I was pretty sick last week into the weekend. But by Monday, I woke up, took a shower, got dressed, and told my wife that I was beginning to feel a little better. This was welcome news to my wife because she wanted to make certain improvements in our backyard that had been on hold while I was under the weather, like putting up a new sun sail that had been blown apart by gale-force winds a few weeks earlier, sanding, sealing, and staining the wood swingset we have for our grandkids, and putting together a new, resin storage shed.

We shared the burden of these tasks because I do have certain limitations due to my hip replacement surgery, but we got both the sun sail and the swingset tasks done by yesterday and started this morning working on putting the storage shed together.

By around noon the temperature had reached 80°F and there was no shade where the shed was going up. So I said I needed a break and suggested that we could resume once the sun had moved enough that the shed area would be in the shade.

At around 3:00 we went back out to continue working on the shed and I smelled something kind of foul. I started sniffing around trying to find the source of the smell, and unable to pinpoint it, I said to my wife, “What’s that smell?”

Without missing a beat she said, “That’s you. I don’t think you’ve showered since Monday and you’ve been sweating a lot this week. You’re kinda ripe.”

“Yikes,” I said. “I think you’re right. Well, I’ll take one tomorrow morning for sure.”

“No,” she said. “You go take a shower now. I’m going to put clean sheets on the bed and I don’t want you stinking them up, so go shower now. Dinner will be ready by the time you’re done.”

It really felt great to take that shower! And I smell fresh as a daisy!

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Written for Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, where Linda has given us the phrase, “What’s that smell?” and asked us to write about the first thing that comes to mind. Image credit: Bing Image Creator.