When I first started writing for the Gatehouse Media newspapers in 2008, I was truly Lost in Suburbia. With two little kids, a dog, and four goldfish named Larry, I
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Lost in Suburbia classic column: In search of the stinky thing
Tracy Beckerman
“Ugh! What stinks?” asked my son, pinching his nose. “It smells like something died in here!”
I glared at him. I had spent the past 20 minutes looking in every nook and cranny in the kitchen to find the source of the stink. I had gotten a whiff of it when I came downstairs to make breakfast, confident that the dog had done something unmentionable. But there was no evidence of a doggy felony anywhere and there were no obvious culprits in the fridge or elsewhere, either. Whatever it was, it threatened to tarnish my spotless reputation as a domestic goddess extraordinaire. Yes, my house looked clean. But it smelled like a hot day in an Odor Eaters testing site. Not an appealing smell unless you have a foot fetish.
Since I work from home, I don’t generally get dressed up for the occasion. Most of the time I consider it a successful day if I change out of my bathrobe and put on actual clothes. Because of this, I don’t have a lot of fancy clothes and most of what I do have can easily be thrown in the wash.
This arrangement has always worked out fine until the day I bought a pair of “nice” jeans. These uber-high end jeans fit great but were clearly spun from gold denim, if the cost was any indication. Even though the label said they could be washed in the laundry, I was concerned that I might accidentally shrink them or spill bleach on them or wreak some other kind of irreparable havoc on them. Not that I’ve ever done that before. Okay, once. Or maybe six times. But definitely not more than 29.