Trina Machacek: It’s olfactory overload season

There are not many of us, but I happily tell you I am one. I am the one that will go into a candle or other sniffy shop, and I want to smell each and every one. From flowers in grandma’s attic to something musky. My favorite is nearly anything vanilla with a hint of rum and wood.

Yes of course there are those that as soon as the smell enters my nose and it reaches my mind and my eyes begin to water, I twitch my nose and say, “Oh no way. Who would want their house to smell like that.” Inevitably when I go to buy my favorites the woman in front of me, dressed to the nines is buying that “my nose still stings” scented candle.

I just figure she is buying it for someone she is getting even with for something. I mean, why else would that smell sell? And that, my friends are why there are over 2 billion people in the world, and we are all different and special in our own ways.

All throughout the year there is someone making something sniffy to sell. To make our homes smell tip top. Or, to make us smell better. There really aren’t many things that make a lady feel pretty more than spritz of perfume – that someone notices.

But! Yes, an overwhelmingly sniffy “but.” When winter sends us all inside it’s a whole new ballgame as to how to keep things “fresh” inside. Oh boy howdy! I am right now creating a winter stew in my house. The winter is nigh, and windows have been closed up.

Yes, it’s that time of the year. Let’s see what is the most politically correct way to say all of our houses need to be aired out. There are things that our bodies do in the summer that are not as apparent as they are in the winter. Because we don’t go outside when – well when we occasionally need to. When it’s too cold to go outside or open the windows.

Yep, it is that time of the year. My first stab at clearing the air inside casa Trina is a full-flavored aromatic stew. After all, it not only smells good but if I work it right, I will also be able to make bread and double my happy nose efforts.

Past candles and stew, especially during the holiday season there are so many things to freshen up your living space. I recently saw a commercial where the item for sale was an incense burner. Now I am a child of the 60s and 70s, so I have vivid memories of the incense and I still want to sneeze every time I think of them.

Seriously, they always just make me sneeze. And they never covered the smell they were supposed to cover up. However, incense burning will absolutely create a unique albeit heavy air space in your space.

Walking through the holiday season decorations you will always, yes always, walk through the cinnamon scented pinecones. I could never find, out in the forest, the tree that sprouts cinnamon scented pinecones. Maybe it’s just me.

I am extremely happy to find pine nuts in pinecones. There’s balsam and pine and sugar cookies and gingerbread smells galore. So much to smell that my nose easily becomes an overloaded olfactory. Then it is time to step outside and – just breathe.

No matter how much R&D a company does there has never been, nor I seriously doubt, will there be a way to copy, bottle, put in a spray, a disk of rubbery stuff that sets in a bathroom holder, anything that will take the place of that fresh air smell.

I am one that actually believes I can smell snow. Now there is a smell that is right up there with rain on sagebrush. Or a fresh mowed field of alfalfa – or a lawn. Those, the real smells we know and enjoy in the recesses of our winter minds, they get us thinking we can create a fresh home – in winter.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I seem to always have a candle burning in my home. Yes, you can Febreze every surface in your house all you want. You can Lysol the germs away, over and over again. You can even toast garlic bread to make your nose happy.

But until you just step outside, no matter how cold it is, just step outside and breathe in all those real scents. Those sniffs, they are the best way to create an olfactory overload of your own.

Trina Machacek lives in Diamond Valley north of Eureka. Her books are available anywhere you buy books or on her website www.theeurekacountystar.com. Email itybytirna@yahoo.com.