Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Stop making scents

One other unexpected side-effect of pregnancy has been the development of a superhuman sense of smell, like a dog. I've always had a good sense of smell, but now it has become preternaturally acute, to the extent that I could tell without turning my head that the man sitting next to me on a recent early flight to Canberra had not brushed his teeth that morning; that the person behind me on the train home from work had just had a cigarette; that the woman who got into the lift in my office building at the end of the week had applied Chanel Allure that day; that one of my colleagues had just enjoyed a cup of coffee; and that D had been cutting coriander from the garden as soon as he entered the room.

As with my other obscure skills (I can tell straight away if someone has had their hair cut; I'm very good at writing questions for pub quizzes; I can recognise an East Kilbride accent; and I can quote entire stanzas of poetry I learned at school as well as fragments of quotes from all over the place), one day I'll be able to make money out of this.

4 comments:

Anna MR said...

Lottie! You are pregnant. No, I know this will come as no surprise to you - but I am surprised and totally delighted. How brilliant, how wonderful. My congratulations - albeit I am coming a few months late to this. When are you due? I should go back to the other pregnancy post and try and calculate it from there.

Will be thinking about you. Sending a hug.

x

LottieP said...

Hello, Anna, and thank you. The baby is due on February 20. He'll be born in Melbourne. It seems incredibly close now, but I still haven't quite woken up to the reality.

Hope all is well with you. x

Anna MR said...

My view is that in matters of this magnitude, only reality can wake one up to reality. Something like parenthood can be imagined but in a sense not believed until it happens - well, as I said, this is my take on it, at any rate.

February 20th? You know it's leap year of course? If you go a bit overdue…who knows, he might land up only having a birthday every four years. And yes, I have read through a fair few pages of your blog over the last couple of nights (how come it's been so long? I have been in a kind of Alaska, I think) and realised you've also changed country. How are you finding it? What made you take the leap? I understand you may have explained that at some point…and I'm just crap at keeping up with people.

And yes, thank you, things are pretty nice over here too. I took a leap of a kind myself some eighteen months ago, left work and started studying at uni (education as in behavioural sciences, not as in teacher training). It's good and stupidly enjoyable, whilst it doth tie the olde braine in a knotte from time to time.

x

LottieP said...

It's a long story... if you're still using Flickr, I will contact you there.