My Doggy Nose

I am blessed with a doggy nose.

No, I don't mean I have a nose that looks like a dog's nose! I mean that, on a human scale, I have a very strong olfactory sense.

I love smelling fresh flowers, the interior of a bakery, somebody's barbecue grilling, and good home cooking!

I have a habit of sniffing brand new pages in a brand new book, fresh bread in the bakery section of a store, expensive perfume as I walk through a department store, shampoos, shower gels and lotions in any store--but especially in high-end boutiques like The Body Shop, and a dish when it arrives at my table in a restaurant.

My mom has a super strong sense of smell. Whenever she visited me, she'd tell me right away if something had an odor to it.! %-0 I'm thinking I got my strong olfactory sense from her.

I also have a habit of sniffing my clothes and hubby's clothes for the slightest hint of odor, the bathroom and the kitchen. Which brings me to say:

I am also cursed with a doggy nose! :-(

Evil odors manage to always waft toward my direction and attack my nostrils! I certainly do NOT go out of my way to seek them out.

Especially in warm and hotter than hell weather. That's when my olfactory senses are at their peak. The odors of everything and everybody are magnified. Yech!

Since I don't have a car anymore and have thus gotten used to taking public transportation again, evil odors attack yours truly with a vengeance. Even a bus or train's air conditioning doesn't always work to mask odors.

Once, someone puked on the bus and didn't clean it up. The bus driver should have left the bus in the bus lot downtown! It was very early in the morning; unfortunately, I wasn't able to take another bus because of where I needed to go at a certain time. So the bus driver put the a/c on full blast. That's like spreading road kill aroma throughout the bus! :-((

I've been overseas in a place where some people don't think of using deodorant. They use a a fancy, textured, glass bottle of cologne that I thought at first was a bottle of booze they were offering me to drink from! But no, it was cologne to mask body smells because they didn't wash often. Just pour a bit into your palms and slap it on your neck, arms, and wherever. Then pass the bottle along to the next person! It's actually refreshing! No big deal. We're quite spoiled here, really--having hot and cold water available at all hours, all year long.

Ah well, if everyone's stinky and sweaty in the heat of summer, then there's really no problem is there?

Yes and no!

No, because if you don't think about it and you get used to the fact that you're as bad as everyone else or vice versa, and there's not enough water to wash but once or twice a week, then so be it.

But if you're in the land of plenty and you're just being lazy, then yes, it could be problematic to others. It's only personal, for goodness sake! %-0 Once, I jumped out of my seat the moment an oversized, unkempt woman sat in front of me. I startled everyone on the bus with my lightening jump, but her odor was insufferable!

The worst odor linked to humans is foot odor. Hands down!

When discussing clients' idiosyncrasies in general one day, one of my massage therapist friends gave me a funny look and asked, "YOU smell people's feet?" Of course NOT. I was quite insulted when she asked me that. :-((

People with dirty feet wearing flip flops/thongs/zoris in the summer are exposing their bacterial footsies to the public. I hate it! Stay outdoors! Away from me! Stay inside, air conditioning will just spread your smell, akin to driving on breezy day down a rural road and being hit with the nasty aroma of road kill that you can't escape until you're in the safety of your home!

Strong bad smells affect me terribly: I get nauseated in an instant. :-((

Last week I sprayed air freshener on one of my clients feet before I started her massage. At least she warned me they were stinky. And they were. But the air freshener took care of that! ;-) It was a life saver...otherwise, I wouldn't have given her a foot massage, which I usually love to do because I love getting them myself.

Enough of people aroma! %-0

The worst smell of my early memory is Play Doh! That's why I stopped playing with it. I don't like the smell of freshly laid asphalt, either. It's worse in summertime than any other time of the year.

On the bright side, my favorite fragrance is my favorite perfume called Maja, from Spain. It was in the collection of my late favorite aunt, along with Chanel No. 5, which I also like, among others. But I like Maja best, after all these years. And I'm not even a perfume person unless I go out somewhere special, which isn't often.

