Apricot and the Clementines

Today is the day after Christmas. I was playing with my phone and Apricot was across the room in the tallest cat tree at the top. After a while I put the phone away and got my book out. Shortly after the book made an appearance, so did Apricot.

He was in the sun and got so toasted
he had to come down and stretch out.

He came over and asked politely if he could be up, and I cat-blinked at him to let him know he was welcome. He curled up in my lap, as at home as he could be, and fell asleep. He even snored for a little bit. Kitty snores are just adorable.

Then he woke up, but instead of leaving, he got up and turned around in a circle to wedge himself against the edge of the chair on my legs, and proceeded to take a cat bath. Wow! He’s never done that before; groomed himself while on my lap.

All told he didn’t stay long, perhaps twenty minutes? My sense of time changes when I’m in the middle of a book. But I’m getting used to his (by my standards) brief stays on my lap. It’s actually kind of nice. If he settles down and I happen to need to do something (like in the bathroom, say), I know that I can just wait a little while and he’ll leave. With Pippin, waiting until he left of his own accord was often hours later, and sometimes that wasn’t exactly, shall we say, possible?

However, there has been no mention of clementines yet, and the title to this post promised clementines.

Those started Christmas Eve. My parents gave me a half a dozen clementines to take home and eat. It will probably sound weird to you, but I’ve never had a clementine before. Furthermore, I’ve never actually had a citrus fruit at home from the “beginning.” IE, fruit that has its wrapper still on it.

I did not realize that when you peeled one, even a clementine which is easy to peel and can be done with your fingers, that you get citrus smell all over the hand doing the active peeling bit.
For about five minutes it was pleasant. My hand smelled like oranges. And then it turned nasty and I couldn’t stand the smell.

Apricot totally agreed with me and wanted me to very much make the smell on my hand go away. And barring that, don’t pet me with that hand!

I washed my hands multiple times, soap and water, and nothing. So I went hunting on the internet, and I’ll tell you, there’s not a lot of useful information out there. (Not for someone allergic to vinegar, anyway.) But I tried the baking soda scrub, and that at least reduced the smell to something I could tolerate.

Apricot was less willing to tolerate it and I ended up petting him with my left hand most of the evening, my right hand stored safely behind me.

Sigh. Sometimes I hate being super smell sensitive. It’s good because I can sympathize with Apricot and know why he gave me that horrified look, but it meant I had to take the rest of the clementines back to my mom, on Christmas Day, and apologetically explain why I couldn’t take them.

My dear sweet mother promptly peeled them for me and gave them back to me, without the peels. How old am I that my mom has to peel my clementines for me? I wasn’t going to protest, however—they are quite tasty and I do like them. Just not enough to subject to myself to that smell on my hands.