I’m Still Craving Roast Chicken

At some point last weekend? Or maybe it was last Friday? Whatever, I don’t remember exactly when… I started to smell … something … every time I was in the office. Something familiar. Something almost… comforting? What was that odor?

It finally occurred to me that it was something like roast chicken or maybe turkey. Huh. Weird. Was TW roasting a chicken for dinner? That would be nice but why was she roasting a chicken so early? Was something going on that meant she needed to cook early? Or we needed to eat early? Or … oh well. Whatever.

I assumed that’s what it was and went on about my day only to discover much later that TW had not really planned anything for dinner and she was most definitely not roasting a turkey.

Huh. What was that odor?

We ended up having pork chops and dressing and some other vegetables that I don’t really remember now and I kind of half decided that the odor in the office might have been dressing. It kind of smells like that and maybe RJ had found the bag of vegan dressing and made herself a pot earlier in the day? Weird but it could happen. RJ likes dressing.

I went about my business trying very hard to forget that the office STILL smelled like… roast chicken? stuffing/dressing? SOMETHING… but after two days, it was getting harder to forget that the office smelled that way.

On the third day, I was pretty much going nuts and had decided that my subconscious was telling me that I needed to roast a chicken or the scent was NOT going to go away. So I made a note to myself to take a chicken out of the freezer.

Later that evening, the dogs were causing a ruckus at the prairie dog cage. Skeeter and Lola barking, Betty banging on the bars, Buster butt banging on the bars. Total mayhem. I went over to shoo the dogs away only to find Buster trying very hard to remove some stalks of celery from the cage and the odor, the one that I thought was roast chicken or stuffing … it was oh so very strong.

Celery. It was celery. Not a chicken roasting. Not dressing/stuffing. Celery.

I cursed and removed all of the celery from the cage because the girls were certainly not eating it. I removed the celery from the mouths of all three dogs (because by that time Buster had successfully removed several stalks) and threw it all away.

I also forbid TW from ever putting celery in the girls’ cages again. It was bad enough that the office smelled like squash for three days the last time she put a half of a butternut squash in their cage but this was worse. The not knowing what the smell was or WHY it was there was so much worse than that. I really had begun to think I was nuts.

It’s been several days since I solved the mystery and cleared out the celery. The office hasn’t smelled like roast chicken in ages.

But, every time I sit down at my desk I think, “Gosh, roast chicken would be really awesome for dinner.”