Tag Archives: mold

Black mold? Come on.

I had this leak coming from somewhere behind the kitchen wall. After putting off getting it taken care of for much longer than I should have, I made an appointment to have a plumber stop by and take a look. Hopefully it wouldn’t be anything too serious, because I really didn’t have the cash for anything more than a quick-fix repair job.

The plumber took one look around the kitchen and suspected that the problem might have something to do with the dishwasher.

“Is this appliance a plugged unit or is it hardwired in?” he asked me.

And just the way he looked at me when he posed the question, it was like he was expecting an answer out of me. I had no idea what he was talking about, but in that moment between his question and my eventual non-answer, here was a man, a professional plumber, treating me like, well, not like an equal, but definitely not like someone who doesn’t know at all what he’s talking about. I should have just said something like, “I don’t know what that means,” but I didn’t want to let him down. I didn’t want to let myself down, to diminish my assumed level of basic appliance know-how.

“Well,” I kind of fumbled around, trying to say something, what exactly, I didn’t really know. “It’s a … uh … it’s a standard unit …”

“All right,” he cut me off, I could tell he was a little disappointed, not in me so much, but in himself, he gave me the once over, he sized me up and took it for granted that I’d have maybe a base level of handiness. And now he was back at square one, or lower than square one.

He pulled the dishwasher out, revealing a puddle of dirty water. The cabinetry was wet on both sides, as was the drywall just behind, crumbling off where it met the tile, everything slightly warped from having been damp for who knows how long.

“Jesus,” the plumber said, which wasn’t really a reaction I was hoping for.

“It’s a leak,” I don’t know why I said that, because it was obviously a leak.

“Is that a direct line?” I don’t know why he asked, because I didn’t know what that meant either.

“A direct line?” I threw the question back at him.

“Look, we have to turn the electricity off before I can check out the pipes. You’ve got a lot of water damage here. And it looks like there’s mold growing.”

“Mold? So what do we do?”

“You got to get a mold guy, I’m not licensed for that sort of stuff.”

“A mold guy?”

“Yeah, look, and do what you got to do, all right, but this is something you got to take care of, all right, black mold is no joke.”

“Well, can you fix the leak?”

“And an electrician. You got to get an electrician over here, because I’d bet anything that the wires need some looking at, I’m just saying, you know, based on how these pipes look, and the mold, you got to take care of everything here.”

“But the leak?”

“You listening to me kid?” he called me kid, and I knew right there that whatever technical benefit of the doubt he’d given me when he walked in had evaporated.

“Yeah, I’m listening to you, I’m just … I just, I don’t know, all right? One thing at a time, right? Can you fix the pipe, or whatever it is that’s causing the water to come out?”

“All right, look, you’ve got extensive damage here. All right, you’re going to need a complete reworking of probably all of the plumbing here. You’ve probably got faulty wiring, and even though I’m not a mold guy, so this is like some off-the-books advice here, but it looks like you’ve got the beginnings of what could be a pretty nasty black mold problem. Now like I said, you do what you got to do, but this isn’t something you’re going to want to let go for too long.”

I said to him, “OK, but for right now, for today, what can you do for me?”

“I can patch up and reinforce the sides of the water main, right, and that’s going to buy you maybe a few months, maybe more, maybe less, again, I don’t know the extent of this damage, right, if this pipe’s corroded here, I’m sure the damage goes way back. So that’s today. And then tomorrow, well tomorrow’s Saturday, but Monday I suggest you call an electrician, and a mold guy, and then the three of us will figure out where to go from here.”

“How much are you thinking this is all going to cost?”

“Look, I’m in absolutely no position to give an estimate right now. I’m telling you, there’s a lot to do here.”

“But like what, a thousand? Two thousand?”

And the plumber just shook his head.

“What about for today? What about for that pipe patch or whatever you were talking about?”

“One forty.”

“Fine.”

“But look, I’ll give you some contacts, some guys I know, guys I’ve worked with before, or you can shop around, your call. But listen to me …”

“Yeah, I got it, I’ll take care of it.” I told him.

He patched up the pipe or whatever it was that he did, and the water stopped. And after he left, after I mopped everything up and scrubbed the tiles and the walls with one of those Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, I have to say, I know that I’m not a plumber or an electrician, but it didn’t really look that bad. And there wasn’t any more water.

