Someone in this house used Snuggle.

There are a number of suspects, but no one’s talking. I wanted to ask my new housekeeper about it, but I don’t know her name. She definitely told me her name when we first met, but then I immediately forgot it because it was a word I’d never heard.

If I had used Snuggle, I would have admitted it right away. Mistakes happen. Like the double-sided Scotch tape fiasco. I bought three of those by accident even though two-sided tape is not usable for anything. But, in this case, it wasn’t me and everyone knows it because I’m afraid of the laundry room. I’ve seen horrible things in there.  Examples: A huge bug with arms, and a brownish puddle of some kind that couldn’t  have come from anywhere.

When I got into bed last night, it only took a second to realize my sheets had been tainted with an industrial strength sweetness that I’ve come to associate with stupid people, psoriasis, and weed killer.

“What are we going to do now?” I asked my husband, knowing that if my sheets smelled like fabric softener, all of our clothes were also ruined and everything would have to be burned.

“Don’t worry. The scent will go away eventually,” he said.

“How? How will it go away? We’d have to rewash everything we own and honestly, which one of us is going to do that?”

“Not me,” we both mumbled.

I walked outside and looked up at the sky hoping for answers.

“Maybe we imagined the whole thing!” I wondered, and forced myself to go downstairs to the laundry room.

I didn’t want to believe it, but there it was, a half empty baby blue bottle with a picture of a  stuffed animal acting like a human being holding a blanket and inhaling its fumes.

I picked up the bottle and looked at the teddy bear.

“You monster!” I cried, and threw the bottle in the trash where it belonged.

And that’s when I noticed my garbage bags were scented.