Coming to my Senses (more sap than snark today)

Dogs like smelly things. Do you know what they really like to do when they happen upon a real stink bomb? Roll in it. They cover their pelts in stink and take it home with them. I can relate. As you may know, I recently started a course of treatment with an acupuncturist to alleviate my allergies. I know, what's a hot dog lover like myself doing in such an alternative medical treatment plan? You'll have to look in my April archives. This post is about the first and most startling benefit of treatment: the return of my sense of smell. I knew it was failing me. When you can't smell the vinegar right out of the bottle, you know that there's a problem. Taste largely disappears when you can't smell too. But if you don't feel ill, just congested, you tend to think of yourself as well. But I wasn't - not completely anyway. But I'm getting there now. First I could smell the obvious stuff, like old broccoli in my fridge. I could smell the jasmine vine I was trimming and my Renuzit air freshener in the car. (When my sense of smell was bad, I put air fresheners EVERYWHERE just in case their was an offensive odor that I couldn't detect.) Mostly it was the stinky stuff that alerted me that my nose was returning to normal. But that's not what makes me have something in common with dogs. This is. I was blow drying my Girlie's hair. A delicate sweet odor wafted up my nose. Just underneath it was an earthy smell, like fresh-cut hay. I turned off the dryer and buried my nose in Girlie's hair (much to her amusement). The delectable scent was her. Not just her shampoo. Not her soap. Her. And I wanted to rub that scent all over me, just like a dog. I didn't of course. Now that I can smell, I'll get that pleasant experience every time we blow dry. Even now, the joy I felt at that moment makes me want to cry. The only hard thing will be explaining to Girlie why, even when she's in college, I'll insist on blow drying her hair every night.