We've Got Mold Again

Or in this case, DO NOT auto-correct!

Yes, we've got mold again. Apparently mold brings out the blogger in me. Hopefully, lack of mold brings out the reader in you. Misused song lyrics aside, I actually started this blog during a mold remediation in our previous house; it's tradition at this point!

I’ve spent considerable time trying to decide how many circles of heck we have in our home right now. And it’s heck, not hell, because, really, they’re just petty annoyances. Wait, though—would lots of CONSTANT petty annoyances be worse than say, eternally burning in a lake of fire? Nah, we’ve definitely got heck.

So a slight construction error, a teeny oversight, a small piece of wallboard missing between our Florida-hot attic and the air handler closet convinced our chill air handler to sweat things a bit, then the sweat went and invited mold to the party. Luckily, we saw all the cars parked on the front lawn and called the cops before the party got out of hand. Or into the ducts.

The mess did manage to roll downhill, though, soaking the studs and wallboard between the front hall and master closet. Party on, dudes!

So, at this precise moment, our air handler has been kicked out of the house; it’s sleeping it off in the garage. Amazing new antimicrobial sprays have been sprayed. Damaged wallboard has been ripped out in the air handler closet upstairs and the hall downstairs. And we have four dehumidifiers running and two portable A/C units trying to cool the great room and master suite.

After a lot of thought on the above situation, I decided we don’t have circles of heck in the house, exactly—more like a Venn diagram of heck.

The first circle, the upstairs, has been abandoned. It’s excessively hot and proportionally miserable. The second circle, the back of the house, is almost cool but sounds roughly like the inside of a jet engine. The white noise rises to the level of—honestly, I can’t choose from the metaphors the leap to mind. Feel free to insert your own image here. The third circle, the front of the house, is moderately hot but somewhat quieter.

In the center, where these three circles overlap (and, ironically, where Harry Potter lived) is the Heckmouth beneath the stairs. Basically, the attic is still open to the air handler closet, but now the wall below the air handler closet has been opened to the house. With a dehumidifier in front.

In practice, it’s like having a giant fireplace in the center of the house. Hot attic air pours down through the wall and into the hallway. You can warm your hands on it as you go by.

Welcome to the Heckmouth.

Night and...

...day! (Not pictured: 7 more machines)

And, you know, it’s unscheduled work for the trades—they fit emergencies like this around their regular work. They come as they can. The dog loses his mind. My husband loses it at the dog. The kids aren’t sleeping well. All the first-world problems. Heck, I tell you. Sheer heck.

So standing here, in the middle of my third mold remediation, I’ve finally figured out that having my home, my sanctuary, my introvert’s snail shell completely invaded by random people from multiple trades doing unexpected and messy things—well, all that brings me to a place where I have nothing to lose.

And that, it turns out, happens to be where I need to be to create.

I’ve been trying to write more lately and basically, in a nutshell, more or less have written…less. I’ve read a lot of helpful advice about the discipline of writing every day, I’ve guilted myself with thoughts of how much housework or editing I could be doing with the time I’m setting aside to write. I’ve tried to back myself into writing like a nervous mare with a shirt over her eyes. Nope.

So the problem’s not lack of time or motivation or ideas, it’s just regulation anxiety-induced paralysis. Writer’s block with a healthy side of self-editing because, after all, I edit for a living.

For now, that’s all in the past. I’m at honey-badger-level of don’t care. Sidebar—do honey badgers regularly get their homes torn apart? In the end, I am producing mold-inspired blogs, poetry contest entries, and chunks of longer works in progress. And, wow, that sounds like some really messed up Pinterest recipe board--Mold-Inspired Writing for Fall!

To paraphrase Buffy the Vampire Slayer again, and Willow for the first time, "I think we've kind of played the scene." Look for more scenes from the Heckmouth coming soon to a blog near you!