I am currently working a project that requires me to sit a war room.  If you've never done this before, imagine a conference room with white boards, shit tapped to the walls, workstations setup at intervals and people continually coming in and out of your space while you're trying to think and write.  It's distracting, sucks all the energy out of you by the end of the day, and requires a huge filter on my big fat mouth so phrases like shut the fuck up dumb ass don't come flying out.  For the most part the team is good and we're making progress with the work, but it's intense and requires lots of focus.

 

Yesterday, towards the end of the day, one of the guys on the team who doesn't sit in the room with me, but who we need to work with comes in and almost immediately I'm like, oh shit he smells.  Because of allergies and sinus stuff, my nose is normally dead to most smells, and short of my husband farting ON me, i can work through almost any odor and not be all that phased by it.  But when I'm pregnant I'm like a good damn blood hound dog.  I can smell a burger king a mile down the street, I have to stay away from the fridge because it stinks and have, on more than one occasion, thrown out perfectly good food because I could smell it.  I often think there has got to be a way to capitalize on a women's sense of smell when we're pregnant - there's got to be some business that needs this skill, and i would make a killing at it, but I digress.

 

Ok so this guy comes and whew it's BO to the max, I'm looking at him to see if he's run, or at least as the tell tale signs of a sweaty pit, but there's nothing.  I do my best not to scrunch up my nose, or worse gag and then turn back to the computer and just ignore him.  After he leaves, smell goes away and all is fine.  Until I go to leave.  I get up and put on my jacket and there it is again, a strong wiff of BO.   I freeze, look around the room mortified and disgusted.  Oh my god it's me.  I quickly do a fast replay of the morning routine, shower, bra, underwear, find daughter some socks out of the pile of clean laundry, brush teeth, dry hair, run down and pack sons lunch, run back up and get dressed. shit. shit. shit.  I forgot deodorant.  The routine is always brush teeth, deodorant, dry hair, dress but the socks got me out of wack and my chance to recover was totally messed up with the almost forgotten lunch.

 

I was red with shame, could they smell me?  Maybe I could smell me but they couldn't.  How come it smelled when that guy came in?  Oh, i'd taken off my jacket at that time.  Oh my god I'm disgusting.  I can't stand myself.  how could I have missed this earlier.  I sat next to my boss shoulder to shoulder for an hour, I wonder if she smelled me?  That can't be possible since I didn't smell me right?  I just felt like I was standing there, ready to leave, and everyone was looking at me thinking, damn she stinks while we did the have a good night routine.

 

I thought back to the British boss I had one time who smelled so bad when he leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head we would all cringe.  I thought about the person who left deodorant in his chair.  Oh I cried i laughed so hard when that happened, but now, what if someone leaves it on my seat??????

 

I had to sit in traffic for the next hour and smell myself.  I was obsessed and grossed out all at the same time.  I don't think anyone at the office noticed, but I also am not close enough with anyone to ask - um excuse me, did you notice me stinking up the joint yesterday?  Today when i came in, no one had moved away from me, I didn't find a speedstick on my chair, and people seemed friendly enough so I'm hoping the odor didn't really escape unless my arms were up in the air.  oh god I pray that's the case because let me tell you something, I fucking stunk!