Is it just me, or does it really smell bad around here?

I've done several loads of wash today, and it's getting to the point where if I breathe with my mouth open, the air tastes like soap. Also, I'm feeling a little woozy, and my nose is stuffed up.

I blame this shit.



This is what I get for acting like an aging hippy, falling for a slick marketing campaign, and buying my laundry detergent at Whole Foods. I sneaked a sniff in the store and it seemed OK. Not something I'd want to bathe with myself, but good enough for the laundry.

The problem is that I don't actually like the smell of lavender very much. (I know, go figure. You think I'd love it, considering that I'm hopelessly Anglophilic, majored in English literature in college, revere Jane Austen, and drink tea instead of coffee. What with lavender's English, Victorian, olde-fashioned aura, it would seem to be tailor-made for me. But I don't, except when it's coming from an actual plant--or is fairly low-key.)

The Mrs. Meyers stuff is not low-key AT ALL. The entire first floor is permeated with the smell, even though my laundry is in the basement. I think I might keel over tonight while I wash the dinner dishes. Which I'll be doing for a long time tonight because I'm exactly the kind of do-goody baby-boomer retro housewife who cooks from scratch and dirties up every pan in the house--and recycles, and spends $249 on groceries at Whole Foods, and thinks she's saving the world by buying stinky detergent in a recycled jug with faux-old-fashioned lettering.

I'm sure Al Gore* is very pleased for what I'm doing for the environment, but this lavender shit isn't doing my immediate surroundings any favors.

* See below.