I've Been Cheated

When we last visited stylin' governor Val, the tough taskmaster, she was not grinning, and was absorbed in her steamy fling with Vicks. To update the situation: Vicks is OH SO SEVEN days ago. He has been replaced by a new liquid love, who hooked up with Val through an introduction by her doctor. More on him in the future.

The business at hand tonight is my smell. More specifically, the lack thereof. For ten days, I have been forsaken by my olfactory senses. I could have taken a blindfolded chomp out of a big red onion and called it an apple. I could have embarked on a leisurely stroll through a hog farm on a humid July evening and deeply inhaled the night air. I could have worked double shifts in a combination horseradish/Limburger cheese factory for minimum wage and not thought to complain.

My sniffer has been on the fritz.

The timing of this tragic event is quite inopportune. Every year, I look forward to the blooming of my lilac bush. I used to have three wonderful lilac bushes at my $17,000 house in town. A dark purple one, and two light purple ones. They were laden with blooms. They sagged under the weight. They had more shoots than you could count. I loved my lilacs. When we moved out of town, to the countrier part of the country, I told Hick that I wanted lilacs. Hick dug up part of my grandma's lilac bush. He planted two of them in our front yard. The third year, frost killed the smaller one. Never mind that I told Hick to protect it from the hard freeze. Hick knows best. Hick knows what is best for himself, in not going out in the cold to wrap a sheet around a lilac bush.

The remaining lilac bush hung on. But didn't bloom. My grandma had told me it would take seven years for it to bloom. I thought that was preposterous. Just an old grandma's tale. How could nurseries survive selling lilacs that took seven years to bloom? But I didn't get mine from a nursery. I got it from Grandma's yard, courtesy of Hick. And wouldn't you know it, the eighth year, that lilac bush bloomed.

Flash to this year, when Hick let his herd of goats loose to mow the front yard. Goats really like lilacs. And roses. Or the bare branches. They ate as high as they could. I had just a few buds remaining. I saw them bloom. But they had no smell detectable by my malfunctioning nostrils.

Today, my smell returned. I stepped out on the porch, where goatherder Hick was sitting, surveying his goat kingdom. He normally rides his four-wheeler around with them, but it was raining tonight. Just like it has rained for the past five nights. And days. I asked Hick if my lilac buds were going to bloom. I had seen them last week, but tonight there were only buds. Or so I thought. Hick informed me: "Oh, they bloomed. But now the rain has beat the petals off of them."

I try to be optimistic, though it is contrary to my nature. What's another year? It's not like I missed the 100-year blooming of the corpse flower.