I think the best smells are from food. :-) From food you love to eat!

My apartment sometimes smells like an international kitchen. When I first arrived nearly four years ago, it smelled like Chinese food on the first floor, Indian food on the second floor, and pizza on the third floor! I was so tempted to knock on their doors and ask what they were cooking because I was so hungry after unloading a Budget rental truck all day long--we're talking about moving STUFF from a three-bedroom house to a one-bedroom apt!

Probably good home-cooking aroma is closest to my heart. Homey Chinese food by my mom and family and relatives. Fresh seafood from my in-laws. Yummy!


I like to think of the good aromas, not the bad ones. That's one reason why I prefer winter over summer: you can't smell as much in winter! ;-D

******

YIN TO Yang

Some men live for a rose.
Some die for its scent.

No rose but withers, nor its scent lasts.

What does a man want from a woman?

Her face of rose?
Or her scent of a saint?

What is it
but her ways of Yin.

--Pwu Jean Lee

Cheers to the Moms of the World!

A mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart -- a heart so large that everybody's grief and everybody's joy found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.

--Mark Twain

Happy Mother's Day to my mom, my mother in-law, and all the moms of the world! :-)

Mom. Ma. Mama. Mommy. Mother. I've called my mom all those and still do, to this day. "Mother" is used least; I might use it jokingly, but to my ears it sounds too formal and lacks warmth. She has done everything for me that society expects of a mom: fed, clothed, washed, and nursed me back to health the numerous time I was sick. She was always there to open the door for me when I walked home from elementary school, and walked home from the bus stop during my junior and senior high school (although I was allowed to have a key to the house by 8th grade or so and let myself into the house).

My mom has a good listening ear and loves to chatter on the phone. Like me. ;-) She has such a huge heart for a small person. It seems a lot people rely on her...even people whom I'm sure she'd prefer they not rely upon her all the time. This must mean they trust her as someone whom they can confide their troubles to.

She has always done her best to cheer me up when I've been blue, she cheers with me when I've done well, gives me advice from time to time on matters big and small, and is probably, generally, concerned about her youngest daughter's health and well-being in more ways than I can fathom.

This is not to say we didn't have rough spots along the way. But thankfully, there haven't been too many of those. ;-) I admire my mom for who she is and for what she has done for her family, despite difficult circumstances. I think my mom is one of the few people in the world who doesn't have one mean bone in her body.

My mil (mother in-law) has always been Mom to me. I love her dearly, too! Like my mom, she has a huge heart and it seems to me that over the years, many of her friends and acquaintances rely on her good listening ear. I doubt she has one mean bone in her body, either. She has always been loving and kind towards me, from the day we met. She often gives of herself to others, whether they are in need or not. She's a great friend to me and to her own friends. I wouldn't want any other mother in-law! :-)

Moms are cool! I often find myself drawn towards women who are moms. I don't know if it's because I'm on the east coast and my mom is on the west coast, but I do have many friends and acquaintances who happen to be moms.

I think I am drawn to moms because I generally admire mothers. They do SO much! They are SO underappreciated! There was a time in my life when I wanted nothing more than to be a mom. To bear my own baby. But since that didn't quite work out, I decided to make my life's work "my baby". Bear other fruit, as hubby would say. I still admire moms and cute and cuddly babies. ;-)

I've heard of "bad" mothers and mothers in-law over the years from friends. I lucked out. Big time. ;-) Ones who badgered and belittled their daughters for not getting "A"s in all their classes, or who loudly bemoaned the fact they only had daughters, not sons. Or mothers in-law who were meddlesome, opinionated, and/or described as "the Iron Lady" (to put it mildly!). That's just a short list! Since I did not know these women and perhaps only met a few of them on a few brief encounters during my school years, I cannot relate.

