Fi Fi Fo Fum, I smell ........

I smell chocolate chip cookies.

Unfortunately, there aren't any fresh baked chocolate chip cookies around. It's just my imagination, the little people inside my head, haunting memories or spirits.

I have occasional olfactory hallucinations, which are known in the medical field as phantosmia. Which are known in my world as 'that crazy old lady and her weird symptoms" syndrome.

Sometimes I smell something baking, like the chocolate chip cookies. Sometimes I recognize scents that used to radiate from my grandmother's kitchen or from my mother's oven. When the wind is right, I can even taste the source of those scents. I can gain weight from just the memory of those delicious aromas.

Sometimes I smell my grandmother's face powder and then I can see her reaching up to the top of the refrigerator to get her makeup. She kept it there because the mirror was in the kitchen, a left-over custom from the old days. I would perch on the red stool and watch her "put on her face" for church or a trip to town.

I occasionally smell a man's cologne when there are no males nearby. It's always the same scent so I know it's the same man, but not who. Someday maybe I'll find him. Or at least the cologne.

Until then, I think I'll go beat up a batch of chocolate chip cookies - the kind with peanut butter and oatmeal. The kind you can actually eat.