Is it weird to have my first ever blog post be an update to a story that I circulate via email to a bunch of my friends? See the thing is, I’ve been thinking about getting into this blogging thing for a while, but have just been telling my stories via email to a select group of friends. And by “select” I mean whoever it occurs to me to include in the address line, for the span of attention I can spare before I’m overwhelmed with the need to start telling the story. And I always saw those emails as more about my obsessive need to share, and my friends’ willingness to indulge that need. But the most recent of these emails, (about a mystery smell in my bedroom) seems to have caught people’s attention, and I keep getting asked for updates. And because I’m relatively self absorbed and seem to be developing adult ADD, I’ve been bad at following up with the whole group. At this point I’ve told enough individuals the updates as to make another group email seem redundant, and I’ve attempted to give an update to enough people who weren’t on the original email that I’ve become self concious about my system for picking recipients of the emails. And so finally, I came to the conclusion that a blog is the only answer. Now I can tell stories to my hearts content without worrying about how is reading them (or not reading them) and those who want updates, and get them at their leisure. And so it has come to be that my first post, is an update to a pre-blog post…
Background: This is the original email:
Subject Line: New Roommates???
About a week ago, I started noticing a subtle smell when I came into my apartment, esp when I’d been gone for a long time and it had been all closed up. Now, I know i’m not the BEST housekeeper, and so at first assumed the smell came from not having done laundry recently, or maybe some food was stuck in the disposal and hadn’t washed all the way down. It wasn’t an awful smell, just a subtle sort of musty smell. So after the second day of coming home to this smell, I did laundry, scrubbed the kitchen, vacuumed, kept all the windows open etc. etc. And it seemed to go away. Or, in retrospect, I was home for a few days in a row, with windows open and so probably just stopped noticing the smell.
This past monday, i came home and was hit with an overwhelming smell that I pegged as dog pee. It literally smelled like a dog had peed in my house. Which is impossible. But I’d left the kitchen window open, and so thought maybe a dog had taken to peeing outside of that window and the smell was wafting in. So I closed the window, and turned on the AC, which strangely only made it worse. But it was hot, and so i suffered with the AC and the smell of pee for a while, and then gave up and turned it off and opened windows and went to bed.
So yesterday I was home all day, and the smell was really strong, and so i started to focus on it and try to figure out what was going on. I realized the smell was way WAY worse in the bedroom. I looked around – no dirty clothes, recently vacuumed, didn’t have sudden bladder control issues during the night without realizing it… I turn the AC on again, and it smelled like it was powered by ammonia. So I turn it off, but then can’t really smell it that bad anymore, and decide its something outside. Around 2pmI’m standing at my dresser which is next to a huge air vent that is low on the wall, and there is a small air vent up near the ceiling on the same wall, and all of a sudden i’m overpowered by the ammonia smell. To the point where i’m coughing and gagging, and it hits me: ammonia = pee. ANY animal pee, not just dog pee. So I decided that some sort of animal must be living in my air vents and peeing up a goddamn storm. SO GROSS. But i had to leave for a meeting, and then went to happy hour and then sat at my computer in the living room until midnight and then went to bed, and didn’t think too much about it during that time. The smell was mild, and i had the window open and thought it would be ok for the night. Nuh-UH. First, there was this awful acrid smell wafting in my open bedroom window every time a breeze blew, and all I could think was that I was going to die in my sleep from inhaling some sort of toxin all night, especially after I passed out from the ammonia smell. So i’m in bed, quietly reading, contemplating noxious gases, when i heard it. The scratchy noises from my new peeing roommate(s) coming from the vent. And then the room was filled with the overwhelming smell of ammonia. And I was done.
It was 1am, and I grabbed my pillow and my book and went out to sleep on the couch. The problem is, my couch isn’t made for sleeping, its barely made for sitting for long periods. But I was not going back into my room. So I fell asleep around 2am, and woke up at 5am with an awesome leg cramp, a headache and stomach ache. I figured i was miserable enough to deal with sleeping in my bed. On my way to pee, I deposited my pillow back on my bed and was met again with a chocking ammonia scent. So I grabbed the pillow went back to the couch and watched the 5am local news. I had only had about 3 hours of sleep, so i refused to get up and instead ate breakfast at 6am and then read until I finally fell into a fitful sleep around 7 and dreamed that they did a story on the news about how its really common to have animals live in your AC vents.
