Last night, amid Andy's hacking, sniffling, sweating, groaning, wheezing, cursing, and snorting (yes, sick again), I managed to fall asleep. But I awoke in a panic: I had a dream that I smelled a gas leak in the house. It was the strangest sensation, because I had a vivid memory of an odor that existed only in my imagination. (Those of you who don't heat or cook with natural gas can just trust me on this one: It has a very distinctive odor.) I of course assumed that a real gas smell had infiltrated my dreams and awakened me—and I still think this was a logical assumption even though it turned out to be untrue—so I went down to the kitchen to poke around. Nothing. Down to the basement. Nothing. Back upstairs. Not gas necessarily, but something unnatural . . . turned out to be the new shower curtain liners I'd hung that day! They had a faint plasticky smell—certainly not enough to have awakened me, but enough that I knew I didn't smell anything else. So I went back to sleep, although not altogether restfully, debating whether I should have called the emergency number just in case, wondering if the kids were breathing, etc. Needless to say, we're all fine—well, except Andy's cold.
The only other time I can recall dreaming about a particular odor was when I had a vivid dream about our old cat George.
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