown, 40 minutes assembly and inflation. Oh, and in between, moving the frame in one piece. Without straining the connections holding it together. Yep. That was fun.

In addition to that I also have (and moved) three large bookcases (one I moved while still full; that was pretty hard) my large chair (chair and a half, they call it, but what the hey, it’s just a big chair if you ask me), my dining room table (covered with everything in the room that had been on something else I moved PLUS what had been building up on the table these last nine months), a dresser, and oh, did I mention my entertainment center? Yeah, that was fun, too. I went ahead and left all my media and the 36″ tube TV in it for the move. You know, for kicks.

The entertainment center was one of the last things I moved before we brought the stove in, and it was while moving that that I first noticed that there was a mild odor that seemed to be coming from me. That scent was the first clue to me that perhaps I had worked quite hard today. Normally, no smell; today, so much sweat and effort that my whole body was exuding it. Shortly thereafter I noticed a mosquito happily sucking out my blood. I’ve got half a dozen more bites since then. But normally I don’t get ANY bites… unless I upset a spider by lifting the heavy thing it’s been living on and setting it down someplace else. To the consternation of my sister, bugs just don’t seem attracted to me. I think it’s the not smelling bad I usually do so well.

I try to pay close attention to this, because now I only shower when I get to Phoenix (there are issues; don’t ask), so it seems fairly important to me to know that I’m starting to smell bad, especially if I can’t do anything about it for a few days. Which is the case now. I will be heading to Phoenix on Friday evening, and will shower as soon as I get there, but as you have probably already figured out, today is Monday.

So… yeah. I’ve just written for ten more minutes than I wanted to be up, so now I’m REALLY going to stop writing about my day and my BO. One more thing:

I have a theory about my sweat. I believe that since I normall sweat a fair amount when working WITHOUT stinking, that perhaps there is something different about my diet in recent days or weeks that my body is now flushing out as a toxin. I can’t exactly think of what would be different, except that I’ve taken sleeping pills a few nights in the last week. Maybe sleeping pills are it. I’ll stop taking them soon enough (if I haven’t already stopped), and I’ll see if it’s that or the deodorant, or … both? or something else?

And for now, I’ll sleep. Really, this time.