If you think you have a dead mouse in your house you will clean all the things. When you clean all the things you find out your teenager has 3 bags of trash in their room.

A stash of nuts and seeds and dried fruit out in the open and you will think, “No wonder there is a mouse in the house! We are feeding them like kings. Or at least like teenagers.” Then you will take out all the bags of trash and clean even the gross stuff at the bottom of the cans. And when there is still the smell of a rotten corpse you will try to follow your nose.

And when two of you follow completely independently to the same place you become certain it has died in your air vent behind the sink and under the kitchen counters and you will (briefly) consider tearing it all out to get rid of that smell. You will air out the house with the windows all open and candles lit and wake up sneezing 15 times in a row because allergies are real. Then you will lay in bed wondering if an ozone machine could cancel out the smell of dead animal.

And then you come downstairs and find a note and a gift from your husband on the table. This is the same husband who never smells the stinky things you smell (like the minivan the dog smell has never entirely come out of) but who definitely smelled the dead mouse. And insisted that it was not in the corner vent under the sink but couldn’t figure out where. He found it folks!

And then you will remember that you baked broccoli for dinner days ago and put it back in the oven to stay warm while you finished making dinner. And the next day even thought to yourself that, “man that broccoli we had for dinner is really lingering in the house. Even though you didn’t eat a single bite of that broccoli that was (still) in the oven.