Olfactory

I'm sitting here enjoying the smell of burning dust -- we turned our heat on tonight. I love this annual ritual. I think, in fact, it should be a family tradition: Turn on the heat that first cold night you just know you can can't sleep through anymore, and everyone sit on the bed, or around the table with hot chocolate, and BREATHE IT IN. That dust smell makes me smile every year. Somehow the dust here in Georgia smells exactly like the dust from Texas, where I was a child. How IS that? There are two different heating systems involved, and very different vegetation and bugs, and even different PEOPLE living here than there, creating all those dusty particles of dog and skin and leaves and taco night and sweat and laundry detergent, and whatever other floaty goodness we've entertained ourselves with all summer. How is it they smell the same??