It's smelling a little ripe in here...

Two weeks ago one of Madison's friends stayed at our house for two nights while her parents went to California. Before she came I cleaned the house, including Madison's bedroom and the girls' bathroom which they normally clean. Both rooms smelled like sweaty, stinky teenagers so I dug through my closet and pulled out my air fresheners from Bath & Body Works. I use to have one of these in the bathroom all the time, but it was replaced with a light when Madison started high school and got up when it was still dark. I had new bulbs of scents in a box in the closet and chose "bamboo" for the bathroom and some flowery scent for Madison's room. I spent considerable time trying to open the bulbs before remembering that Bath & Body Works screws everything in the opposite way of all other products. I attached the bulb in the plug like so:

Then I plugged it into the wall. But I didn't plug it into the wall as the above picture shows because the light was plugged in the upper outlet. Instead, not thinking, I turned the bulb upside down as I would a light or any other air freshener plug-in and I plugged it in like this:

I continued into Madison's room and did the same with the one I plugged into her room as she had something plugged in too. Then I continued my cleaning frenzy. Every time I  passed by the bathroom it smelled heavenly. I had the window open as well, and since all fresheners seem to put out a strong scent in the first plug-in phase I didn't think a thing about it. About three hours later I left to pick up Madison and her friend from school. When we walked into the house we were hit with the smell of flowery bamboo. It seemed to be wafting through the entire house. While it wasn't unpleasant it was unusual as I find most of the time those fresheners don't put out the scent long enough to suit me.

It wasn't until a couple of hours after that that I found the scent overpowering. I was more worried about the bedroom plug-in as it was in the area where the friend would sleep on a blow up mattress, and I didn't want the strong odor to give anyone a sore throat, which it tends to do with me. So I went into the bedroom to unplug it and immediately noticed that half of the liquid in the bulb was gone. Poof! Disappeared. I stood in shock for maybe half a minute, irritated at Bath & Body Works, staring at the contraption when it hit me what I had done. I went into the bathroom and found that bulb completely empty. Yet no where could I find the liquid. It wasn't on the bathroom counter and there wasn't any wet spot on Madison's carpet. I kept looking into the flower part of the plug in in disbelief that it had soaked up the liquid scent.

For the last two weeks the bathroom has smelled heavenly, yet strongly, of the bamboo scent. It is the best that bathroom has smelled in years, but I still found it strong and worried that perhaps it had gone into the electrical outlet and was wafting throughout my house in all the outlets, coming out through the coffee pot and TV wires. Yet it was only in that room that you could smell the scent. You smelled it as soon as you neared the room and you were overtaken with the smell when inside the room. Darcy said it wasn't unpleasant at all, and it didn't seem to bother anyone, although Tom wanted to know who had died and received flowers in our bathroom.

Today Darcy and I washed the dog in the tub, and after that activity the bathroom has to be cleaned because the small room is always covered in wet dog hair afterwards due to his shaking and trying to dry off on the walls. Darcy took the job of cleaning the toilet and the tub, and I took the job of the walls and the sink. When I clean the sink I remove everything on the counter before I clean. There is a soap dispenser, a toothbrush holder, and a small plastic container that sits catty corner that is full of braces paraphernalia and hair products. When I lifted up that container, behind it was a pool of yellow liquid. Annoyed, I ranted and raved about how Madison had not removed the container during the last bathroom cleaning job, which happened to be recently. I swiped at the liquid and found it thick like an oil. Perplexed I leaned over to exam it closely and was hit with the aroma of bamboo. Now I know that I can use the coffee pot again, but I'm still wondering where the liquid is lurking in Madison's room.