Danielle Blog

hang up in my packing

We have had a water disaster at the house. When HB went to pull my stored belongings out of the crawl space, he discovered that about 1/8 of it had standing water. We never knew it had gotten bad down there, because I think the last time we went in was when we stored the Girlie-girl’s stuff after she had died over a year ago (March). it looks like it has been bad for quite a while, because – get this – there were mushrooms growing on a sleeping bag! How absolutely disgusting is that???

In the end, even with claritin, I started having a pretty concerning allergic reaction. I’ve known from allergy testing years ago that I’m extremely allergic to mold.

I would go stay at a friend’s house until it is all over, but I have to pack. *sigh*

When I got home from church yesterday, HB had thought he had finished all that could be done and he left on a business trip. In his defense, neither of us had realized that I would continue to react quite so badly. I thought it would lessen once we got the wet stuff out of the main part of the house. Luckily, we have amazing neighbors, and the neighbor was willing to close up the downstairs space, put 2 more fans down there, open up those windows, get all of the wet crap out of the garage and to the end of the street, AND move my empty boxes for packing into the house. After opening every single window in the house (including the one without a screen!) I got out of the house to give it time to air out. That is actually when I had lunch out at a restaurant yesterday and did my Home Depot run.

So, I got respirators at Home Depot that are of the same rating as I’ve used in the lab to prevent reactions. I had never realized until about four years ago that modern respirators are not necessarily those huge, gas-mask-looking things that they show you in chemical safety videos; instead they are basically similar to a regular surgical/home repair mask, but with a filter on the front. Maybe you already knew this, but it was news to me when I started wearing them.

Anyway, it is pain to use them, because the straps are too tight. I may have to rig up some sort of tie system instead of the current elastic bands. I wore a respirator for the whole day, and ate supper on the deck. I feel very one with nature right now, because I hear every little bird chirp.

Right now, I’m eating breakfast inside, because the house has been opened up since about noon yesterday and my throat seems manageable. But I will work upstairs this morning (the rest of the house is sort of cold), and I will go back to wearing a respirator. We have service people coming this morning.

what a disaster.

I’ll manage; it is just one more thing to deal with that I really hadn’t expected!

Note: all but some of my college lit books (mainly my Russian literature) was okay. We had mostly moved the most important things to the far side originally. And some of our stuff was in plastic bins. My advisor for grad school had a water problem in her basement, which helped me realize the importance of using plastic bins when possible and NOT boxes. So, that was excellent.

I guess we will have to stop teasing Texas Seestor for her habit of buying storage bins every time she needs to put stuff away somewhere! I will be taking on that habit. Although, she had told me once that she read that one should never put books in plastic. They actually need to breath. I imagine it is because the paper has a certain amount of moisture in it. I will see if I can buy dessicant for the other stuff. I am hoping that Home Depot or somebody sells small packets.