Authors: Fay Jacobs
Time Fries! (12 page)
I have now spent more money on one room in my house than on any other. And it's not even a room. It's the crawl space. Cue the scary music.
How I came to own a home with something called a crawl space is beyond me. What am I, from the Addams Family? Just the thought of the space and what could crawl in it makes me nuts. And I'm sure nobody is surprised I've never actually crawled into the crawl space to take a look at what's creeping around down there.
But that scary space beneath my home has, over the years, seen more inspections than Iraq's nuclear facilities.
Apparently, in the early 90s, building beach homes atop crawl spaces rather than concrete slabs seemed like a good idea. As with other fads gone bad, like Sir Walter Raleigh's idea to stick tobacco leaves in your mouth and set them on fire, to the more recent Fen-Phen diet craze, dangerous issues arose from the idea of crawl spaces. In our case we were told a river ran through it and toxic fungi festered down there.
The first crawl space incident happened several years ago. Mildew spots appeared on clothes in our guestroom closet. This was odd, as we no longer lived on a boat. My mate, always up for adventure, volunteered to belly crawl under the house to see what was breeding in the Petri dish under our spare room.
I watched House Detective disappear into the black hole, kneeled at the ground level entrance to the space and read aloud from the newspaper: “three bedroom, two bath CONDO⦔
“Is there a fungus among us?” I hollered into the cavity.
“The moisture barrier seems okay,” my spouse yelled. What? To me, a moisture barrier is a Totes umbrella.
“I don't see any black mold,” came a faraway voice. Is that good? Does it relate to the stuff in Tupperware in my fridge?
Eventually my mate emerged, damp and mud-caked, admitting we needed professional help.
“It's not too bad. I've seen lots worse around here,” said the contractor. Apparently, thanks to bad grading and too few vents, we had Lake Minnehaha under the house. No black mold, so cancel the bulldozer.
We could have bought a Kia for what it cost for a complex system of electronic vents and fans to blow out the moisture. Sometime later, convinced I'd developed acute Tinnitus or ringing in the ears, I went to the doctor, who assured me my ears were fine. I laughed when, days later, as I stood in my walk-in closet, ears ringing away, I realized I was hearing the incessant hum of my crawl space vents inhaling. I wanted my co-pay back.
But in no time, the crawl space was dry as a bone, even as the house occasionally sounded like LAX with jumbo jets taking off. Everything under the house was all well and good for a few years, until recently when Schnauzerhaven, a completely feline-free zone for obvious reasons, began to smell like a kitty litter box.
Clearly, a feral family had relocated to our crawl space. Once again, I sent my long-suffering mate, armed with a flashlight and Friskies, under the house. Nancy Drew discovered no cats. Just the overpowering aroma of Eau d' Kitty. Upstairs, the dogs went berserk, sniffing at the heating vents like teens huffing aerosols.
Coincidently, it was time for our quarterly exterminator visit (I live at the beach, ergo I have ants). As luck would have it, the bug hunter was getting into the lucrative field of crawl space remediation. Spiderman saw dollar signs.
He said there were no cats, but we had more than ants in our pants. We had under-house white water rapids and hazardous black mold. He recommended digging a maze of French drains and installing a giant sump pump. When his mold remediation credentials turned out to be a certificate for snuffing creepy-crawlers, I told Spiderman to take back the night and go home.
Then I called a company advertised as crawl space experts. Well, the second opinion was just as terrifying. They wanted to rent a giant dumpster, rip out all our under-house insulation, install miles of moisture barrier and dig up the circumference of our foundation.
I would have instantly posted a For Sale sign on the house, but realized that potential buyers would have to be willing to wear gas masks and bio hazard gear while watching TV. So I got the name of a highly recommended firm specializing in crawl space solutions.
These people not only emerged from under the house with good news, but withâhere's a conceptâgood pictures. I could actually see what was happening in the forbidden zone and the answer was nothing much. No Lake Superior, no procreating mold, no Hello Kitty.
“You probably had some dampness under here with melting snow or after very heavy rains. And yeah, when insulation gets a little wet it smells just like cat pee.” Aha! I knew my schnozz that could tell Merlot from Beaujolais couldn't mistake cat piss.
Okay, so we had a little mildew, a trickle of moisture now and then and our 14 year old moisture barrier was a shredded messâprobably from my spouse crawling on it every time I whiffed Sylvester and friends. Or, from Spiderman working in golf cleats.
We didn't need drains, sump pumps, or insulation ripped out. It was suggested that like 1950s ads with doctors endorsing Marlboros, our expensive crawl space vent system, sucking in air had seemed like a good idea at the time, but was no longer a remediation of choice.
“Actually, it's pumping cold air inside in the winter and hot air in the summer and boosting your heating bills.” Ugh.
So our experts sealed up the vents, installed a silent dehumidifier and entombed the entire crawl space with a moisture barrier to keep water out, appropriate temperatures in and mold from forming. And when the insulation dried, the phantom cats left, too.
Photos of the finished job look amazing. The floor and four-foot walls are covered in clean, white vinyl material, the vents are gone, and a small, moisture-activated dehumidifier sits quietly off in a corner. It looks so lovely down there I'm considering setting up my laptop and a coffee pot and going into the cave to write.
