every rose has its thorn.

so all day long today i've been smelling roses. like intensely. smelling. roses. and there are no roses here. not in a vase, not on a bush.

for all you non-catholics, when you smell roses when there aren't actually any roses around it means there's some sort of significant spiritual event occurring or about to occur.

not that i'm catholic, but all the jewish, cancer girl, middle child guilt i possess isn't nearly enough so i like to borrow some from the catholics. one thing leads to another, people talk, you hear things, then before you know it you know about the roses. plus, i dig mary.

so anyway, all morning and into the afternoon i'm smelling roses. and at first it's really pleasant and then i realize OH MY GOD. i'm smelling roses! and i start to get a bit excited. maybe this is my miracle! maybe all this suffering is about to pay off! divine intervention is mine! maybe i should clean the house in case this will involve a crowd soon!

at the very least i should get out of my pajamas.

i wondered what it could be. would it be a sign? the miracle i've been waiting for? maybe i'll be struck dead right here and now and they will make me a martyred saint! god knows (no pun intended) that i certainly have trained for this moment all my life, i might as well get a little something out of it. patron saint of wine as a hobby and denial masked as optimism. nice.

so i tell the husband all about it and he says

"yeah. well, you're not going to get out of it that easy."

bah.

i kid. i kid. i do not have dreams of dying anytime soon. even if it meant getting out of the next few tough weeks. even if it meant getting out of organizing and packing up a huge ass house full of STUUUUFFFFFF, including the three HUGE boxes of my ex-husband's crap that i will likely be moving for the 10th time. even still.

so i'm still smelling roses when i go upstairs to get something from my bedside table. and right there is a little bottle of lotion. it's one of those travel bottles from a hotel, and last night i grabbed it from the drawer in the bathroom to put on my feet before bed. and i totally forgot that i did that. of course you know where i'm going with this.

it's rose scented lotion.

and it didn't really smell all that rosy at the time, but upon further investigation, it is SO pungent. and i remember using a LOT last night.

so.

there you have it. my divine intervention? my miracle? my macabre fantasy ticket out of this silly mortal existence is nothing more than a residual, off-gassing smell on my feet.

indeed.

i knew it couldn't be that easy. sigh. but a girl can dream can't she?

and just because i can, and because it's begging for it, cue the poison...

x.