joys of marriage...

I have noticed that one of the things my husband and I often argue about is food. He tends to like foods that are the most odor producing and the most messy to prepare. I have always been extremely sensitive to smells...any strong smells (certain perfumes, colognes, food, animal, musty, dusty, basically anything funky) have a tendency to make my stomach roll and send me into a cleaning frenzy to get rid of them. For example, our two dogs spend their day in the kennel together when we are out of the house. Their kennel is in our entryway and has a nice memory foam pad in it. When I walk in the door and smell that dog smell, I am instantly annoyed and have to wash both dogs, clean their ears, wash the pad cover and sanitize their entire kennel (the first time this happened I covered the inside of their pad with a plastic cover so that the dog smell doesn't permeate the actual memory foam and I can just wash the cover). This tends to annoy Steve, who doesn't even notice a smell and thinks that my cleaning frenzies are a bit OCD. But he should know by now that this will probably never change, I will always be that way. I cannot relax when I notice a messy kitchen, pet hair in the corners of the living room, or a weird smell coming from somewhere in the house(however slight or hard to identify). Based on all this you would think he would know not to even think about "preparing" salmon for smoking all over our kitchen (laying it out to dry for 24 hours, while brining it with a soy-sauce, salt, and brown sugar mix) and then smoking it right on our patio, leaving everything in our house saturated with the smell of salmon. But no, and when I complain, his only response? "I like the smell of smoked salmon..." sigh...

Then this morning, after spending the entire day yesterday removing the stench of salmon from my kitchen and house in general, he decides to fry up bacon on the stove top. I used to love bacon, but over the last couple of months I have developed a strong aversion to the smell.Regardless, I have always cooked bacon in the oven so it doesn't make such a mess on the stove top. Now I can look forward to cleaning all the grease off of the stovetop. And even though Steve offers to clean it, I don't even consider that anymore, since his "clean" is pretty different from mine. I guess I shouldn't really complain too much, since Steve is such an excellent cook and is always making me yummy things that I actually like to eat, but after the weeklong salmon ordeal, the bacon just about put me over the edge and I had to vent. But now I think I'll go enjoy the egg sandwich he cooked just how I like it, and try to ignore the smell of bacon coming from Steve's plate...