At 9am, I called my landlord. I didn’t know if I was going to sound crazy or not, so I explained the smells and then the scratching noise, before presenting my hypothesis that i had roommates, and he simply said “ok, probably rats.” and I said “EXCUSE ME?!” Now, I had spent a fair amount of time thinking about what might be living in there: A raccoon, my old nemesis the Squirrel, a really small homeless man, but never RATS. That was too much. My landlord responded “Oh, uh…I said we’ll send someone over to check it out,” probably realizing he’d freaked me out the R word. I guess those are the most likely suspects – disgusting rodents that they are, but for some reason I’d rather it be a nest of rabid raccoons. I don’t know why. I begged that someone check it out today b/c I couldn’t sleep in my room last night, and he said “ok” (he is a man of few words).
I’m hoping that the smell will be taken care of by the time I get home today, but I’ve already decided that if it isn’t, I’m pulling out the sleeping bag and camping on the floor of my living room before I spend another night on that couch. I just hope its not going to entail some kind of major extermination project that kicks me out of my apartment, or destroys my room. I think that might be the worst part – that they seem to be living in the vent in MY BEDROOM. I mean, can you EVER clean enough if you know that rats have been living inches from where you sleep??
Update:
My landlord Andy, and one of his maintenence men, did a quick investigation of the closet where the AC unit lives, took the cover off the one AC vent etc, and didn’t see anything. Fortunately Andy could smell it, even if his guy couldn’t (but he was roughly 104 years old, and I think the olefactory functions give out somewhere around 90). Andy said that he would come back with some who could smell and they would move the AC unit out of the closet and look inside. So left to continue contemplating the smell, I came up with the horrifying idea that maybe a rodent had crawled into my dresser and suffocated under my clothes and was now rotting and causing the smell. (This actually happened to a housemate in college. It was a chipmunk. Seriously gross). After much freaking out, I finally investigated the drawers (with my mother’s encouragement: “you’ll feel the slick gooey-ness before you have to look at it.” Awesome.) But there was nothing smelly or slimy in my dresser drawers, or under the dresser. Then my friend’s husband came over and practically crawled through my entire AC vent work and found…nothing. We turned the AC on and the whole apartment smelled like pee for a while…until it got better. We decided maybe it was old pee and it needed to be blown out of the AC system. So I closed the place up tight and went to the pool for a few hours, and when I came back….no smell. Turned off the AC, opened the windows, spent a few hours on the couch, then went to get ready for bed, having more or less forgotten about the pee. Until, standing at my dresser, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the smell again. And so it went. And continues to go. Sometimes it smells, sometimes it doesn’t. I bought a plug-in air freshner and pluged it in next to my dresser. Now my apartment smells like chemical pinneapples (it was on sale). The first night I slept and dreamt of brain damage from the chemicals in the air.
I googled “apartment smells like ammonia” and found out it was most likely a)animal pee, b) a meth lab at my neighbor’s place, or 3)wood rot. Wood rot suddenly seemed not only possible, but likely. I was elated to have a new theory (although I wasn’t totally abandoning the idea of the tiny homeless man). The corner where the smell was coming from was where the AC air return vent was, and was also where the sliding door met the wall – the WOOD wall and the WOOD floor. I ran to the bedroom, dropped to my knees and looked into the corner. Normally my dresser would be blocking that corner, but it had been moved during the investigations. And I saw what I was pretty sure was signs of wood rot. And by that I mean, some brown stuff on the baseboard, and grey stuff on the bottom of the blinds. I rushed to call my landlord, “I know what the smell is!” I announced with pride and enthusiasm. “Great! What is it?” he replied. “Wood rot!!” I announced triumphantly. “No, that’s not it,” he responded immediately. ”No, but it is. I googled it!” I told him, invoking the well known Google=Reality argument. “No. We looked for that. Nothing is wet.” “Then why is there brown stuff on the base board?” “Dirt?” He offered. I think he was really trying to be helpful, but I literally wanted to cry. I was begining to realize that the only thing worse than the smell, was not knowing what was causing it. Would I never live in a non-noxious space again?! Then he said “we are going to come over and remove your AC unit, I think the problem might be in there.” I sullenly offered that I was going to be out of town for the next 5 days, and maybe they could do it then.
Upon returning from my trip, I expected to be affronted by the smell immediately. In fact, I half expected to find new smells. But…there was nothing. No smell at all. Andy came over to tell me they were just going to replace the entire AC unit. “It would probably have died this winter anyway, so we might as well take care of it now.” (So if not for the smell, would i have found myself without heat in the middle of winter? No. I refuse to see the smell as a positive force.) So, I’m now cleaning my room to try to avoid the traditional routine where workmen come over and I have underwear lying on my bedroom floor.
Here’s hoping there will be a day soon where I can sleep in a space that smell neither like chemical pineapples or animal pee.
