The Moldy Lemon

When my husband came home from work and saw me passed out on the couch the other day he immediately knew the culprit, and that it must be hidden somewhere near.

But where?

This could be a story about addiction but it’s not.

It could be a story about poverty as that was the origin of my issue, but, no, it’s not — not this time anyway.

I’m not an addict, well, to anything that would cause me to pass out, but I do have an issue with mold. It first showed up during the time I lived with my one year-old up in Olympia, Washington, in a packed-dirt floor, one room yurt, no electricity, no heat. The mold coated everything before I could afford the woodstove that eventually dried out our little home.

The mold issue grew more severe when we lived at the damp Pacific coast in far north California in the ’90s and pretty much everything we owned was subject to mold, this time while living in an old trailer — wood stove heat only — in the middle of the dark redwood rainforest. It’s where we moved for more room once there were three young sons in the family, after the one room woodstove-heat-only cabin (also in the middle of the damp and dark redwood forest) grew too cramped.

Once we moved into the sunshine, the mold issue receded for awhile (the money/work situations also began to improve drastically).

….but mold became severe again for some hidden reason once we moved to Georgia and eventually the downstairs wall in my mother’s rustic cabin was knocked down during what became an extensive search.

No one knew there was an epidemic of mold in the walls, this time black mold — but my husband knew me — and he’d found me passed out one day, unable to be roused, so he knew mold was nearby.

Fast forward fifteen years to this week.

This time around, the culprit was a moldy lemon, hidden, wedged, in the back corner of a stack of clean casserole dishes. I’d been breathing mold spores for days as I worked nearby.**

It’s taken me a couple days to get it out of my system, to get me off the couch.

So, there were no daily photos posted for December 6th — 8th in my Photo a Day for December series.

Not even of the moldy lemon.

(*I* would have photo-ed it, but I was passed out when it was found and husband very smartly got rid of it quick.)

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**An active Thanksgiving dish wash-er somehow didn’t notice the fresh lemon sitting in the clean casserole dish (due to extensive chatting, no doubt) before placing more clean dishes on top. The cupboard is right by where I work each day. Weeks later…

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