I can however relate with those friends when they expressed--sometimes bitterly, the profound disappointment that their mothers conveyed to them in whatever they had done wrong. With Asian friends, the sense of shame was present, without a doubt. If there is anything negative to be said about our Asian mommies, it's that they have elevated the expression of disappointment into a look that says: how could you shame me/the family/yourself like this?, to an art form! %-0

The first time I experienced the gravity of my mother's disappointment was when I got in trouble in 3rd grade for talking when the teacher was talking. My best friend tried to get my attention--not once, but twice, to stop talking. The third time, my teacher said my name, and not in the most pleasant manner!

Uh oh! Busted!

I had to write: I will not talk in class when the teacher is talking, on one of those big, beige-colored and blue-lined papers and fill the whole page up. And have my parents sign it.

Drum roll, please...!

Of course, I went to my mom first. I tried to plead with her to pu-leeeze not let Daddy see it. I was all too aware of what he might do; I was afraid of him. Please?! But she just gave me The Look. She looked at the paper, and then looked at me. A few times over. It was The Look, alright. "Why? How could you do this? I'm very disappointed in you! I think you need to show this to your father."

Aww, shucks! It didn't work. It was more my mother's LOOK, than what she said, that pierced me. I can't explain it now, nor could I then, but I was thinking I was a pretty clever girl and thought I could wrap my pop around my fingers by being humorous in some bizarre way. I folded up the paper, then asked him, "Daddy! Can I have your autograph?"

HAHAHAHA! %-0

That didn't work either. WWIII broke out in the form of his fury. He was so angry the paper shook in his hands. He yelled and cussed me out for what seemed like forever, but was probably about 15 minutes or so, demanding I never do such a thing again.

Well, I didn't do that again: talking in class while the teacher was talking. However, in 7th grade, I got caught writing on the wall! Red-handed. A classmate who I knew since 4th grade and with whom I shared a mutual hatred of each other, made fun of my teeny-bopper poster of a pop star in my locker and all his friends laughed along with him. I was SO angry with him! So I wrote on the wall: "I hate W--- I-------!" when along came an older man with a shiny bald head.

He boomed: "YOUNG LADY! You erase that right now or I'll have the front office call your parents". So I did. Oooh! He was scary. He said he'd let me off the hook this time, but if he caught me again...sorry, Charlie!

So he spared me The Look from my mother and my father's wrath. But, boy oh boy, I paid for it the following year: that big, gruff, bald man became my math teacher in 8th grade!! And my mom, who never once missed a parent-teacher conference in all my 12 years of school, met with him, too. I was hoping he wouldn't fib on my grafitti job--hoping he'd forget because he was an old guy (such age discrimination on my part!), and I believe he never did since I was always present with my mom on those parent-teacher evenings.

Enough of my delinquency! That's another thing about my mom: she never missed a beat when it came to my education. There were many times, especially as I got older, that I wanted her not to attend those parent-teacher evenings. Most especially in high school! I even asked her once or twice if she wouldn't mind skipping the evening, to which she looked at me disapprovingly and replied, "Of course I'm going!" And then she and I would go to school--and my classmates and I would exchange knowing glances as if to say: yes, we are forced to be here with our mothers...this is most certainly torture of the highest order! time to be raked over the coals! the inquisition! you got a B? oh, too bad...so close to an A! try harder next time! %-0

Funny how the number of mothers dwindled as years passed on. It was the norm in elementary school for our moms to show up on those all-important parent-teacher evenings. Then slowly, through junior high and then senior high, the presence of moms lessened. However, die-hard moms like mine--and especially of my Asian classmates, never failed to show up! Let us all share in this evening of embarrassment and torture under the microscopic lenses of our mothers, while they gang up on us with our teachers! %-(

Now, of course, we can all say, our moms loved us so much! A mother's love can manifest in ways we may never understand! %-)

I try to call my mom every week to see how she is. She is the kind of mom who has to live forever. I told her that, too. "If I'm 100 years old, you have to live to be 100 and....years!" I want my mil to be around when I'm old, too!

Mothers are an integral part of my life. My mom. My mom in-law. My friends who've been like moms to me over the years. My friends who are moms. They are excellent role models as moms and as women, in general.

I love them and I need them! :-)