Mold Hunt

Mold- a growth of minute fungi associated with decay or dampness.  So there’s mold in my brand new rental house, my son can’t step foot into it, and my kids are I are staying at my grandmother’s.  Are you all caught up?  Good. 

The problem we had was this, where the hell was this mold?  We had a few guesses.  The older carpet padding. In the ceiling where the old roof had leaked.  In the walls, slowly permeating every porous surface of my possessions, of my kids, of MYSELF!!!

After I paid the engineer to do the air quality test, the landlord ordered his own.  The result-no mold.  He wasn’t super motivated to find it after that, even with the report I had.  So while I wait for him to take his time with finding and resolving this problem, I’ve been transferring all of my possessions out of this house and into the garage.  This way they can get to whatever they need to get to and so mold spores aren't accumulating any more than they already have. 

After a few days moving things, about a third of the house was packed into the garage and I was back over there to move more.  When I opened the garage I noticed that the massive amount of snow that we had gotten through the winter had been melting and that water was running into the garage.  My boxes were dripping.  Boxes of clothes, boxes of books, boxes of photo albums…all soaked.  “Oh, well, this happened,” I told my daughter and calmly moved things on the other side of the floor drain.  My 14 year old spitfire threw things and cursed and stormed around the house.  Why bother?  Things were on a downward spiral and a tantrum wasn’t going to help that.

The next day at work when my coworkers all asked how things were going, I simply told them what happened with the garage flood.  The ladies expressed shock over my demeanor, “How are you not freaking out and swearing?” I was asked more than once.  “Well, it’s not going to change anything.  I just deal with it as it comes,” I replied.  That night the kids and I went back to the house to finish up.  In a matter of 15 minutes I managed to slip on ice and fall into a mud puddle, spraining my wrist, and thennnn, I lost my grip on a piece of furniture wrenching the already throbbing wrist, and that’s when I broke.  Throwing stuff in a box while hurling every curse word I could think of (and some words that weren't foul but became so the way I used them), tears running down my face, I was done.  Hannah and I finished putting the furniture on the kitchen linoleum and the boxes in the wet garage and we went home where my grandma had purchased a bottle of wine…she must have known.