And black mold? Come on, it didn’t look any worse than the black mildew upstairs in the bathroom or in the basement. And the Magic Eraser works fine on that too. Besides, I’m thinking of repainting the whole place, just giving everything a couple of fresh coats. Because I really don’t know, that guy, ready with his trusted associates, maybe I’m not a plumber, but I can tell when I’m getting squeezed.

Black mold problem, please. I try not to use the word problem. I see it as more of a black mold opportunity. Because look, now I’m almost positive I’m going to paint. Maybe like next weekend, or the weekend after that. And who knows if I would’ve gotten around to it if it weren’t for that mold or mildew or whatever it is. Yeah, a fresh coat of paint is going to solve everything.

But man, I should get into plumbing. That guy was over here for what, an hour? And he charged me a hundred and forty bucks? Talk about a good gig. I’d love to make a hundred and forty an hour. And then I could tell all of my friends about it, my electrician friends and my mold friends, and they could hook me up when they get house calls. “Gee, I don’t know, you better let me get my friend Rob the plumber over here to take a look at this.” What a racket.

You call this a winter?

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, and of course it’s below freezing now, but whatever, at the time it was warm and wet:

It’s already December, but we haven’t had any serious winter weather yet. There have been a few cold days, but there hasn’t been any bitterness to the chill, no temperature you’d be able to describe as bone-chilling. And the past few days have been pretty rainy, so it’s like, I’ll go outside, I’m wearing what I think should be appropriate mid-December gear, a sweater, gloves, a scarf, and it’s all too much, it feels like it’s maybe pushing fifty degrees, I’m starting to sweat, and my feet are getting wet through my sneakers.

And I try not to let my mind focus on things that I really can’t control, but I wonder what the Northeast is going to be like if we keep having warm, wet winters. I remember a few years ago, we had one of these autumns that was almost tropical. I read in the newspaper this article about how these giant mushrooms were growing all over the city. Of course you had groups of starry-eyed foragers going on about how much money they’d have had to spend on shitakes if they hadn’t had the good fortune of stumbling into some rotted log in the park, but the fungus was seeping into peoples houses, weird oblong-shaped shrooms were sprouting from the cracks of people’s walls.

And this is just the start, right? Pretty soon we’ll have giant palmetto bugs year round, I mean, they have those in DC, it’s only a matter of time before those more tropical pests move up north. And what about snakes? Are we going to get snakes? Isn’t black mold a really big problem? How do you tell black mold from regular mold?

I’m sitting here freaking out about how I’m not going to be able to survive the gradual change in temperature, but right now, today, it’s actually pretty cold out. I think me sitting here and finally feeling a chill inside my house, inside my body, it’s what prompted me to think about the weather in the first place, about the lack of winter. It’s already December and on this one particularly cold day, I’m feeling like it’s the oddity here.

But I think I like winter. I don’t know. It’s always great up until my knuckles start cracking and bleeding from being too dry. It’s just like the warm weather. I enjoy it until my skin starts breaking out alongside my temple. I don’t know what my body wants, really, because as soon as the temperature starts to swing in the other direction, I’m only afforded a brief window of comfort before I start reacting negatively to the climate.

I’m probably just complaining too much. I know that I’m freaking out. I’m sitting here by the window and I can feel the winter air through the walls. For everything that I complain and worry about, I still can’t imagine how human beings dealt with the weather a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. If I get too cold I can just hop in the shower, steam myself back to homeostasis.

But how did the pioneers deal with winter? You spend all of this time chopping down trees and building yourself a house out of wood, and then the winter comes and you’re freezing and you’re wet and you’re stuck inside that box of wood, insulation hasn’t been invented yet, and so if I can kind of feel this not-even-that-wintery weather through the walls of my modern house, I can’t imagine a log cabin or whatever providing much comfort against one of those historical winters that you just know had to have been much more severe than the seasons are today.

And I always think about George Washington, that famous painting where they’re all crossing the Delaware on Christmas. Like, Jesus, that had to have been freezing, icy water sloshing up over the sides of that boat, and what did they make winter coats out of back then? Animal pelts? There’s no way that they could have been even close to as warm as I am with my contemporary double-layered jacket. I have waterproof boots, wool socks, man, those guys must have been miserable for months at a time.

I wonder if those soldiers in that boat knew that everything that they were fighting for, it would all lead to this, our modern world, where some guy gets to sit at his computer and write on the Internet about how he’s afraid of wild mushrooms or about how it’s too warm this winter. If I were in their position, I would’ve been like, fuck this, this shit’s crazy, let’s just all move south. Yeah, we’ve got to deal with snakes, and palmetto bugs, and spiders, and malaria, but cold wet feet for three months at a time? And what happens when we finally cross that Delaware, we’ve got to go to war? Battlefield injuries with no antibiotics? Yeah, sorry General, I’ll be back in just one second, you guys get in the boat without me, I promise I’ll be right back.

Mike, you going to eat that sandwich?

Hey Mike, it’s Rob. I just wanted to ask you about that chicken parm hero you left in my fridge last night. Were you planning on coming back for that? Did you just forget it? Let me know, because I’ll eat it if you don’t want it. Or if you want me to bring it with me the next time I see you, I could do that too. Just, yeah, just let me know. All right. Bye.

Mike. I just got back from work and I’m starving. I’m looking right at that sandwich and I’m so tempted to just pop it in the microwave and dive in. Would that be OK? I don’t want you to show up later and to not have that sandwich. You did forget it, right? I’ll wait a little bit. Just call me back when you get this, OK? Thanks.

OK, so I waited a couple of hours but I couldn’t take it any longer, so I went out and got some McDonald’s. Swing by and pick up your food whenever you feel like it. Or just call me back, just shoot me a text, if you want me to hang on to it for you, if you’re not interested anymore, whatever. Do you want me to throw it in the freezer? The sauce might last a month in there, but the bread? I don’t think it’s going to thaw out well. I’ll just keep it where it is. Call me back.

So I think this is like the last day that we can possibly do something with this sandwich. I’d eat it today. It’s definitely not as fresh as it was when you put it in there, or even yesterday, but it’s totally edible. I lifted back the wax paper and swiped my finger through the corner – is that cool? I just wanted to taste it, to see if it’s still good. It’s still totally good, but I can tell it’s about to turn any second. I’ll eat it. I’ll still totally eat it. But if you want to eat it, seriously, that’s cool too. But one of us should eat it. It’s still perfectly good. Perfectly … acceptable.

All right Mike, I think we blew it here. Your sandwich has definitely passed over to the other side now. I’m not going to eat it. So, I mean, I don’t know what you’d want with it at this point, but I feel bad doing anything until you give me the go ahead. Hit me up. Thanks.

Mike, I know that I told you yesterday that the sandwich was bad, and yeah, it doesn’t look too great at all. The bread is definitely a little grayer than bread it supposed to look. But I did the finger test again today with the sauce and I’ve got to tell you, I’m pleasantly surprised. I probably wouldn’t eat the bread, maybe not the cheese either, but the chicken? The sauce? I think that’s potentially salvageable. What do you say? Call me up. Stop by. We can share it. Or you could take it back, it’s your sandwich.

OK, we’ve absolutely crossed the point of no return here. There’s mold all over. I don’t know if it started from the bread, or if it’s contaminated the whole sandwich, but it’s gross. The wax paper wasn’t doing a good enough job keeping everything together. Well, I don’t really know how long that sandwich would have lasted even if it were sealed. And a totally closed environment? That might have spelled the end of the bread even earlier. Anyway, it’s not happening. Just come by and throw it out, whenever you’re free.

Mike, the mold from your sandwich is starting to make me a little uneasy. It’s really splotchy, furry. I’m worried that it’s going to contaminate the rest of the food in my fridge. Can you come get rid of it, please?

Mike, I just had to throw out a pineapple. It was perfectly good. There’s no way that it should have been able to grow mold on it so soon. Mike, come by, take the sandwich, throw it out, bring me a new pineapple.

Mike, my cheese drawer is in bad shape here. You free later?

Mike, I can’t even open the fridge door anymore. It smells terrible, unbearable. Bring some bleach.

Mike, I threw it out.

Mike, I took it out of the trash and put it back in the fridge.

Mike, OK, yeah, I got rid of it. Sorry man. I’ll make you a new sandwich sometime. Are we cool?