scratch-n-sniff neighborhood

Either I recently quit smoking (without ever knowing I smoked in the first place) or the trees have stopped having sex long enough for me to breathe freely again. Whatever happened, I started to really smell my life again recently. And let me tell you this: I live in a smelly, smelly world.

A useful tidbit from Kate State University [This one's for free. The next will cost you partial tuition.]: The reason smells evoke such strong memories is that the part of your brain that processes smell hangs out right near the part of your brain that processes emotional memory. So that wiff of cookies baking? The recognition of that kicks a little part of your hippocampus (Mr. Emotional Memory) and it digs through its files (really quickly) and comes up with Mom. And the Kitchen. And You (in your 80s-licious garb, those like fluorescent mickey mouse tube socks! Yeeeeah!)

So... my smelly world. There's a bakery near my house, and when I run around the cemetery, the 11th of the 12 sides always smells like brioche. So I run faster, like the donkey with the carrot danging in front of it, in hopes that magically there will be brioche at home. (There never is.)

They must also make jelly donuts. Because the other night I came home and for three blocks, all I could smell were lucious, goopey jelly donuts. (No, there weren't any at home when I got there, either.)

So last night, when I got home, the whole hood smelled of play-dough. Weirder still? My whole house was full of it when I got there.

(No, it wasn't.)

Completely unrelatedly, in a search for jelly donuts online, I found this picture and it made me happy, so I share it here with you: