My nose is still recovering from the overwhelming stench

But, in a twist befitting Shakespeare, there’s more to this recent story about my nose-wrenching experience. 

You see, the tragedy that befell my nostrils that day could have been averted. Easily. 

Except, I only learned this last week.

There I sat in our living room, comfortably on our couch while she was tucked under a light blanket on her oversized blue easy chair in the corner.

I was scrolling through my social media feeds and decided to scroll through some of my past posts, like I do sometimes to pass my boredom and try to inspire new Saturday Morning Stories. When I wrapped up that exercise and was still bored out of my mind, I didn’t want to clean the kitchen again so I decided to scroll through some of her old tweets to see if there might be any storytelling inspiration there.

After a few minutes, I came across a curious post that caught my attention. Immediately, my jaw smashed into our living room floor. 

If it hadn’t been for the floor in our living room, my jaw would’ve hit the cold, concrete floor of her basement studio. Hard. Again.

While I was outside freezing all of my digits with our Christmas light display and my artist wife was dropping her art-related stench bomb, she was also being as social as an artist gets in the midst of a pandemic.

She posted to Twitter about the stink she was making. 

Don’t get me wrong. Successful artists should use their social media to pull the curtain back on their process to attract more potential customers. 

But she told the world – well, her followers – that she was issuing a vile stench bomb. A stench bomb that left me playing the role a bug crushed by a bus windshield.

Seriously. Post to Twitter or warn your unsuspecting, frozen husband?

I know where my vote lands… both! Preferably the latter first. 

Lifting my eyes from my phone, I looked across the living room at her. I said nothing. I just stared.

Despite the thoughts running through my mind, I picked my jaw back up. Lifting my eyes from my phone, I looked across the living room at her. I said nothing. I just stared.

Perhaps sensing something was amiss, she looked up momentarily from her crochet.

“You posted on social media about the stench?” I asked.

She stared back with a confused look in her eyes.

“The stench,” I reiterated, “I can’t believe you posted about it on social media.”

Her eyes lit up. She understood.

“I didn’t, but you really should have closed the bathroom door,” she deadpanned with no hint of sarcasm. 

Suffice to say, I won’t be bringing the stench up again. I have, however, turned on notifications for all future tweets from her. And I’ll be closing the bathroom door after I finish.


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