At eight, Ellen and I grab a snack together standing at the mephitic end of kitchen counter, but I can only manage two or three mozzarella sticks, and lunch had been a mere handful of McNuggets.

mephitic (adj) : 1: tending to destroy life; poisonous; noxious; as, mephitic exhalations; mephitic regions 2: offensive to the smell; as, mephitic odors [syn: miasmic] – source: Nickel and Dimed, p. 46