I’ve always believed that people are either neat or clean; they have everything in its place but that place may be dusty or a little dirty here and there, or everything is clean but in a special ordering system that looks like a mess to the casual observer. Only my father is both neat and clean, and he’s wound so tight he could snap any moment.
Anyhoo, I tend to be on the neat but less than spotless camp. The dishes are always sorted into the sink but may take a while to get cleaned. Everything is neatly arranged but I don’t vacuum or dust all that often. I clean dishes and clothes, perform basic personal hygiene as regularly as needed, and dispose of my trash in a timely manner.
So I’m sitting at home working on work stuff since work does not have A/C and I can’t stand it anymore, when I come across something mindnumbingly boring. I don’t have the Internet at home so instead of the SDMB, I find myself visually surfing my kitchen. Wow, I should really scrub the floor, or at least sweep. Hmm, what is that spill by the lamp? Probably splatter from the stovetop, no biggie. As I go to wipe it up (housekeeping takes on a higher priority when the alternative is the tedium work offers) I spot it. You know how when you see something out of place you have to look at it a bunch of times before you really believe what you are seeing? It took at least six tries to register that
mushrooms were growing out of my baseboard!!
And then I did this: :eek: :o :smack: and went to find the Mr. Clean.
Yeah, my friends (I swore them to secrecy since they are friends with my landlord) suggested either smoke em or eat em, but either way I should start a whole farm in my kitchen. :o
Yes, it is near a pipe for a former washer hookup. I guess there was just enough dirt and just the right spores…I am afraid to go into the basement and see what’s going on down there. :eek:
Years ago a friend and I wrote an instrumental song – it was one of many, but this was a scary song, full of creeky doors, maniacal laughter, and headless horsemen. The working title we came up with was “You Go In the Basement. I Ain’t Goin’ In the Basement. Me and That Basement Got Nothin’ to Discuss!”
This is awesome. My grandmother had one of those basements. My siblings and I would often dare one another to go down in there or use it as a threat, i.e. “do what I want or I’ll shove you down the basement stairs.”
My dad lives in that house now and he goes down there all the time. It’s still really creepy to me.
Doesn’t it have to be pretty damp for mushrooms to grow? A friend of mine lived in a basement apartment that had a sem-wet carpet perpetually, and he had 3" tall mushrooms growing down there. So maybe it’s not just your housekeeping… could there be a water problem near your baseboards?
Or maybe I’m jus trying to comfort a fellow slovenly housekeeper…
I’m of the “neat” camp, but after far too many arguements with my lover, we long ago hired someone to come in and take care of the “clean” side of things, too.
Nonetheless, on September 10th, 2001, a minor pipe broke in the apartment upstairs from us. Due to the fact that all of the bridges and tunnels were out the next day, and there was a police cordon around the neighborhood for several days afterwards, not to mention generalized chaos - well, it took a week to get a plumber over.
During this week I had to stay in the apartment because someone needed to be there to keep emptying the buckets under the water drips (my lover’s job was going crazy at the time). In an unrelated incident, the phone had gone out on Sept. 8th and the phone company was justifiably busy elsewhere. So I’m trapped, alone, 24 hours a day in this apartment with a dripping ceiling, no way to call out, surrounded by a police cordon, all hell breaking loose in the world around me, and non-stop falling towers on TV. I was trying to make use of this time to prepare my first peer-reviewed publication, but between inexperience, depression, and general freaked-outedness I wasn’t making any headway. This was an ugly time for me.
The pipe was eventually fixed, but three weeks later the water-logged ceiling started sprouting hideous soot-black mushrooms with long, limp, stringy stems and pus-flecked caps. They looked like some spontaneous physical manifestation of all of the ugliness I was feeling. I hated them, and thinking back on them still makes me uncomfortable.
So, gig, there are much worse ways of finding mushrooms growing in your apartment. Don’t worry about yours. It’s probably just moisture.
Man, sorry. I hope things are looking up all around.
(my lover’s job was going crazy at the time).
We may get to go home early for EXTREME HEAT: NOW SUPERSIZED!!1I!! so I think a good floor-scrubbing is in the offing. But you guys are right, I think there is a moisture problem around that pipe because when my furnace quit and things froze over last winter (my apartment ROX!!11!!! :rolleyes: ) that area had a patch of ice and was kind of drippy.
and went to find the Mr. Clean.
