Not such a charm, after all. Every day that I’ve been in this rental, I’ve had the doors and windows wide open. It smells new, so I’ve taken precautions to air it out. After three nights, I finally mustered the energy to hang towels in the bedroom window to block the morning light and then didn’t open the window because I didn’t want the towels to fall… This coincided with a weather change and, because of the rain, I kept the other windows closed. It also coincided with my husband discovering a hornet nest under the eaves, so I started keeping the front door closed. This is all to explain what led to my perfect home away from home becoming an off-gassing cesspool.

I lay in bed, breathing the chemical fog, trying to sleep, trying to convince myself I was imagining it. The next day I told my husband, if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was coming down with a cold. My nose was all stuffed up and running at the same time, one ear was clogged, my eyes and throat were sore(er). That night, I couldn’t sleep in the bedroom. Did I reach some sort of chemical threshold? Or was this simply because the windows had been closed? After choking for an hour, I dragged everything to the couch: doubled over duvet on the bottom for my aching bones, pillow, sheets, top blanket and duvet… so much work for me, especially at 2am. An hour later, after being woken up every few seconds by rain hitting what sounded like a metal pail somewhere… Drip drip drip… Like torture every time I drifted off… I got up and put in ear plugs. At 4am, after waking up every time I moved because this couch is basically like concrete, I crawled into the bedroom, got an unwieldy camping mattress and wrestled it under the folded over bottom duvet. At 430am, I stumbled into the kitchenette and put duck tape over the blue clock lights on the oven and the microwave. At 5am, I turned off the porch lights that were keeping me awake. At 7am, I woke up from the morning sun through the window. Dear lord.

I asked the landlord about the IKEA wardrobes in the bedroom, knowing that I had bad reactions to my own IKEA wardrobe for so long and, sure enough, they are brand new a week before I got here.

View from this rental's door

So, I’ve gone a little backwards. Two nights on the couch and a week steeped in chemical off-gas, I don’t quite feel as stable. I’m exhausted, heart palpitations started yesterday and I continue to have the cold symptoms above the neck and the flu symptoms below. I’m still going home today. I’m going to keep a segregated box of stuff separate that I don’t bring into the house in case I crash and burn and need to leave again. But, man oh man, am I excited to see my boys and sleep in my own bed. Fingers crossed that I can climb back up to where I was a month ago.