I seem to be on a roll with car stories, but this one is too good not to share.
Last year my husband wandered into a car dealership, just killing time. There he met a little number, a GMC Terrain, in burgundy that met his criteria for the perfect automobile. Needless to say he drove it home.
An uneventful year has passed since that car batted her high beams at him; they’ve been very happy together up until a couple of weeks ago.
On a return trip from the grocery store I sniffed the air conditioned breeze and commented, “something smells funny”. I have a remarkable sense of smell, honed by raising three children. My senses only grew more acute as they became teens. I knew when my son was home from the smell of young, male sneakers under the couch. I could detect cigarette smoke at fifty paces, and teen drinking never made it past the front door undetected. I am Mom...The Nose...but even I could not ferret out the source of the increasing stench.
Over the last two weeks the smell in that car had grown to frightening proportions. Even he could smell it, and that’s saying something! Last evening it came to a head when we exited a restaurant with friends, only to have them recoil as they stood on the sidewalk and my husband opened the car door. It’s one thing to have an odor you need to track down, it’s quite another to have it stop foot traffic in restaurant parking lots.
It’s not as if we hadn’t tried, but nothing seemed to help. Vent deodorizers added a sickening sweetness to the problem, removing the glove box to check for goodness knows what proved fruitless, under carriage washes and seat removals all left us stymied. The odor bloomed and our hopes plummeted. I was ready to call in the cadaver dogs, but my husband is a more practical type.
Finally this morning he squared his shoulders, dragged the shop vac into the driveway, and announced this was his last attempt to find the offensive odor before he took the car 🚘 in to the dealer for help. His determination was impressive, his expression said the smell had increased again over night. I hid in the house and pretended not to hear the racket going on.
Two hours passed before he finally stuck his head around the door, “Wanna know what a ball of mozzarella cheese smells like when it’s been stuck behind the spare tire in a Terrain?” He had located an indentation we had no idea existed. At some point the well-sealed ball of cheese found its way in there and snuggled in. The expiration date was September, 2017 so it had remained under the radar for a long time; until the heat caused it to swell and leak we had no reason to complain.
He is my hero! To the victor go the spoils...in this case my poor husband had the honor of disposing of a very spoiled ball of cheese. His victory is the fact that, once he puts everything back together, he can settle back into his happy relationship with his sweet ride. Finally Mom the Nose can breathe a sigh of relief, although we do seem to have more seats sitting in the driveway than I remember.....
Life is Good
