Major Beefy

Our ward had its annual Sweetheart Ball last night, and Ben volunteered our oven to cook one of many enormous, billion-pound roasts. Seriously, it had to have been fifty pounds. I could hardly lift it down from my counter into the oven. And that sucker took four hours on 500 degrees to cook. Not joking.

The problem is, there is this little tube that goes from the inside of our oven to a place right next to the stove dials. And it blows out whatever air is in the oven, into my house. I don't know if other ovens do this or not; I just know that I can sit and see the steamy, smoky air being blown out whenever we do any kind of roasting.

Before long, my house smelled like beef. Ben was delighted by this when he came home. It just made me want to vomit all day. When I'm pregnant, me, plus meat, equals NON-true love. A week or so ago, I was trimming some fat off of some raw pork chops, and I swear I got Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from it. Bleaughhhhh..... (That is a barfing noise.)

As soon as Ben was sure the beef was all the way done, I commanded him to take it to the church. To get it away from my house. And he did. But the disappearing of the beef didn't make the smell go away. In fact, it STILL smells like I just cooked a huge roast. I can smell it on my walls. On my clothes. In my hair (even though I've washed it since then). And I know that a lot of this is my Pregnancy Bloodhound Nose. But still.

This morning, the kids came and pounced on us in bed. As I woke up, the first thing I was cognisant of was the smell of BEEF. It smelled majorly beefy. And then I giggled, because I remembered this voice that a girl I knew in junior high and high school used. She kind of used her tongue to constrict her airway a little bit, and she would sound kind of like a chipmunk when she talked like that. It's a really funny-sounding voice. She called it her "Major Beefy Voice." When she used that voice and said the words, "major beefy," they sounded really, really funny.

So when my kids pounced on me and I giggled, they said, "What?" And I said, in the chipmunk voice, "It smells major beefy in here!!" And they laughed sooooo hard. Dylan was all, "How do you DO that?" I tried to teach him, but he didn't quite get it. We all lay on the bed, and the kids would request certain phrases to be said in the Major Beefy Voice.

"Say, 'Sadie's butt.'"

[In the Major Beefy Voice] "Sadie's butt!"

[Many guffaws and giggles.]

"Say, 'Dylan's butt.'"

And on and on. So I had to say everyone's name, including Xena's name, plus "butt" afterwards. It's been hours since we got up, obviously, and Dylan is still walking around, perfecting his Major Beefy Voice. He's getting the hang of it now. I hear Sadie muttering, off and on, "Major Binkie!"

Today, we've been opening our windows for as long as we can stand it, until we're all shivering uncontrollably, and then we close them for awhile. And then open them again. Ben stuffed dryer sheets into our air intake thingeys. We went and bought a candle for our living room. And I'm seriously thinking of borrowing an air sanitizer spray from work for a couple of days. We've been scrubbing the house like crazy.

But our house still smells Major Beefy to me.