Bad Backs and Strange Smells

Caught your attention with that heading, didn't I? It's not as bad as it sounds. Let's discuss bad backs first.

I'm not one of those paperthin women - heck, I'm not even one of those notebook thin women, so my back would probably appreciate it if I lost some pounds. BUT, I've also been in a bad car wreck in the past, not to mention all the extreme sporting adventures that sometimes resulted in crashes, so the back has had injury that was not related to my weight in any way. I've always been one of those people who liked a soft bed. My back likes a soft bed. I have one of those sleep by numbers systems at home and if I could get it to go negative, I swear I would.

So I'm doing a training in Tampa this week and I'm staying at a hotel with the hardest bed in North America. Seriously, I bet if I pulled back all those covers they have tucked over the top that there's a sheet of plywood under there. Now, this is nothing new, but what I find entertaining about this is my personal take on it. You see, this hotel has a spa on the third floor and I'm convinced that this is the way they get you to schedule a massage.

Clever, clever marketing - and much more profitable than buying decent mattresses.

So that's the back issue, now on to smells. So I land at the airport in Tampa on Sunday and of course, I have some silly directions from Mapquest that don't even mirror the actual things I need to do to get to the hotel because there is construction and the road I needed to take wasn't open. So I get on the highway going north even though I need to go south (but that's the entrance I could find) and I figure I'll take the first exit, turn around and head back the direction I actually need - no problem, right?

Yeah, except that the highway split into two other highways. So I took the split closest to me and found myself headed across a causeway that most likely crossed some inlet of the Gulf of Mexico. As I was crossing the water, my nose began to register this bad smell - sort of like sewage. I wrinkled my nose and thought to myself "what the hell is that?" But after another five seconds or so, my senses cleared and everything hit me in an instant. It wasn't sewage. It was the smell of the Gulf rolling over mud and dead fish and all the other smells that a body of water can bring. Since it was humid, the smell was pretty loud. As soon as it hit me what I was smelling, I was transported right back home to Louisiana and the smell was no longer bad, it was nice.

Interesting observation, huh? And it reminded me that smell is the one sense I am always forgetting to put into my writing. I don't know why since it's obviously very strongly linked with memory. Otherwise why would a perfectly sane woman go from thinking something smelled like sewage to thinking it smelled like home?

So do you have a smell memory?????