Sensitive

Today I went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house with my boys, Mieren (my niece), and her friend, Kim. I was prepared to have a nice, peaceful morning at the temple. And I did, until we got into the temple.

Nothing unusual happened. But the smell in there was terrible. Let me preface this by noting that I am extremely sensitive to smells. Pregnancy and migraines seem to make my olfactory senses even more alive. I first became aware of my sensitivities to a lot of different smells when I was about 12.

Back to the temple issue. When I first entered, I there was a slight formaldehyde smell. As we progressed into smaller hallways and rooms, the smell was really strong. I discovered the source of the smell. It was the floors. Because the temple gets a lot of traffic during the open house they cover the carpets with a thick plastic covering to keep the carpet clean.

I have been fighting off a migraine for the past week, and I swear that I couldn't get out of that temple fast enough. I was seriously getting sick.

I'm not sure if the plastic flooring has formaldehyde in it or not, but it smelled like it. When I was a Sophomore in college, I took a Physiology and Anatomy class. We spent some time in the cadaver lab. The smell of that lab will never leave my memory. In fact, I had a sweater that I wore into the lab once. I hung it out to air out for days, I carefully washed it (100% wool), and even though I'm pretty sure that the smell was gone, I finally had to get rid of the sweater, because it reminded me of that smell.

Formaldehyde and other strong plastic smells are only a few of the smells that almost always bother me. Because you are dying to know what other scents stink to me, here is a list:

Scented candles
Fabric softener (especially when coupled with scented detergent)
Scented lotions
Perfume
Diesel fuel/exhaust (probably why I get sick on airplanes, and buses)
Car tires (parking garages are not my friends)
Wet dog
Cola
Coffee (even walking down the coffee isle at the grocery store can be too much)
Cigarette smoke
Cardboard
Newsprint (some books have a strong ink smell to them, too)
Rubber toys (balls, stretchy creatures)
Play Doh (not always, but sometimes)
Sunscreen
Scotch tape
Damp basements smell (mildew/mold or whatever it is)

I am sure that I have left some off of the list, but I've covered most of them.

I am not always super sensitive to the smells, sometimes the smell will bother me, but it won't make me sick. Other times, I have to leave the area. Today would have gone better if I could have left immediately, but I didn't because the kids really wanted to be in there.

I guess that I could have creeped them out a bit if I told them that we had to leave because it smelled like dead people.