But stay tuned for the next installment of Home Sweet Crawl Space, when some enterprising company figures out that crawl space encapsulation, like Asbestos before it, seemed like a good idea at the time. Cue the scary musicâ¦
Thank goodness the cruise I took this winter was not the one that wound up on its side in Italy.
There's something to be said for being able to afford the Caribbean but not Europe. Watching that disaster unfold right after debarking from a cruise was very, very unsettling.
However, our own cruise was unsettled by the threat of the dreaded Norovirus or 24 hour flu, familiarly known as the trots. Picture this. We line up at the pier to board and nattily dressed cruise officials start squirting our palms with antibacterial gel. What is this, 1912 and I'm at Ellis Island being deloused?
We stand there, with thousands of other cruisersâa cornucopia of screaming babies, people coughing into their elbows, and suitcases having rolled through heavens knows what to be thereâand wonder why, when picturing our dream vacation, this scene never came to mind?
Then we get the warning flyer. The previous ship had suffered an outbreak of Norovirus and over 400 people got sick. However, we're assured that the vessel has been thoroughly swabbed and disinfected and we are merely being cautioned by the Centers for Disease Control. I'm going on a cruise. I expect to be cautioned by Weight Watchers, not the CDC. The flyer warns me to wash my hands incessantly and take precautions against touching contaminated doorknobs and railings. What precautions? I'm going to Cozumel, I didn't bring mittens.
I flash back to my health conscious friends warning that effective hand washing requires 30 seconds in soapy water, which is roughly equivalent to the time it takes to sing the Birthday Song. Okay, I can do that.
As I board the ship I am again squirted with complimentary disinfectant. I'm surprised the gangplank photographer does not include the squirter patrol in each souvenir portrait. The ship is
massive, like cruising in the mall. I need GPS to find my stateroom.
After unpacking, I head upstairs to the lounge, touching the elevator button with the hem of my blouse. Going to the 12th floor, raises my shirt practically over my head. Which is worse, the trots or being a flasher? Looking down to avoid stares from the crowd I see that the elevator floor has a panel reading Saturday. They must change it daily. I'm facing six more days of epidemiological gymnastics?
From the lounge I visit the casino, where, to humor the CDC I keep a cocktail napkin around my Rum Punch glass. Then I stretch my shirtsleeve over my hand, pulling my neck and head to my shoulder, as I crank the one-armed bandit. Quasimodo at sea.
We go to dinner, getting squirted with the ubiquitous antibacterial gel on the way in and the way out. Thousands of people rub their hands together like mad villains planning nefarious deeds.
The next day, the unthinkable happens. I have to use a hallway rest room. Okay, primary mission accomplished, I go to wash my hands. I can do this⦠“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Norovirus, happy birthday to you.” Adjacent hand washers step away from the crazy lady.
It's a logistical cruelty that after banishing bacteria and blotting with a paper towel, you are forced to touch and turn the germ-riddled, outbreak-threatening, horror story of a door handle just to leave the bathroom. So I keep the soggy paper towel in my hand, open the door, hold it ajar with my ass and extend my too-short body toward the trash receptacle to dispose of my paper towel. A 7-foot NBA star couldn't sink it, if you'll excuse the word sink in a cruise article. Finally I give up, tuck the sodden towel in my pocket and exit.
Minutes later, lounging by the pool, contorting to hold a book while keeping my elbows and wrists off the infectious arms of the chair, I see that the wet paper towel has made a
very unattractive wet spot on my shorts.
I get up to go change, heading for my room, when the boat hits an ocean swell, and I lurch forward, catching myself on the towel rental counter. Upright, but open-palmed, hands down on the shiny metal table, a thousand fingerprints look up and mock me.
The hell with it. I go get out of my wet shorts and into a dry martini.
And for the rest of the cruise I do not agonize about Norovirus. I augment the germicides by taking my alcohol internally and throwing precautions to the wind. I eat, drink and make merry. I dunk in the pool with the germy masses, sit amid coughing theatre crowds and touch any damn surface I please. I swim with dolphins, tour the islands, I'm king of the world.
Two days later, gleefully fingering the elevator buttons with my bare hands, I wonder if the removable day of the week panel might say, “It's Wednesday, do you know where your liver is?”
Then it's two more days of port visits, unrelenting gel squirts, more Bahama Mama cocktails for disease prevention and a grand time on the high seas. I knew it was time to come home when I looked down at my swollen ankles and realized I was retaining vodka. But thankfully, no signs of Norovirus.
I loved the cruise and didn't mind dripping with a little hand gel. But like other traumatic experiences, there can be flashbacks. As I watched the festivities after the Giants clinched the Super Bowl, I was absolutely horrified.
In a nightmare scenario, one dirty, sweaty, turf-covered player after another reached out with their bare hands to touch, and even oh-my-God kiss that darn Lombardi Trophy. Oh no, guys!!! Get thee to the soap dispenser and water supply. Sing Happy Birthday. Or you'll be in the bathroom when it's time to go to Disneyland.
As for me, I just bought stock in Lysol. Squirt, squirt.