I’m cleaning the bathroom. It’s a deep clean because the bathroom needs it and my in-laws are visiting. Not that they’re going to be using our shower or anything, it’s just a way for me to waste time cleaning something that doesn’t necessarily need to be cleaned when there are piles of laundry to be folded on the couch. Kinda like when I was 8 and I had toys piled in the floor and Mom would walk in to check on my progress only to find me dusting my perfume bottles and arranging them tallest to shortest on my vanity.
Yeah.
Well, I’ve been fighting something for a long time in the shower. No, not the desire to shave my legs because that is nonexistent.
Black mold.
Now, I don’t know if it’s the cancer causing kind, but with this old house leakiness I’m worried that it’s In The Walls. Sitting. Waiting. Silently attacking our brain cells and causing exacerbating neuroses.
So what does a person who is prone to WebMD-ing (verb, like Googling) every cramp or temperature change do when she thinks she has black mold lurking in the walls? She Googles pictures of black mold. And when she can’t be confident that what she’s got isn’t the bad kind, she looks up “symptoms of toxic black mold poisoning” and gets scared because everything it lists is something she has experienced in the 5 years she’s been living in this house, except for “spleen pain” and that’s only because she’s not sure where her spleen is.
There could totally BE spleen pain. Where is my SPLEEN?
And then the she who is me decides to counteract the cancer-causing mold spores by stopping at Jamba Juice and getting one of those açai berry smoothies because it’s filled with antioxidants and that’s really my only chance now. But on the way there I’m on the phone with my mom who sounds like she picked up smoking overnight and made up for the 40-some-odd years she didn’t smoke. She’s got some sort of contagious infection and I was just with her last night for an extended period of time…
Sheesh.
As luck would have it I did have a buy-one-get-one-free coupon, so I got the açai and the Coldbuster®, which I am saving for the morning. Tonight I’m fighting off the mold spores and tomorrow I’ll battle the common cold.
Now back to the shower.
Related posts:
Oklahoma girl through-and-through. Writer, aspiring domestic goddess and totalitarian dictator. Taking on the world one carb-induced coma at a time. Founder of GodlyGals, a ministry for women established in 2002. Co-host of Picture Shows & Petticoats. 
I knew there was a reason I liked you so much . . .
Speaking as a nursing student, web-mding will just cause your frustration and make you a hypochondriac, I know.
Your spleen, FYI, is kind of next to your stomach, so if you look down on your chest, just below the ribcage at the lower part… below the heart.
You would sooo not want to come to my house. I have no idea what is growing on the wall behind my shower. Can I live by the motto… “What I can’t see won’t hurt me”? :/
I do the WebMD thing sometimes. Like a couple weeks ago, out of nowhere, my sister lost sight in her eye. I did an internet search and found out it could be grave, like a blood clot or heart condition. Turns out she had a migraine.
You are hysterical! Thank you for letting me know Im not the only one webMD-ing and freaking myself out! I heard the other day that vodka applied from a spray bottle and left to soak, then rinsed is supposed to kill off shower mold… havent tried it yet, but am planning to, I have pink mold in my shower … dun dun duuuunnn :{