Selling and Smelling

Well, it's the night before Thanksgiving, and I just finished my work. Most of it having nothing to do with the actual holiday, just work. All I did for the holiday was make a pumpkin pie (I'll be potato-mashing in B'burg tomorrow), and for the rest, I sold out. Well, better put, I bought out. I bought broccoli casserole and a pumpkin cake from the Bumble. Better known as the Bumbleberry Patch, a local cafe run by women who can really cook.

The last task of tonight was putting the bed back together. Bedsheets, the last of my laundry. You know, I wouldn't have chosen housecleaning as a way to spend my vacation, but it's been oddly satisfying. I guess one just has to be in the right frame of mind.

This morning I was padding around the house - now, I want to make this perfectly clear, that I was not sitting watching the Game Show Network on my vacation. Not that there's anything wrong with that - and the TV was on in the background, the yammering of some decades-old game show as my day's soundtrack.

So in the background of my pie-stirring, or towel-folding, or whatever the hell it was, I hear that a lucky contestant has won an all-expenses paid trip to Jamaica! Wooooo! And along with that, the lucky contestant has also won a complete set of Amelia Earhart luggage!

Woo?

Amelia Earhart luggage?

Now, this is just wrong on so many levels. The first being, when one thinks of Amelia Earhart, I don't believe "luggage" would actually be the next sequential association. I mean, I've seen Samsonite luggage being thrown off trains, hit by semi-trucks, and raped by gorillas, but.... Amelia Earhart luggage! "You can disappear somewhere over the Pacific Rim and never be seen again, but be secure in the fact that your luggage will keep your most personal belongings safe and dry!"

Then there's the idea that, well, I'm assuming, and Mr M and I have had this very discussion about Harley Earl - you know, the dead guy Buick resurrected to sell their cars? - that one would think that the celebrity's, albeit the dead one's, family would have to have some sort of say in licensing their loved one's name to sell a product. Right?

I would like to have been in the room when that pitch was made. "Yes, what does Amelia say to the world? Courage, adventure...luggage! Very stylish luggage!"

And we won't even address the issue of whether or not men can carry Amelia Earhart luggage, or if carrying a woman's luggage would be too, well, sissyfying.

And on a completely unrelated note, I must report to you that my car smells like syrup.

It's smelled like this for a few weeks.

Now, I must also tell you that I've had syrup possibly once in the last two years. It was poured upon some pancakes, and was in the comfort of Chez Mr M. And the remainder stayed there, on my plate, till it was washed off. So why my car smells like syrup I've no idea.

And it's weird. Because it comes and goes. Now, when I back out of my driveway and head south, and get to the first stop light, *pow!* syrup smell. Right at that intersection. In fact, at first, I thought there was actually something wrong with the intersection! Like, a maple syrup-carrying tanker had wrecked or something.

Then I started smelling it on the outside of my car. In the parking lot at work. In the parking lot of the video store.

I'm stymied as to why this is. It's certainly not a constant smell, it comes and goes, but it's not a pleasant smell, either. It's incredibly sickly sweet. I don't like that. My car sat in the driveway for two days of driving pouring rain, and whatever it is didn't wash off.

I think my car's possessed. It's possessed by the ghost of Aunt Jemima.