I posted this to my blog, and then I realised that this seemed like the perfect subject for an MPSIMS thread—I just had to share.
So there I was, puttering at home for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to eat there or to grab something on Thayer Street. And my eyes fell upon the mantel over the (disused) fireplace in my dining room, and the pumpkin that was on it.
Pumpkin?
In fact, it looked like the top half of a pumpkin. (You can see where this is going.) And closer inspection showed evidence of no less than three species of mould, merrily growing across the surface. A sticky-looking (I wasn’t about to touch it) pool of long-dried pumpkin juice covered two-thirds of the mantel, soiling the bottoms of assorted bottles of alcohol that were there and two little stuffed animals that had been there for ages. I realised, to my horror, that although I had no recollection whatsoever of ever having seen this pumpkin before, whole or not, it must have been there for many, many months. I shudder to think that it might have been since last October.
Cleaning it up was one of the grosser things I’ve done. I suppose that may say something about the charmed life I’ve led, as I can certainly imagine many grosser things I could have had to do, but in point of fact, this one was definitely up there. I went and got a plastic grocery bag (which I carefully checked for holes), and juryrigged a way to hold it there while I took a broken spatula and tried to move the pumpkin remains. The pumpkin deflated, and the bottom gave out, so after I scooped the top half of the thing into the bag, I had to scrape a mess of pulp and seeds into the bag. All while desperately attempting not to breathe. The bag got tied off and thrown in the dumpster.
Then, of course, I had to go in there with a bucket of ammonia water and clean up. Yuck. The bottles were fine, though the stuffed toys had to go. The mantel itself has a permanent stain in the paint, and what I really hope is not a permanent smell; right where the pumpkin was, the paint is actually bubbled from the nasty stuff.
What gets me most about this is, how could it have been there so long? The stuff that’s up there is not stuff I really interacted with, ever, but over the mantel was a van Gogh print that one of my housemates put up there just a month or two ago, and on the mantel itself (in front of the juice puddle) was a row of little party/votive candles that are the forte of my other housemate and must have been replaced in the last few months. And they didn’t notice this thing? Not to mention other people who were over in the last, oh, year. It’s not like my friends are particularly soft-spoken; how is it that none of them ever said, “dude, what’s with the rotting pumpkin?”
Anyway, it’s as cleaned up as it’s going to be, now. A new coat of paint (and stripping the existing one) is recommended, but hey, I’m moving out in a month, so that’s not my job. My housemates are out of town right now, so I can’t wait to ask them about it. Oh! I just realised I should’ve taken a picture. Oh well, pictures weren’t really foremost in my mind—I really just needed to get that out of there RIGHT AWAY. Ugh.